A few years ago, Miyoko Creamery’s Vegan “Butter” [that’s it, I have fulfilled my irony quote duties for the evening, EU] was simply the best there was. Hands down. No contest. It was so good that several times it was my treat food. Instead of candy or snacks I would get it and then just enjoy it over the next several days.
The end result is that one of the absolute icons of the vegan and plant-based lifestyle has her name associated with a product that she is not actually affiliated with and has no control over. Which is shame.
And, frankly, is one of the reasons I think corporate veganism needs to…well, not die…but cease to be the face of vegan discourse.
I DIGRESS…
The good news is that Miyoko has released a video showing her current take on The Real Miyoko’s Vegan Butter:
Considering I have no real care to support the Schinner-less brand AND the fact that I cannot get said butter over here, anyhow, I am all in. Miyoko Schinner is a wonderful cook and I highly recommend you see her videos.
Just in case you are curious, my other favorites (in alphabetical order) are:
Which one will vibe with you depends on a lot of factors but they each do things that I absolute love. Pick one at random and go from there.
Speaking of Vegan Foods, Doug’s Vegan Roast
While typing this up I am cooking my take on a vegan roast. It is partially a known recipe, partially an experiment. It smells reallllly good. The plan is to cook it, then cool it off, then freeze it, and then re-cook it tomorrow.
It roughly goes like this: take a block of tofu. How big? Doesn’t matter, really. Then, for around every 150g/5(ish)oz of tofu, you want to add in what I’m going to call half a cup of vital wheat gluten. I don’t know precisely how many grams it is because I take a measuring cup that is basically 4-liquid-oz and just whack it in. I could measure it, but it’s not really necessary. It can vary.
Then, also, for each of those “units” of tofu, you want around 15ml of olive oil and soy sauce. And roughly the same by volume measure of nutritional yeast.
In more American units, a pound block of tofu will need 1.5 cups of gluten (up to 2 works, but you might need a bit of water). Then 3tbsp of oil and 3tbsp of soy sauce and 3tbsp of nutritional yeast. You can also, like me, just pour it in and hope.
At this point, it starts to be up to you. I tossed in a few spoonfuls of flavoring: onion powder, garlic powder, ground mushrooms, a spicy blend I made. How much flavoring? I don’t know. Enough. I add this early with the tofu and whip it in a food processor until it’s a paste and taste it. I want it to taste strong. Not so strong that I hate it. But maybe 150% – 200% as strong as I need it to be at the end.
Pardon the pun, but go ham. Black pepper. MSG. Brown sugar. Add a bit at a time to hit the vibe. I like mine a bit spicy and a bit smokey. I had pan roasted the spice blend (which had paprika, cumin, coriander, chili peppers, and some other stuff, and was ground up afterwards) so that worked for me. Just toss in some stuff and then figure out what you did and did not like about it.
THEN you mix in the vital wheat gluten. Depending on how wet the tofu is, you might need to add in some water. With the above, I needed about 30-40ml of water extra. I like to add in a bit of baking powder. The general rule of thumb I go for is: if you make VWG to be cooked wet, use vinegar; if you are going to dry cook it, use baking powder. Both help to balance the flavor of the strong gluten taste.
Process until it is chunky and a bit damp but well mixed. Take it out. Split it into three or four, and then put each bit back into the food process and work it for a few minutes. It will go through a stage where it looks like ground meat and then sort of clump up into a dough ball. That works. Take that out and flatten it. Do it with the others. Finally, kind of mash it all together.
Where I diverged is I took that second ball of dough and I broke it up into 7 or 8 pieces. I took each piece and ran it back through the food processor on high until it got very gluten-y. Then I rolled that into a long strip. Like a little gluten snake. I would do it for 2 or three and weave them together and then take an un-extra-processed one and sort of use that to fill in the gaps. The idea was to add in variance to the textures.
Once it was assembled for the third time, I wrapped once in parchment paper and then three times in aluminum foil [ours is a bit small, here]. It is a wily beast. If you don’t wrap it tightly, it will expand a lot. You can also do a few things like pan fry it to try and lock up in a shape.
