even if you prep the lettuce a little in advance (which I do too), storing the lettuce in a way that keeps the cells hydrated and turgid goes a long way to help. I fill a wide-mouth 1 cup mason jar with water to put the base of the lettuce in, then use a ziplock bag to pull over the lettuce; that way the lettuce has a source of water to pull and the respiration of the leaves won’t cause water loss, as the air remains humid in the bag.

I cut up my lettuce an hour or two before I made the crunchwraps, put them in a bowl, put a lid on the bowl, and put it back in the fridge until I needed them, but prepping closer to time will also help prevent limp lettuce. I used Romaine, so that might also help but I would imagine iceberg could also be kept hydrated.

Good luck - pass along any tips you learn!!

Yes, vegan cheese makes me pretty sad. Thanks for your encouragement and positivity! 🥰

Here is my recipe for the nacho cheez:

• 1 lb (around 3 - 4) potatoes, boiled
• 1 medium to large carrot, boiled
• 1/2 - 1 cup retained starchy water from cooking potatoes and carrots
• 1 cup cashews, soaked and drained
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp MSG
• 1/2 tsp salt
• a few pickled jalapenos (optional if it’s too spicy for you)
• 2 tsp white miso
• ~ 1 TB Miyokos farmhouse cheddar (can sub with lactic acid)
• 1/4 - 1 tsp mustard

I find the blender overheats with how thick the potatoes make it, so I like to let the carrots, potato, and the water all cool fully after boiling. I also like to blend the cashews and other ingredients together first, before adding the potato which will bring my blender nearly to overheating.

This recipe (like all recipes in my mind) is more a rough guideline. I rarely measure everything and I often change the ingredients up a little, but it gives you a sense of the dish. I often use fewer potatoes now, more like 1/2 lb, maybe 1 - 2 small to medium potatoes, usually gold potatoes. I also don’t like to remove the skin for the added fiber, which is extra filling (and more nutritious).

I will have to try dill and paprika for mac & cheese, I have never tried that before, thank for the ideas!

aw, thank you - that’s nice to hear 😊

The color comes from the carrot and nutritional yeast, I don’t really intend to mimic the look of real nacho cheese but it does sorta work out doesn’t it? I find having a high-powered blender to get the cashews blended fully is the key to the consistency, which is important to me.

The pickled onion isn’t that important and is actually getting away from copycating a taco bell crunchwrap supreme. I just like vegetables a lot and I’m always lacto-fermenting something, so this is a way to use it up. It does add a nice color and flavor, though! (Or at least I enjoy it.)

Regarding the lettuce, here is how I build it:

https://imgur.com/a/l8IYGod

0. base: tostada + melted cheese
1. layer of “sour cream”
2. lettuce
3. tomato

Then when I crisp the outside, I preheat my pan so it doesn’t spend much time on the griddle. The lettuce I keep crisp in my fridge by keeping the cut stem / root area in water and covering the lettuce in a plastic bag. Then I only take the leaves I need and I rinse them well before using them (for bacteria, pesticides, bugs, dirt, etc.). This makes the lettuce turgid and full of cold water, which also would make it harder to wilt. The tomatoes are also wet and keep the lettuce wet during the cooking. I probably don’t spend more than a minute searing each side of the tortilla, just enough that it starts to brown. I find this doesn’t really heat up the cold ingredients much at all, so there is no wilting.

Hope this helps. ❤️

If you decide to make them I’d love to see photos!!

aww, thanks!

If you end up making anything let me know - would love to see pics! 😁

yes, it does a better job of emulating meat in some ways, but it’s still mostly just TVP (and really overpriced TVP at that!).

The main advantage beyond beef has is through the use of methylcellulose, which is used to make the fat chunks. You could totally make this with your typical TVP taco meat, if you wanted more like beyond beef I would add more fats somehow, whether whole foods approach like avocado and cashews, or by making your own methylcellulose fat pucks in the freezer and shredding them into your TVP mix.

This is a recipe on how to make your own beyond beef: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUWR9VRckAk

might take a little tweaking in my experience it’s hard to perfectly replicate the beyond beef

it tastes as good as it looks, too - takes some finessing to get a suitable nacho cheese flavor and to get the beef tasting like taco bell meat, but usually when I make this it tastes better than I expect it to. There have been a couple times where it didn’t live up to expectations. Still trying to figure out exactly what contributes to the disappointment in those moments (but I suspect it’s not adding enough seasoning to the beyond beef or cooking the beef too wet and not getting enough browning).

Another thing I like to do is melt some shredded violife (3 cheese blend or the american / cheddar cheese) onto the tostada before adding the sour cream and other toppings. I deep fry the tortilla, then put it on a tray and add the cheese and pop it into my convection oven with the broil setting for a minute or so.

thank you!!

it was so, so delicious - some of the red cabbage I used had been fermented a little bit (like a young saurkraut); I did chop up fresh dill to serve, and I served with a little dollop of vegenaise (sounds gross, but it adds richness and I didn’t have time / energy to make a cashew cream).

