budgeting, shopping, meat, and rice

Rookie mistake: shopping for food online when you're not hungry and feel like you never need to eat again because you glutted yourself on tamarind candy from Mexico that your coworker introduced you to never realizing where this could lead.

There are two things that deeply annoy me here:

1.) How did I not know tamarind a.) existed (I thought it was some kind of fantasy food?) and b.) was so fucking good? Like yes, I get I'm eating the compressed sugar-and-spicy version but holy shit.

2.) My shopping list was, to my experienced eye, remarkably functional with little to no indulgence (nope, one thing: English muffins). In fact, I am well under budget.

This may sound like a good thing but generally, no, it's not. My budget plan has built-ins for indulgence, and in general, I go over by at least 10%-15% each month, which is expected. Then why not raise the budget, you wonder? No, then I'd go ten to fifteen percent over that. Logic.

Anyway going under that hard this early in the month when I'm stocking up on staples as well? Not a good sign.

Sure, now I'm on a tamarind candy high and care not, but there's a reason I have that ten to fifteen percent buffer to buy snacks and candy and boomerang pies at reasonable prices. The reason is, if I don't, if I'm careful and methodical and stick to the healthy ingredient list and act responsible and shit, there will be many trips to the convenience store next door for overpriced Bear Claws, Reese's Pieces stuffed chocolate everything, and while I'm there, might as well grab an Orange Vanilla Coke or two.

This is going to be a really fun month.

Food Weirdness

When I moved to my apartment, I made a resolution to eat healthy. This quickly morphed into 'eat healthy and organic (when affordable)' but at some point turned into becoming super into ethically conscious meat and dairy consumption.



Okay, it must be said, there's no chance in hell this will change because Whole Foods actually added a visible categorization of each type and cut of meat to their website, aka 5 Step Animal Welfare Rating. Up until that moment, I was mostly buying my meat from Sprouts and Whole Foods with the rare exception of when HEB had chicken thighs for 70 cents a pound and what can you do?

Then the categorization appeared on the website, I went to look up what it meant, and now I feel guilty buying below Step Two (enriched environment). prefer Step 4 and up, and can't even deal with looking at random unrated chickens that I assume live a life of horror like that episode about factory chickens on Bones. I even tried to buy chicken on sale like a normal person and flashed on horrific episode details I won't share because Jesus and thought how I was personally contributing toward universal entropy or some shit because I wanted to save a dollar and change a pound, I couldn't tell you, it was weird.

This isn't, by the way, some belated connection between animals and food. I grew up in the country; we raised chickens and eventually ate the chickens, same with pigs (only once, though). I was a member of 4-H. I used to fish with my family and help out with the prep. When my grandfather was alive, they went deer hunting; I personally observed the result hanging in a tree in my grandmother's backyard and even have a picture. One of my father's closest friends was a butcher and my early childhood was stuffed with high quality beef and chicken I had no idea I was supposed to appreciate more because we got a discount; we went to the local meat market that had a small slaughterhouse attached for local farmers.

I do not have any desire to personally participate in the process of how an animal becomes an item for dinner and have no desire to watch any part of it, but I'm not horrified by it and if I had to, could do it with only some vomiting and ewww.

(Exceptions: chickens and related poultry, because of that fucking Bones episode, and rabbits, for reasons obvious and which horrifies me so badly that Central Market's meat area is a minefield due to the occasional appearance of such and so have people check for me.)

I don't feel like a crazy Farmer's Market hipster, though, but that's mostly because I can't afford it. Whole Foods level is sustainable; Farmer's Market level requires a six figure income to make a roast. I soothe my feelings with startlingly priced vegetables and eggs no one is allowed to use without express permission because dear God.

Note: the one thing that keeps surprising me is that none of the Farmer's Markets ever have dairy, even butter, as I am all about overpriced butter with fancy names produced by spoiled cows that probably have a higher level of education than I do and are sometimes British or Irish. Is that a legal thing due to pasteurization requirements?



Semi-relate, I've also come to realize there's been a shift in the Force on how I view rice.



Rice Is My Friend

Because we have so many Indian employees and contractors, all of our parties at work are a smorgasborg of southern (fried chicken, fried fish, potato salad (multiple types), sometimes pasta salad), Mexican and Tex-Mex (tacos and/or fajitas and/or enchiladas with accompanying tortillas in their flour and corn forms, queso, tortilla chips, beans and rice), and Indian ([insert word] curries, samosas, [insert word] tikka, [insert word] masala, tandoori chicken (if someone feels super generous), naan, etc). However, the most common among my Indian coworkers is to bring a rice dish, and I mean, we'll have six to ten different ones every time.

Not gonna lie, for most of my life, rice has been that thing that isn't potatoes under the gravy, in casseroles of various types, and shows up in stir fry or in a box when ordering Chinese or Japanese or Korean or Indian or Thai (continue common places rice is found here) that generally you use as a sort of mat to show off the good part of the meal and soak up the juices. Suffice to say, rice being an actual food you'd want to eat because its rice was restricted to basically rice pudding and beans and rice (Mexican or Cajun or Popeye's dirty rice).