Then I bake it at around 180(ish)C for a little over an hour. Turning it ever so often. In this case, because our local tofu comes in half-kilos, I’m giving it an extra ten minutes.
Take it out, let it cool.
Like I said, I will then freeze it overnight and thaw it in the morning. This process does some interesting things with the gluten strands.
I’ll try and remember to edit in a picture after all is said and done.
The actual “Thanksgiving Dinner” for us will be this Saturday or Sunday, depending on how things go. I am not sure about the precise menu, but I think I’ll aim to make a vegan roast (using gluten, tofu, and mushrooms), some vegan mac-and-cheese, and maybe a few other things. Dressing will be different this year because cornmeal is different, here. I might try and figure something out or just make some kind of bread-crumb type dish that fits a similar niche. And then….spinach? I don’t know. I think I will miss cranberry sauce the most.
It goes without saying but American-style Thanksgiving is not a thing here in Belgium. We have different feast days here. Presumably. Hmm, I will need to look that up.
I’m sure there are some expat clubs doing something and various expat families having their own thing. We have generally had our own relatively quiet version for years so the adjustment is relatively minor. I know for others such holidays are a much bigger deal.
What we do have is Black Friday. Sort of. According to some locals, it is more recent, but there have been a few “BLACK FRIDAY DEALS” cropping up in the scant shopping space I inhabit.
America’s biggest export will always be capitalist frenzy.
Speaking of…I might actually make an order from Amazon US to catch up on a few Blu-Ray and book releases from November.
Besides that, I am off to enjoy a few quiet minutes. Then get my double jabs.
In my last post (The Pillow Washing Incident), I mentioned a bit of a catch up. This post represents that, mostly. I’m sure I’m leaving things out but to kind of enshrine a log for myself.
B back in Town
Barbara’s school had their annual “adventure camp” conclude today. It was a week-long trip somewhere in Belgium [I, oddly, do not know specifics, though I am sure I have been told] where the school as pretty much a whole — minus the early year students and some others that have opted out for various reasons — goes and does a lot of camp-type stuff. Swimming. Playing. Music. Talent shows. Eating in camp cafeterias. That kind of thing.
I’ve never exactly been to that kind of camp. I have done some volunteer work where we go out into the woods and clean up a bit or fix old playgrounds. Kind of similar, just a bit more hammer-and-nail and less friends-playing-games. And I’ve gone camping plenty of times. Lots of hiking and such.
I’m glad she got to experience it. She said it was mostly ok. Food was her biggest complaint.
Oddly enough, she seems to have more energy than I do now that it is concluded.
Kaz and I had a week to ourselves but we got the edge of a cold and for other reasons mostly just hung out and took care of a few things around the house and rested up. The parent paradox. Kids are gone for a week and you just choose sleep. Well, sleep and watching The Substance (my second time, Kaz’s first).
Take this as advice: it is a terrible date night movie.
It also ranks up there with Under the Skin as far as movies go where you get to see someone who is undeniably attractive in the nude and the overall vibe just outright punishes you for it.
Mail Call
On the left is the UK Blu-Ray of Southbound. On the right is Florence and the Machine’s new album, Everybody Scream, the “Chamber Music Edition.” Not pictured, because I picked it up digitally, is Robert Rich and Markus Reuter’s Incubation.
I have watched Southbound once, years ago. Likely near the time of release. Back then, I liked it better than the V/H/S movies. Ironically, I ended up rewatching V/H/S a good bit more. I have been doing a rewatch of that series and kind of felt like Southbound should join. I’ll likely write up my thoughts at some point on Doug Talks Weird.
As for Everybody Scream, I’ve been a fan of Florence and the Machine for a good while and am excited for this one. I have heard a couple of the singles and they fit well into my expectations. A good witchy album. We’ll see how the “Chamber Editions” of the songs go. It was supposed to hit on Halloween but there was a delay so I got it a week late. That’s ok.
Halloween
Speaking of… Halloween is not quite a big deal here in Belgium. There are lots of parties and lots of decorations. Schools have costume wearing events. I’ve heard there are even haunted corn-mazes and such. Here on our sleepy street, we were pretty much the only one to do anything.
