DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

We did some celebrating and visiting over the holiday weekend (Easter), and I fell off my vegan diet as an avocado falling from great height, to smack hard into the ground and nearly split open from the pressure of my insides bursting forth.

Friday I ate about 3 lbs of chilean sea bass at GTO’s Seafood in a town we call San Bastopol. It was served in a large shallow bowl over about 3 lbs of pasta in a spicy tomato-garlic sauce… which was great, even though I had to pick out nearly a head’s worth of garlic chunks from the sauce.

I like garlic but wanted to avoid the 48-hour cloud of garlic vapor that would follow such a meal. Years ago, I ate at a place I now know to be an overhyped tourist trap: The Stinking Rose, a garlic theme restaurant in San Francisco. For two days after eating their “40-clove chicken,” I felt ill from garlic saturation, and I could still taste the garlic two mornings later… bleahh. If you ever find yourself at The Stinking Rose, do yourself and all those close to you a large favor and cross the street to eat at Viva instead.

Saturday afternoon we snacked on great vegetarian pizza at a friend’s open-house, and for the first time I tasted faux meat products. The concept of faux meat is somewhat disturbing. If I were recovering from alcohol addiction I wouldn’t feel right about drinking alcohol-free beer or wine; the explanation “I just like the taste” somehow doesn’t work for me. Even so, I tasted “fakin’ bacon” as well as some sort of textured-protein chicken substitute.

I’ve only eaten real bacon once or twice in the past year, but I can say with conviction that the faux version leaves a lot to be desired. An engineer friend, upon tasting this stuff, remarked that it tasted like real bacon that had been cooked and then left out on the counter for three days. How he knew this is a mystery, but not one I need to solve. The flavor was certainly bacon-like, but this only makes me wonder what chemical concoction is responsible for bacon flavor. (See this recent article by Eric Schlosser on chemical flavoring agents: Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good; it’s fascinating).

The chicken was somewhat more true to actual chicken texture than was the bacon, which was clearly pressed and formed to simulate bacon, even though the result looked like a dog treat. I couldn’t taste the chicken, though, given that it was buried in a mound of other stuff, most of which I believe was genuine food.

Saturday night (with other friends) we feasted on Ceasar salad, pasta with gorgonzola and pine nuts, and my own flax sourdough bread. Oh, and a 97 Ironhorse Zinfandel that was quite nice.

Sunday morning brought pancakes, a secret recipe known only to a friend and her 4-yr-old daughter. I suspect they (the pancakes, not the friends) contain tofu as there was some secrecy surrounding the preparation.

Lunch was a filet of sole with shallots, rolled up and baked vertically inside a tomato (!)… fancy food for my pedestrian habits, but somewhat typical for my chef friend and his family. I wasn’t complaining, that’s for sure. At least there wasn’t any butter in it… not.

Sunday evening we attended a party at Indigo in San Francisco. We grazed at a buffet that was refreshed three times with an array of amazing foods: salmon on a bed of risotto, grilled vegetables with red chilis, pasta salad that I admit doesn’t sound very enticing but only because I can’t remember any of the other ingredients. And the closer was a monstrous chocolate-on-chocolate birthday cake, which was about half cake and half cream filling. Even the icing had icing. It was one of the richest cakes I’ve eaten, and I’m not ashamed to say I ate a huge piece and lusted for a second. And then I suffered a sugar crash of epic, thousand-calorie, Maida Heatter, Flo Braker proportions, as I nodded off at a dance performance following the party.