If someone had asked me five years ago, "What kind of rice is it?" my blank expression and "uh white?" would probably tell you all you needed to know about my relationship with rice. And for the most part, this was true of most of my American coworkers.

In our defense, we just didn't know.

One of my coworkers designed a little place card for everyone to use for their dishes with the name and checkboxes for common food restrictions/allergens (common and ones we know people in the office have)/vegetarian/vegan/meat type/dairy/etc to make it easy for everyone, just check off what's applicable. And one of the most common things you see is people taking pictures of those cards whenever someone brings a new rice dish because it got embarrassing to wander around asking "what was that rice called? No, not the lemon rice, the one with brown stuff and carrots--orange bits of something?--and peas I think? It was beside the green one? I wrote down that one, though. Do you know who brought it?"

(And always--always--there was one rice dish no one ever claimed, which I assume now is a gift of the rice god to educate us further. Generally it was the best one. I still fantasize about the greenish-brown one with whole chickpeas and reddish strips of pepper sometimes.)

I didn't consciously realize, however, how much that had influenced me until one terrible day when I was told 'oh, we're having pepper steak and rice' and came over excitedly to be confronted with a bland bowl of ambiguous composition, uncertain texture, and the glaring, blinding whiteness of untrodden snow and after a few seconds bafflement, recognized it to be--apparently--rice. It was weird and mushy and flavorless and individual granules didn't seem to have any sort of shape. Its sole purpose seemed to be providing a nice frame for the pepper steak and it always looked like it should be melting or collapsing but never losing that amphibious semi-firmness like Jello but somehow more upsetting.

Of course, I ate as a normal person and didn't scream every time it touched my lips, but I couldn't help but ponder how I now apparently have not only rice opinions, but have rice standards.

This is like that moment when--with a straight face and no irony--I sincerely asked the guy at the farmer's market selling eggs, "But are your chickens vegetarian or vegan?"

Comments

[toujours_nigel]

I love your adventures with Indian everything, and yes rice is an actual meal, it's amazing.

[seperis]

My son's charter school was founded by Turkish ex-pats, and so their school lunches were generally halal and had a couple of neat rice-is-food dishes (One I sampled was I think at the family/teacher evening after Ramadan and was really good), but I honestly didn't make the connection to types of rice and what to do with it until every party, my Indian coworkers would bring something new and we're all like "...witchcraft?"

Of course, I'm now waiting for masala kolache or curry kolache to appear, because as is tradition here, if food can be placed in Bohemian/Czech breading and baked, it will happen. I still remember happily buying migas kolache and my mother's expression.

(of course I am also the person who will roll leftovers into tortillas, sprinkle with cheese, and microwave, and I'm not picky about what leftovers (chicken and rice? Roll with cheese. Samosa innards? Roll with cheese. Potatoes and gravy? Roll with cheese). I have yet to meet a leftover that doesn't benefit from a tortilla wrapper and cheese. So I may be a poor judge.)

[toujours_nigel]

Oh, that's cool. Relatedly, Ramadan starts on Sunday so if you like haleem you could probably get it. (and also all the things you roll in tortilla with cheese sound perfectly legit, and also also I'm now gonna google kolache.)

There are tamarind trees on campus, and I went for a walk today and noticed all the fallen pods way more than I usually do, because of this post. Tamarind water is the best thing, especially with phuchka/golgappa/pani puri.

[seperis]

Central Texas had a couple of German Immigration Events (and Czech/Bohemian and Polish, etc), but unlike Mexican influence (which is two-thirds of Texas culture period, you can't separate them out), it only really obvious (outside festivals and such) in small town names in this area, the small churches, and food.

It's one of the reasons when I was a kid, you'd go to a barbecue competition and there was almost always an inordinate amount of saurkraut just there. Why? Grandmother made it when we had barbecue. Why? Because most grandmothers were at the time only one gen or at best two gen off the boat and they ate saurkraut. Same with Polish sausage (aka 'sausage'). Kolaches are another that penetrate hard; the small town I grew up near where we did our shopping had a breakfast taco/kolache shop owned by a Hispanic lady. Only open 6 AM to noon on weekdays, but didn't matter; twenty years, that was where you went for your breakfast taco and/or kolache needs. In Austin, there are at least two kolache shops I have been to personally and there exist at least two or three more.

(Okay, there were donuts too, but no one went there for donuts. You went for a dozen kolaches and a dozen breakfast tacos for your class/crew/whatever. Maybe grab some donuts while you were there, yeah.)

Tamarind water is the best thing, especially with phuchka/golgappa/pani puri.

And now it is my turn to google!