That’s “Sam,” my very quickly done pumpkin using Sharpie. I decorated him on Halloween evening and put him out in a chair with a little hat because it was quite chilly. The hat got deeply rained on so I tossed it into textile recycling but still have the pumpkin. Not sure what we’ll do with him. Maybe consign him into the garden and let nature take its course.
Barbara (and Kaz) went to a classmate’s house and did some minor trick-or-treating. It seems like a few neighborhoods organize stuff.
She was Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters. She is of the age for that movie to hit big and wide. Got her the soundtrack and everything.
Spices (and Beans) from Foods of Asia
One of the things Kaz and I did while B was out of town was hit up Foods of Asia in Brussels/Evere and dropped around 100€ on spices. I am not talking any crap at all about Belgium, which actually has an ok assortment of spices in most shops, but there were a few that I really missed getting in proper bulk. I don’t like the tiny little jars of spices when I want to cook.
We got cloves, coriander, cumin powder, whole cumin, nutmeg, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, asafoetida, and some other similar things. Also some ramen and a mid-sized bag of jasmine rice.
Oh, and butterbeans, which I grew up knowing as limas. It was a pretty big staple for our family growing up (only bested by black-eyed peas in the legume category). We had a bean we called butterbean which was probably just baby-limas picked fresh. I don’t know.
The only bean that I have not been able to find, precisely, is pinto beans exactly like what we had in the Southern US. There are pinto beans here, but maybe just a bit more mature? I’m not sure. They taste a bit different and are a bit harder. It’s not too bad, though. Just a minor shift in cooking.
Alright, that’s probably enough note-taking. It’s sunny here in Grimbergen. I’m about to get out and go blink at this so-called “day star”.
OH, before I go, here’s my bike ride stats. Pushing to over an hour. Roughly of an average of mid-20s km/h. Intensity up to around the half-way mark on the bike (equivalent of mild uphills). The middle of the ride was more intense than the end but there’s no way to take a picture of the whole route so I just have the snap of me doing the wind down to finish out to the 17mi mark:
I write the following with two perhaps important caveats:
I am an American citizen currently under the auspices of the European Union and enjoying the delightful country of Belgium for work- and family-related reasons and therefore mostly have a stake in this “fight” in that, for a period of a couple of years, I will be eating Belgian (et al) food.
I consume a plant-based diet (though lean more towards beans and tofu than pre-processed “meat substitutes”).
Stricter Naming for “Meat-Alternatives” Vegan Products
And Arjen Lubach gives a nice rant about it which is actually where I first heard about it because, once again, The Algorithm and I have not yet come to terms. His video is in Dutch with English subtitles available. I appreciate his sass.
When the numbers flashed up on the screen — 355 in favor, 247 against and 30 abstentions — Imart looked visibly relieved and drew a round of applause from her colleagues. The overall reform package, including the ban, was later adopted by a comfortable margin.
Following the links in that article, the actual terminology is explained. Adding to a list of suggested “reserved for meat products only” terms introduced in the utter mouthful of the Annex 1 (PDF) to, deep breath, the “Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL amending Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 as regards the school fruit, vegetables and milk scheme (‘EU school scheme’), sectoral interventions, the creation of a protein sector, requirements for hemp, the possibility for marketing standards for cheese, protein crops and meat, application of additional import duties, rules on the availability of supplies in time of emergencies and severe crisis and securities.” On that document, pages 3 & 4 have the terms including the usual suspects of beef, chicken, pork, and rump.
Amendment 113 (PDF) is what is triggering the above articles and discussions. To the above list, it adds:
Steak
Escalope
Sausage
Burger
Hamburger
Egg yolk
Egg white
In the next part, it refers to poultry-meat (note: hyphenation is mine to stop spell checker from shouting at me) as a whole other broad category (via reference to Regulation (EU) No 543/2008) though most of that seems primarily contained within the aforementioned/linked proposal.
