Life moves on after the vegans depart
Well, the DNC is gone, and in its wake at Generous Servings are two jars of Vegannaise (vegan "mayonnaise"), a box of "Not Chick'n" brand of not-bouillon cubes, and nine pepper grinders (for which I have no explanation). It was actually pretty fun.
The "celebrity chef", Tal, arrived on Saturday, and he didn't look like Mario Batali. He's a skinny ex-New Yorker with a generous, laid-back attitude. His sidekick Lex ("as in Lex Luther") flew in from Texas, and was kind of like you'd hope a chef from Texas would be: big, melodramatic, loving the media circus. They were full of praise for our kitchen. Tal said he had expected to be cooking in some basement, so our spacious, bright kitchen was a welcome surprise. A good start.
The first couple of days of cooking with them were the funniest, because we got to hear all about their vegan cooking philosophies. There was lots of talk of cleansing toxins, probiotics, and doing yoga. Besides me, there were several other helpers who had been hired from the vegan cooking network, most notably a chef from Boulder named Ron who exists entirely in his own universe, including while talking to others. He was a Franciscan monk for 25 years but finally quit because they didn't appreciate his cooking. The first day I cooked with Ron, he had brought a bottle of Mona Vie, a "potent new blend of 19 rare and powerful fruits." Ron was handing out shots of this juice and I was very interested to try it because I just read a Newsweek article about the sketchy pyramind scheme used to make money off this stuff (a bottle costs $40, and the only way to get it is to become an unpaid distributor for the company). Ron assured me that this was the active formulation, with glucosamine, which is good because I had been really worried about that. No point in drinking the inactive formulation! Ron drinks two shots a day, and he credits it with his health and energy. However, I thought it tasted disgusting, and I couldn't even drink my shot. I'll just have to get my energy, joint health, cancer-avoidance, relief from warts and seizures, sex drive, and healthy skin elsewhere.
It turns out that the cooking wasn't very intense: with four or five people helping each day, we finished all the hors d'oeuvres by about 11 am, and then Tal and Lex took them down to the hotel and stayed there for the rest of the day. Some of the vegan things we cooked were surprisingly good, including a fake chicken product that I had been disparagingly referring to as "toficken", but which actually tasted almost exactly like chicken. Less successful was a breakfast that Tal cooked for all of us one day that included fake scrambled eggs and fake bacon that tasted like fake food.
On Thursday there were hugs all around, and we took a group picture that Tal promised to e-mail to me but I haven't gotten yet. Then the vegans were off to convert new souls, and I spent an hour throwing away random vegan ingredients they had left behind. I gave away the pepper grinders to my Herbs and Spices class that night.
The "celebrity chef", Tal, arrived on Saturday, and he didn't look like Mario Batali. He's a skinny ex-New Yorker with a generous, laid-back attitude. His sidekick Lex ("as in Lex Luther") flew in from Texas, and was kind of like you'd hope a chef from Texas would be: big, melodramatic, loving the media circus. They were full of praise for our kitchen. Tal said he had expected to be cooking in some basement, so our spacious, bright kitchen was a welcome surprise. A good start.
The first couple of days of cooking with them were the funniest, because we got to hear all about their vegan cooking philosophies. There was lots of talk of cleansing toxins, probiotics, and doing yoga. Besides me, there were several other helpers who had been hired from the vegan cooking network, most notably a chef from Boulder named Ron who exists entirely in his own universe, including while talking to others. He was a Franciscan monk for 25 years but finally quit because they didn't appreciate his cooking. The first day I cooked with Ron, he had brought a bottle of Mona Vie, a "potent new blend of 19 rare and powerful fruits." Ron was handing out shots of this juice and I was very interested to try it because I just read a Newsweek article about the sketchy pyramind scheme used to make money off this stuff (a bottle costs $40, and the only way to get it is to become an unpaid distributor for the company). Ron assured me that this was the active formulation, with glucosamine, which is good because I had been really worried about that. No point in drinking the inactive formulation! Ron drinks two shots a day, and he credits it with his health and energy. However, I thought it tasted disgusting, and I couldn't even drink my shot. I'll just have to get my energy, joint health, cancer-avoidance, relief from warts and seizures, sex drive, and healthy skin elsewhere.
It turns out that the cooking wasn't very intense: with four or five people helping each day, we finished all the hors d'oeuvres by about 11 am, and then Tal and Lex took them down to the hotel and stayed there for the rest of the day. Some of the vegan things we cooked were surprisingly good, including a fake chicken product that I had been disparagingly referring to as "toficken", but which actually tasted almost exactly like chicken. Less successful was a breakfast that Tal cooked for all of us one day that included fake scrambled eggs and fake bacon that tasted like fake food.
On Thursday there were hugs all around, and we took a group picture that Tal promised to e-mail to me but I haven't gotten yet. Then the vegans were off to convert new souls, and I spent an hour throwing away random vegan ingredients they had left behind. I gave away the pepper grinders to my Herbs and Spices class that night.
posted by The Cooking Doctor at
1:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home