RE: Rice

[raine]

Ha. I grew up eating rice (being half-Filipina) and I still emember the forlorn look on my dad's face one Thanksgiving when my mom elected not to make rice but instead serve only potatoes. ::giggles::

[lilacsigil]

I live in a dairy farming area, though not in the US, and dairy sales rules are extremely complicated, mostly because every now and then some twit starts selling unpasteurised milk somewhere other than "at my own farm where I have total control over the process" and people get sick or die. So my guess is that your region had An Incident some time ago and there's still a law making it not worth selling at the farmer's market.

[goss]

Tamarind! Ha. In my old elementary school we had a big tamarind tree, and as punishment, I remember getting rapped on the hand with a tamarind stick for not learning my multiplication table. /o\

Not sure about the candy from Mexico that you refer to, but here in Trinidad, we have a kind of sugar-and-spicy tamarind ball (recipe) that is very popular amongst the kiddies. :D

[seperis]

In my old elementary school we had a big tamarind tree, and as punishment, I remember getting rapped on the hand with a tamarind stick for not learning my multiplication table. /o\

I saw those pods on google! Ouch, those suckers look hard.

Re candy: My coworker lives in San Antonio and gets a huge bag from the market there, I think, and everything in it is magic. One is a stretchy-pulpy mass made of tamarind, sugar, and chili powder should not be the taste equivalent of heroin, but here we are.

[kiratael]

I developed a passion for takikomi gohan (rice with dashi and soy sauce and whatever the chef wants) while living in Japan to the point that when I visited again years after leaving, my former coworker's kid was like, "mom, don't forget to make hotate (clam) takikomi gohan when she gets here." Because I love all takikomi gohan, but takikomi gohan with clams is the best takikomi gohan and apparently that was written all over my face whenever I had it.

we just didn't know

[harmonic_tabby]

The staples in our pantry include two bags of rice: a basmati and a medium brown. They do different things, they have different flavors and they suit my cooking style. I sometimes bring home others we enjoy like black rice and wild rice (yes, I know it's not actually a rice) or something new to experiment with.

My 'rice awareness' has existed long enough that the child I taught to cook occasionally makes rice for his children and none of them, son or grandchildren, will default to calling it just white. My mother rarely cooked rice and even now has no 'rice awareness' at over 80 years old.

Her mother taught me (still no rice) and I knew beans. I also know a great deal about preserving fruits and vegetables. Quince jam anyone?? I think we encode the cooking traditions/cultural knowledge of our antecedents so I started white girl/white bread. I kept learning because I found the idea of feeding people important and embraced that.

I applaud your rice standards! We've joined the revolution!

and tamarind, you say?? Huh, another thing to investigate...

Tabs

[krait]

Hahahaha, once I discovered brown Basmati rice there was no going back. :D I basically gave myself a Rice Education once I was living on my own, because there was an inexpensive international grocery store near my apartment and why would you not try every variety of rice? :D

[seperis]

RICE TYPES! I had no idea until Child started the charter school and didn't really get it until my Indian coworkers introduced us to reality. IT's amazing.

We have about three or four rice types on hand now.

[lebannen]

The answer to the the question about the chickens is no, because not only will the little bastards happily eat their own eggs if they can get their heads into the bit where the eggs roll away to, they will also eat any other things they can peck into submission (and I mean generally that's a good thing, they eat all sorts of slugs and bugs that are not generally things you want).

[olanthanide]

Really enjoying the rice discussion in the comment thread -- I remember how a group of Asian colleagues (East, South East, and Pacific Islanders) and I were having Opinions about rice and how confused / amused our white colleagues were. Our subgroup's general consensus is that long grain jasmine is the best default rice. Also comparing the different kinds of pilaf-styled rice recipes from around the world is fun.

Have you tried tamarind soda before? If you like the candy you might enjoy that as well.

[seperis]

Really enjoying the rice discussion in the comment thread -- I remember how a group of Asian colleagues (East, South East, and Pacific Islanders) and I were having Opinions about rice and how confused / amused our white colleagues were.

I know exactly that expression; three years ago, it was mine. In my defense, southern food culture is more about the potato; I've known potatoes all my life and I have potato preferences even. Rice, that took some cultural expansion.

Our subgroup's general consensus is that long grain jasmine is the best default rice. Also comparing the different kinds of pilaf-styled rice recipes from around the world is fun.

My current base rice is brown basmati but Child prefers jasmine so we have a healthy supply of both.

Have you tried tamarind soda before? If you like the candy you might enjoy that as well.

...I have not and shall be doing so really, really soon.

[sprocket]

Rice! I made the rice dish for a work potluck one time. It tasted great, but I forgot most of my coworkers came from Rice As Main culture. Lesson learned about making three times as much rice than I think I'll need.

For potluck at that job, someone would always get The Meat. A take-out container of grilled protein that dripped grease and perfumed the entire lab with smoky char smell. Mmmmm. It probably wasn't ethically sourced meat, but it tasted fantastic.