Perhaps buried a bit in the coverage is part of Amendment 113, prior to enumerating the list, states: “These names include, for example.” In other words, the above list should not be considered total or all inclusive. It essentially opens up the doors to the argument that any name understood by common-use language that might be associated with meat-adjacent production could be argued to be included by proxy. Jerky, pot pies, and maybe even certain soups and stews could be argued under such rulings.
It is labeled as vegan, soy-based (twice), and a source of fiber (which is distinctly untrue of meat based burgers). It is also labeled as Garden Gourmet though I admit that you could make the argument that “garden” does not necessarily preclude meat.
Why Such Laws at Least Slightly Bother Me (and not exactly the obvious reason)
Let me be clear, I 100% support farmers and I 100% support clear labeling. Consumers deserve options. Farmers deserve recognition as the backbone of society. Society exists as a concept because farmers make the gathering of people into cities and countries possible. It is hard damned work and they rarely get enough credit for the things they do.
Seriously, thank you.
My first issue with any such law, be it here in Europe or elsewhere, is that the conversation almost always turns quickly to consumer confusion. I feel a defined need of consumer harm should be demonstrated before the consumer becomes the main focus of many arguments. I am not sure if there is any evidence that consumers are actually confused, or harmed, by the label. If anything, such terminology helps consumers to find new products and have greater overall choice.
In the vegan space, sometimes the problem is more or less the opposite. Outside of a few restaurants that bury their vegan-lede, meat-eating customers tend to have better labeling than not. On the other hand, if you find a “garden burger” you sometimes have no idea if it is vegan, vegetarian, or just a label meaning “meat-based burger with fun root vegetables” without clarifications. I have ordered plenty of greens and beans and found out that the entire dish is just packed with bacon or ham or meat-broth. Things like kimchi might have their fish sauce component overlooked and served to vega*n customers. One Huntsville restaurant I used to love had hashbrown casserole that made with cream of chicken soup but not labeled as such.
While there is evidence of harm to traditional meat farmers, and therefore an argument fully based on the production side has merit, I am not even sure that such a ban will actually do much to protect them. A similar EU ban on the use of “milk” in reference to plant-based dairy alternatives has not slowed an increasing adoption of plant-based alternatives to replace dairy products. In fact, that’s one of my favorite things about Belgium, there’s a lot of cool soy drink to be had.
Instead, the primary benefit seems to be a chilling effect and re-labeling cost associated to producers of vegan and vegetarian products. “Minced soy patties” instead of veggie burgers or, you know…gehakte soja pasteitjes. Will that really make a difference? While you eat with your mouth and your eyes/nose, etc, the name of food only partially factors into your long term enjoyment of it. It’s not like “burger” or “sausage” or “hot dog” are particularly appetizing words in and of themselves.
I’m just not exactly sure it will actually deter sales. It will require labels, over time, to be adjusted, though, and that costs. And it reframes discussions of vegan diets into more niche terminology.
The Issue of De-meaty-fying (and Mystifying) Meat
My second issue comes out of the general class of words being targeted.
“Burger” and “sausage” terminologies are adopted by vegans and vegetarians because the words’ histories are in a huge class of products only really classified largely by rough shape and product standards.
Amendment 113 says it for me (emphasis mine):
(2) ‘Meat preparations’ means fresh meat, including meat that has been reduced to fragments, which has had foodstuffs, seasonings or additives added to it…
(3) ‘Meat products’ means processed products resulting from the processing of meat or from the further processing of such processed products, so that the cut surface shows that the product no longer has the characteristics of fresh meat.
Burger is practically a neologism. Even tracing the roots as a sandwich back to the late 19th century, the general rise of minced meat being flavored with vegan additives like salt, pepper, onions, and other spices and and then shaped into a scone before being served with a light garden salad between two slices of bread is an absolute infant by historical food standards. The Oxford English Dictionary lists “burger” as being first seen in 1939. While I’m sure that fried biscuits of mince-meat are older in technology, we are not talking a particular class of bread-like meat shapes. We are talking about a specific word.
