Zen food

Yay to my brother for saving e-mails I've sent out. I thought almond cheese was lost forever.

I've been sticking to a mainly vegetarian diet since February of 2002. It was bought on by the fact that the food served in the UNH dining halls was less than savory, particularly the meat. I never knew that plain chicken could be so bad. Dry enough that splinters of meat would get caught in my throat. Not poking through the delicate lining or anything, mind you, but water/coffee/caustic soda wasn't enough to re-hydrate even after the meal was through. That chicken didn't even suck up the moisture of its environment, just evaporated any water that came near it, like the desert.

I'm not a good vegetarian. Don't like to cook all that much. Prefer it when someone else works their magic with spices and such to make a delicious meal. Then I don't have to do the dishes either. In my quest to find tasty, convenient, vegetarian food I have tried a variety of items. Flax chips seasoned with onion and garlic, Kombu seaweed, no salt - no fat microwave dishes. (My cholesterol went through the roof too. Too many eggs trying to make up for the protein I'm not getting in meat.) All of these products promoted the flavor contained within.

Particularly my latest trial. "Cheddar Cheese" made from an almond base.
Don't think I swallowed this "Tastes Great" line and expected to have something that really tasted like cheddar cheese when it had never even known a cow or cold storage aging process. Almonds are missing a vital spoiling chemical that actually gets better with the proper conditions.

Spoiled almonds are bitter, angry nuts. Worse than the chicken.

I figured the almond cheese would at least employ some sort of seasoning, some trickery of spice like the "meatless chorizo sausage". They got the color right, and the consistency down, but the block of orange putty was missing smell of any kind. I tried it anyway. It was exactly like chewing on orange putty. Not even enough sodium to try and fool the person eating it. It tasted like nothing. Much like tofu. Much like the no-salt no-fat microwave meal.

The flax was different though, a bit of an oniony taste. But it didn't last long. Just a seedy flake of waxy flax.

After those vegan taste adventures though I've come to a conclusion. "Tastes Great" on a vegetarian/vegan product is double talk for "Doesn't taste like ass." You're not going to yak the stuff up, but you're going to chew on it for about five minutes waiting for something to happen. Like some twisted Willy Wonka concoction made to help you reach a Zen like state, chewing and chewing and getting lost in the question "What is the taste of almond cheese?"

Go ahead, ask yourself, "what is the taste of almond cheese?"

Nothing grasshopper.

Now go eat a ham sammich.