To adapt the recipe to be vegan, I made a few modifications, like instead of using a rich beef bone broth, I tried adding richness and making a vegan broth using no-beef bouillon, white miso, and some v. butter (any neutral fat might work here, like refined coconut oil). This mimics the umami, saltiness, and richness of a bone broth somewhat. You can also use mushroom seasoning granules, which are found in Asian food stores, or MSG to increase umami further.

I highly recommend this dish, I had never made borscht before and I kept craving it even though I made a huge amount.

I use hot water to rinse the soap off the razor as I’m shaving. There might be a little bit of residue that builds up, I try to hit it with some hot water. If it’s my straight razor I sometimes carefully wipe the blade with a towel before stropping (this helps dry it and prevent rust, as well as remove any remaining soap scum).

On DE safety razors I take a q-tip and sterilize the blade with 70% isopropyl alcohol which happens to also clean the soap scum off. I sterilize before shaving to help prevent infections to the follicles that can be caused by bacteria that start to live on your razor. Another recommendation I’ve heard is just to store your razor in 70% alcohol, but I prefer my way.

omg 🤦‍♀️

Thank you! Is there a reason Dale Earnhardt is in these memes? Is he a leftist Nascar driver? (Maybe your video will answer my questions, but I don’t have the time to watch an hour long video essay right now, though I’m quite interested and hope to in the future, thanks for the link!)

I see he died in 2001, so all the reasons I could think of as to why he’s in two memes representing the Left are falling short …

I’m out of the loop - who is the person with the “Plus” hat? Maybe the same person as in this meme?

Yes! I do think it’s usually physical books, and books I have grown overly attached to reading, where I can’t bring myself to finish them.

Asimov’s Foundation trilogy comes to mind, I had a physical copy that had the whole trilogy as one book, and just as the third book was coming to a climax I quit reading it and shelved it. It’s been so long I barely remember the plot now, lol.

All good points! I have the same tendency to pick up and drop books based on mood and what’s going on in my life. I recently just picked back up Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir which I had abandoned years ago after reading roughly the first half. Picking it back up, I enjoyed it so thoroughly I became a bit avid in my reading and finished the rest of the book in a week or so (which is rather fast paced for me).

I like the metaphor of reading being like listening to the radio. I often feel guilty for dropping books or not powering through (there are many, many books I have read the first quarter or so of and shelved with the intention to finish another time). Probably healthier to have a more free and less “driven” mindset towards reading books.

Sometimes I drop a book because I enjoy it so much I don’t want it to end, I want it to always be there and to relish it later. This is a bit silly - there are always other books, but I also will forget the plot over time and eventually the book will be enough like new that I can enjoy re-reading it.

That seems like a wholesome perspective, thanks for sharing it!

People lie because they want people to think they are smart.

I remember when I was a kid, I was amazed by my grandmother who could finish a whole novel in a few sittings across a day or two when she would come and stay with us. I once mustered up the courage to ask her how she learned to read so quickly, and she explained that she doesn’t actually read every word, but just scans for major plot points. I felt silly, and unsure how to respond - it seemed to me she wasn’t reading, but I didn’t want to imply that. lol

She wasn’t trying to appear smart, I think she just didn’t want to suffer the boring parts, so she scanned ahead to the juicy bits. That’s such an interesting and different way of approaching reading than I have, I’ve only recently started to skip an introduction or preface if it didn’t seem crucial to the book, something I would have previously considered antisocial or rougish, haha.

I’m using an ancient Nexus tablet with the Android app “MoonReader” (one of the only apps I have paid for); I would prefer a different setup, to use a FOSS app or not use a tablet, but most physical ereaders seem to have issues with PDFs, no?

I would want something I can just load files on (no walled garden); I currently use syncthing to transfer books to my tablet.

That’s an interesting perspective, as I have always felt insecure for being a slow reader. I feel like people in my world see it as a sign of being less intelligent, and while I would like to think slower reading helps with my comprehension, I also just feel like it’s not much of a choice for me (I mean, the alternative to slow reading for me would be something other than reading, like scanning; it seems people who can read faster than me are somehow also more competent or intelligent).

Definitely worth reading, I remember it being better than the first book.

I’ve read both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and while you can tell the general arc she was going for with the next book (and can imagine the broad strokes of what would happen next), I never felt there was a lack of closure for the story.

They are emotionally difficult books to read, so it’s also hard to recommend them to people, but I would encourage you to not let the lack of a third book prevent you from reading the first two, they are worth reading on their own merits. The Parable of the Talents especially has significance to the situation in the U.S., as some say it predicted Trump.

I don’t think anyone has recommended the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson yet.