And while sausage is a much older technology (some of which are essentially “burgers,” now), one in which minced meat is combined with more vegan ingredients to give it a better flavor and then shaped roughly like root vegetables or, you know, other things, the sheer variety of presumably-acceptable-by-Amendment-113 recipes is mind boggling.
Taking the piss a bit, I asked ChatGPT to give me a rough count of sausages not including vega* options: it put the number around 1200. Then said that Germany had 1500+ of those 1200, so…you know, much like prepared-meat-adjacent-food, it is best taken with a grain of salt.
And many of those recipes involve non-meat additives ranging from small amounts to not quite small amounts at all. It is the sorites paradox. When does the pile of sand become a not-pile? How much salt and pepper and vegetable matter in ground beef + beef-fat is too much?
The end result is that there are entire classes of food, let’s add in “nuggets” and “lunch slices” and “filets,” that are popular despite, or possibly because, their removal from the central meat-ness of their ingredients.
I’m more open to phrases like “egg yolk,” “bacon,” and “steak” being recognized. Of course, the latter two are also seeing a general fracturing from a particular food into a wide class of foods.
I mean, I might eat a plant-based diet but even when I was an omnivore, I would rarely wish turkey bacon on anyone.
Just joking, I’m not going to yuck your yum.
I am purposefully going to avoid bringing up a huge variety of food which encroaches upon the same aspect of a naming schema (e.g., pindakaas [peanut cheese]) but are given a pass because they are not pitched as alternatives.
Of course, peanut butter is an awesome source of flavorful protein, but that’s for another day.
To Counter My Own Argument
The big counter to my own argument is that I actually like moving away from meat-derived names in general. Words like patties and nuggets are general enough, but other phrases (e.g., beef-like, chick’n, veggiefish) sometimes pitch the vegan diet as a strange second place to meat-centric diets.
Let me be really clear about something: despite the constant insistence that a plant-based and plant-forward diet is somehow being centered in self-denial and self-limitation, my chosen diet is extremely varied to the point that adding back in meat and dairy (the latter to which I have a strong physical reaction) would be nothing more an opportunity cost vs cheaper, more ecologically friend, more sustainable, and more varied foods. To say it louder for the people in the back:
Despite the constant insistence that a plant-based and plant-forward diet is somehow being centered in self-denial and self-limitation, my chosen diet is extremely varied to the point that adding back in meat and dairy (the latter to which I have a strong physical reaction) would be nothing more an opportunity cost vs cheaper, more ecologically friend, more sustainable, and more varied foods.
While you do cut out some foods, the variety of flavors, tastes, and types of foods is far greater on the plant side of thing unless you perhaps include a wide variety of non-farmed animal meats, more exotic fish meats, and insect protein.
Even then, a lot of the cores of cooking, such a spices, are notoriously vegan. Minus the use of animal fats, meat, and dairy itself.
While the line between “non-beef plant-based hamburger patty” and “centuries old tofu recipe” is wide, my point is merely that such inventions are constantly being treated as a newfangled idea when they, in their purest form, predate many modern food practices. Human society has enjoyed plant based protein long before protein was being studied as a concept.
And I admit I would be absolutely irritated if words like “tofu” or “seitan” were taken out of context and turned into a meat-bearing product (setting aside that plenty of tofu and wheat gluten recipes do involve meat, traditionally).
Maybe this is a good time to come up with a new terminology and recommit to the “Vegan 1.0” of increased food variety, whole foods, sustainable practices, and flavors that are not so beholden to a meat-centric view that is so hardwired that it, checks notes, requires laws to protect it.
Conclusion
I will obviously abide by whatever decision comes out of this, I am just not all that supportive of re-limiting certain words when your average consumer is more than capable of coming to their own informed decision.
The history of food is vast, complex, and as essential to culture as language itself. Using language to reshape that in a prescriptivist manner actually interferes with one of the great joys of human expression: enjoying food, updating old recipes into new delights, responding to cultural change, and sharing all this with others.
All that being said, I will reiterate that I do very much support farmers and their sacrifice. I just also support consumers and their sacrifice.
