TOFU EATERS AND RAGGEDY BEARDS

Preambulary remarks: When I came home today, the apartment smelled wonderful. My apartment mate was furthering her dastardly plot to kill her boyfriend, which involves cooking meals for him that she freezes and takes over to his place. Her cholesterol is fine, his, maybe not so much.
He's paranoid about both his cholesterol and her cooking.

He can't cook worth squat. She cooks very well.
And she's gotten better over the years.

Nobody has cooked for me in a very long (!) time.
In all honesty, that irritates me somewhat.
I haven't cooked for any one either.
So it balances out. Sort of.

In any case, her poor blighter is going to feast on the national dish of his people: Beef Stroganoff (бефстроганов). No, I had no idea it was his national dish -- he's of Russian Jewish extraction, so I was guessing that it would be gehakte leber (deadly), brisket, or even gefilte fish -- and I did not know that Russian Jews had rich butter, cream, and smetana sauce with everything. Did I mention that she's a good cook?
He's going to die of a heart attack.
Or gout.

She needs a fry-o-lator, so she can make him Chicken Kiev. It's the other Russian Jewish national dish. Plus pelmeny and kotlety.
With more butter and smetana.

He should try lobster.


What I had for lunch today was coldcuts on a roll with mediocre hot sauce, because they've run out of the good stuff (Sriracha) at the convenience store near work -- which is VERY inconvenient -- and I bought a bottle of Frank's Red Hot instead. Flavoured vinegar. Now I have to wait to use the kitchen till she has finished making huge pots of Beef buggery Stroganoff before I can make steamed pork patty (蒸肉餅 'jing yiuk beng') with a strip (條 'tiu') of bacon (煙肉 'yin yiuk') or two for my dinner.

Yin yiuk mei jing yiuk beng (煙肉味蒸肉餅), shredded ginger, and hot sauce; it's bachelor cooking at its finest. Plus veggies and rice.


I have NEVER eaten Beef Stroganoff.
With butter, cream, and smetana.

[End of preamble]


Several days ago someone invited me to feel his beard. Which I grudgingly did. I am not a beard person. I have one, and, in all honesty, it is the only one I wish to feel. It disturbed me to hear that he uses a beard-care product on it, even though it indeed felt soft and silky.

You know, I wash my hair often, and clean my face on a more than daily basis. My beard is perfectly clean.
And I trim it regularly.

[My beard may be felt only under certain very specific circumstances. It shall remain off-limits entirely to the vast majority of people, for sound reasons.]

My beard is as soft and silky as it needs to be. It is neat.

Most vegans I know are not so persnickety. With the exception of the LOTR-obsesses daughter of a friend, their beards are nasty-ass monstrosities, in keeping with their kith, kin, and clothing.
The daughter of the friend does not have a beard.

[Please note that I haven't seen her in nearly four years, but I shall assume that that hasn't changed. Pet bunny rabbits yes, beard no.]


I have always found the facial hair of Gandalf and his many wannabees disreputable-looking and gross. Which hobbits died in that semi-kempt tangle? Would you like someone like that to sit next to you on a bus?

Fercrapsakes, trim that ugly mess!

Be more like me.


POT, TRIBAL TATTOOS, AND NATIVE RAGS

My negative obsession with other people's beards stems partly from the many pictures on a pipe-smokers forum of men with shaggy crap on their faces enjoying some of the worst tobacco in existence, with pipes that scream highly creative individual, AND from the tofu-snarfing middle-aged hippies who have recently discovered that an intolerance to meat, sugar, gluten, and dairy products makes them unique and fascinating.
Oh and yoga; that also paints them as "artistic".

Yes, I am judgmental.

[And no, you do not get to talk smack about my lunch. Which contains animal protein, gluten, and numerous other good things, according to the text-rich nutritional label on the package.
Kindly stuff a sock in it.]

Haircuts, baths, and a delicious piece of meat; these are all good things. And fish. And cheese. The French, Italians, and Chinese agree. Well, except for the cheese thing, some Chinese aren't too hep on that.

People who like to be considered sane wash themselves, trim their beards, smoke non-aromatic pipe tobacco, and don't through hissy fits over food.
If the food is problematic, they just quietly don't eat it.
No long lectures about anal leakage or gas.
Or how butter is murder.

No tattoos, and no hippie yoga either.



I work over in Marin County.
It's like San Francisco.
Just much more so.
Can you tell?


Have a cow.
Stroganoff it.



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