Three things

You learn something new every day

On Friday I trundled on down to LCB for what I thought was going to be a demonstration of our next cooking venture but no. Instead, it was an amazing presentation on cooking vegan. Not really a part of the program I am in as we are using everything from cuttlefish to bone marrow, but it left me speechless.

Chef poured soy milk into a saucepan and started cooking it until it was thickened and then turned off the heat and let it curdle (gross word I know) and then poured it through cheesecloth and a sieve while all this disgusting yellowy stuff ended up in a bowl below it. Then she took that curdled soy milk after it hardened a little and it miraculously became tofu! Then she mixed it with some seaweed (can you even imagine?) and soy sauce and spices and molded it into a burger!

Then, the real chicanery started. You know the French love their mayonnaise right. Well, she took that disgusting yellow stuff that had run through the sieve after the soy milk curdled and added mustard to it and put it in a vitamix and slowly streamed in oil and voilà—in about two minutes she had vegan mayonnaise! It was incredible!

After, she beautifully cut up a bunch of vegatables in flower shapes and pickled them right in front of us! Then she took more vegetables and put them in this dehydrating contraption—which I want so badly- and cooked the burger.

When she began to plate the completed arrangement she whipped out a bun that another chef had made from squid ink and rice flour—I am not making this up! It was dark and tiger-striped and looked so much better than you can even imagine a rice flour-squid ink piece of bread could ever aspire to be—it was shocking.

With a ding the dehydrator went off and out she pulled these absolutely delicious looking vegetable chips for an accoutrement. It was just incredible. And it smelled fantastic. You literally had to see it happen to believe it! I will probably never be a vegan—I was raised in Nebraska for God’s sake- but this really made me think it over.

Burger à la tofu

Delicious chips!

So, for the second piece of big news over the weekend—I made a friend! A very nice woman doctor who is my age with three kids. I was thrilled. And we went to a Gypsy Jazz concert on Saturday night! I personally had never heard of gypsy jazz but it was like speakeasy music. It just made me feel like I wanted to make some bathtub gin and then yell something like “Scram Dollface, the coppers are here!” The venue was underground and kind of like you imagine an illegal bar in the 1920’s would be like in Paris. Except the crowd was old like us and it was all very tame—but still, it felt like it could have been dangerous-maybe.

In the lead up to my “date” this weekend I had some input from the peanut gallery (you know who you are) back home. Things like, “well what are you going to wear?” and, “are you going to invite her over to your place”, and “don’t come on too strong, you don’t want to scare her off.” It was, in a word, weird. I felt like I had been matched on Tinder and was getting some well-meaning dating advice from my veteran single friends. Complete with tips on how not to blow it. You will be happy to know I played it cool and I think we will go out again. In case you were worried.

Gypsy Jazz band at Le Bal Blomet

Finally, the big news that came out on Friday at LCB—no more masks! I am over the moon about this—but you forget how weird wearing a mask is—you really don’t know what people look like. I have a cooking partner (I am station 3 and she is 4) and I did not even recognize her without her mask. From the eyes down she was nothing like what I had imagined. So strange!