PS: Shout Out to Dan
My roommate in 2002, Dan, complained about some world-building I was doing in a roleplaying game I was writing where I said that by the late 2010s and early 2020s, a “war of words and their meaning” would be the frontline of the reality wars: where different people fractured into world views framed by their languages. He said such terms as I was using was overblown and never going to happen.
Woke up at 6am to get ready for my morning workout and spent a few minutes, as I do every morning, resting in bed to give my joints time to “calm down.” The arthritis/inflammation-meets-disability tends to be worse after prolonged activity and when I first wake up. I’m sure there’s math to explain the latter. Just know that most of my mornings start with a “Daddy, Chill!” moment between me and my aches.
While resting up for that ten- to twenty-minutes that it takes for my body to realize it is indeed ok to get out of bed, I heard a noise that sounded like someone showering which caught me off guard because I was pretty sure I was the only one awake. Then a few seconds later the wind hit and it turned out that Grimbergen was getting a LOT of wind and rain. It was kind of fun getting up in the pre-sunrise darkness and just watching the rain slam into the side of the house.
Pictured above is my cat, Turkey, pondering why the outside was so blustery. Taken in the moments right before sunrise [the light outside is mostly the streetlights but you can see the sky starting to lighten]. It’s a bit blurry because it was taken in fair darkness and it’s hard to get a photo of a cat while your phone is doing night-photo mode.
At some point I need to find my Nikon and try taking some more proper photos. Not just of weather but also like, you know, heavily macroed shots of rusty nails and stuff.
A Return to “A Day in the Life”
Holy crap, it has been a while since I have used that post title template. In fact, I had to dig through the back-end a bit to find out the previous “Day in the Life” was #14194. That’s over 3000 days ago. Also finding it made me a bit sad. It dealt with a fair amount of negativity. 2016 was a hell of a year. Blogs are truly a double-headed beast.
Just to clarify, in case you are wondering, the Day in the Life posts show the number of days I have been alive, not the number of posts I have made. I used Google to calculate it this time but somewhere in my stacks of files is a Python script I made when I would post these “just stuff I did today” type posts on the old Dickens of a Blog. I should find that. Marvel at how my code used to look. Good marvel? Bad marvel? I don’t know.
#!/usr/bin/python
import datetime
YEAR = 1977
MONTH = 05
DAY = 30
d = "%Y/%m/&d"
today = datetime.date.today()
birth = datetime.date(YEAR, MONTH, DAY)
daysinlife = today - birth
print daysinlife.days
You know, frankly, that’s not too bad. It is clearly Python 2 era. And from the time period where I tended to purposefully over-write code so it was easier for me to chunk and fix later. I’m not even sure what one of those lines is doing in this context. It’s like I copy and pasted it from some other function and just changed the bits I need to change. Let’s show some confidence and fix that up, slightly:
Despite being a person who has been sharing stuff online since the late 90s, and having multiple blogs of which only three have been named “Dickens of a Blog,” it is still a bit odd for me to just share my personal stuff without some major context to sort it through. And possibly that’s because when I get personal I tend to get a bit self-incriminating and self-deprecating. I become that stranger on the bus that starts complaining about his ex-wife and his brother’s dog and stuff his boss said. I mean, maybe not that bad but you get the idea.
At any rate, the “Day in the Life” series was a way for me to have a few dips into those waters on the occasional basis without dealing solely with myself as the main topic. It’s nice to have them back in principle whether or not I use “the brand” all that often. Like most Days in the Life, it is less about a day and more about a bunch of random stuff that has accumulated.
EDIT: Shortly after posting this I realized that my code was still wrong. The way I am wording it would need to include a zero-day. As in, on the date of my birth I would be considering that “Day 1”. I could either set the day to the day before my birth or add 1. I added in a cheeky “+”. That means the title of this is off by a day, but eh. So it goes…
Warning: this one might get a bit over-long as I get back into the balance.
Pommelien Thijs’s Gedoe
Pommelien Thijs’s Gedoe — note, link is in Dutch/Nederlands — came out yesterday so I got to listen to that for a bit. Then more this morning while doing my workout. I really enjoy it.
When we first moved to the Flemish-Brabant/Brussels region, I was trying to absorb some language by listening to local news and such. Thijs kept coming up right as I was breaking into the point of following the slightest bit along. Looking up her music videos, I came across “Ongewoon” [in the context of the song, the line is “Alles voelt zo ongewoon” which is “Everything feels so unusual” but possibly “peculiar” or “strange” or “unfamiliar”…the feeling you get when some preconceived emotions are actually out of whack with expectations] and “Het Midden” [“the middle”] (below):
I enjoyed both of those and other stuff I could find. I’m not a pop-head but still, it was an album I wanted to pick up as I return to getting more physical media, again. I pre-ordered it and ordered her first and got them both in the mail.
The issue at first was how to listen to them. Neither my desktop or laptop have optical disk drives. This means I had to a) get out my external drive that was a still in its box from the move, b) get a voltage converter that we bought early on but have not used yet, c) hook a into b and then plug that into a computer. Then tweak/fix the files I ripped. Being me, I then zipped and cataloged the files and moved them into two different backups.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a proper review of an album so I am thinking about using that as a guinea pig of such. Maybe. Maybe not.
Barbara’s Assembly
Barbara’s P3 class had their first assembly at her school, yesterday. She spent a fair amount of her own time building up wings using old construction paper and Amazon boxes:
This was all for about half a minute when she was on a stage pretending to be a bird of the Amazon while her class talked about education around the world and how environment impacts education opportunities.
NOTE: I have a photo B wearing her wings but I asked her if she was ok with me sharing and she said no. Since one of the reasons I pulled out of social media because of a personal disagreement with parents oversharing elements of their children’s lives to the wide public, I respect her decision. She was ok with me sharing the wings, though.
Between her planning and construction of a costume largely on her own; her sense of stage direction; and her (at one point) helping another student to remember his lines during the show: she’s a natural stage manager. At eight, she better at handling the chaos of stagecraft than I ever was.
Finally, an American-Style Peanut Butter!
There is actually very little American food that I miss over here with the slight exceptions of Back Homeâ„¢ has a better selection of types of beans and, via mail order, an overall better selection of TVP (textured vegetable proteins) shapes/sizes. There are plenty of beans here and some variations of soy product [and cheaper soya drink/milk and tofu], but it required some adjustment.
Still, I’ve had a few sad moments where I miss American style peanut butter (or pindakaas [peanut cheese] in Nederlands). Yesterday, swinging by the Carrefour in Vilvoorde, I found this beauty:
I have not been this excited about 2g of added sugars per serving for a minute. I mean, compared to some American foods, this peanut butter is still relatively a healthy food. And, most importantly, it tastes amazing.
I’m not throwing any shade at the availability of plant-based Nutella or the decent selection of other nut butters including some quite decent Belgische pindakaas. It just, good salty-sweet peanut butter hits different.
“Breaking” and Fixing a Garage Door
One aspect of the move that cannot be overstated is how much the large beats are sometimes easy to adapt towards since a lot of support tends to exist to learning the language, replacing electronics, etc but the small beats can practically haunt you as you learn what some minor device or some local custom means. Learning how to say, “Pardon, waar is het toilet?,” can take less time than figuring out how to ask what a small symbol might mean on food packaging when everyone around you thinks of such things as derived from universal common sense. Even somewhat universal symbols can shift slightly enough to imply different things. This is well, good, and expected. Language is a product of the people using it. It just sometimes catches you out.
One way you adjust, which is to say one way that I adjust, is just occasionally pushing a button or pulling a string to see what happens. Buy the product. Tap the card.
This morning, post-workout, I realized our garage had a pull cord and so I went, “Hmm, ik kan aan dit koord trekken.” And then a loud pop answered my call as the cord turned out to be a release to detach the door from the mechanism.
Kaz and I fixed it shortly after but it was a good life lesson. Push the buttons, pull the cords, and bring a toolbox to fix the fallout when you do.
With the above photo, don’t sweat about the power cord with duct tape. It’s not actually plugged in. We’ll replace it if we ever need to use it.
