Impossible burger update
Turns out that Impossible Burger does, in fact, use enough methylcellulose to give me a bad time.
Rambles that are fluffy, by fluffy
Turns out that Impossible Burger does, in fact, use enough methylcellulose to give me a bad time.
I finally had Impossible Burger alt-meat in a burger tonight. My impressions of it:
This isn’t the first time I’ve eaten Impossible Burger itself; I first tried it when Poquitos had it in taco form, back when it was still a brand-new “coming soon” thing that was only available to restaurants. Back then I felt like the flavor was really good (although being in tacos it was so heavily-spiced that it’s more that it didn’t have a flavor that overpowered the cumin and chili and so on), and I felt like the mouthfeel was a bit mushy.
Werner was unable to keep his liquid antibiotics down so yesterday I got him pills instead, at least for one of them (unfortunately the other one was liquid-only). He’s of course been lethargic but generally happy most of the time, and during my birthday party yesterday he mostly just hung out in my bedroom, but occasionally said hi to people — very uncharacteristic for him, and towards the end I even took him around to everyone to get pettings.
Anyway, today he’s been feeling a bit better, and I had a cheeseburger for lunch, which he got really interested in and wanted some of. So I decided that he can, in fact, haz cheezburger, and he’s enjoying it quite a lot, and eating way more than I’ve seen him eat lately. Really going to town on it. (I tried taking a picture for the meme™ but he was way more interested in snarfing it down than waiting for me to manage to get any shots in. Oh well.)
He’s such a good little guy.
oh god i’m old
Werner doesn’t seem to have a lot of time left.
There’s still a lot of MSG discourse happening in certain pockets of the Internet; right now it’s mostly on food YouTube, where folks are primarily saying that people who claim an MSG sensitivity are racist and/or relying on bad pseudoscience. And, as usual, using the same two strawmen of
For 1, yes, lots of foods have glutamate in it, but not bound to sodium.
For 2, yes, that’s why it was eating junk food in college (Doritos and the chili-flavored Fritos, specifically) that led me to realize what was causing my near-daily sensory overload migraines.
Anyway, recently I bought some “country style” bulk sausage at a local butcher which ended up having MSG in it, and rather than throw it out or try to return it, I figured I’d use it to perform an (admittedly extremely unscientific) experiment. Namely, a couple days ago I fried up a small amount and ate it, and while I felt a bit of the classic MSG effects it seemed like it might have been psychosomatic. So today I made a full patty of it and ate it for breakfast… and holy hell that was a bad time. I’m still recovering from it a couple hours later.
So, yeah, I’m still pretty sure MSG causes me problems, and I’m still gonna keep avoiding it.
I’ve finally gotten a handle on my resin printer and have gotten some successful prints! Here’s some of what I did to get it to a good state:
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of spam comments from people (really, probably just one person) trying to pedal Kratom, an herbal hallucinogen which has extremely bad side effects.
I hope that it’s obvious that I am not, in fact, going to allow my site to be used as a vehicle for advertising this shit, so stop trying to post comments on every mental-health-related article about it, thanks.
Today my Switchbot curtain robots arrived. They work pretty well, but getting them to the point of working well was a bit tricky. Here’s some notes, in case they help others:
Anyway, having this set up was a lot of fun when my neighbor came by to help me finish hanging up my new TV; he suggested closing the curtains before verifying the TV tilt angle, so I said, “Hey Siri, close living room curtains,” and he said “No way!!!” and then the curtains closed.
And now I have a bunch of automations, like:
I also have a few other automated lighting changes throughout the day, and the awesome one will be when my bedroom shades finally arrive — I’ll be able to automatically close them at midnight and open them at 8 AM, and maybe I’ll stop getting woken up at 6 AM by the sun shining on my face!
Hey folks! That time of year is coming up… it’s my birthday in June! And what’s more, I have a new house to celebrate it at!
My plan this year is to have an outdoor cookout in my lovely new yard in White Center (a small town nestled in between Seattle and Burien) the afternoon/evening of June 13, 2021. I’m trying to get a headcount to see who’s going to be able to attend. Please register your interest by emailing me or posting a comment or RSVP webmention or whatever, and I’ll try to get a more formal invite when details start to coalesce better (ideally in a better format than a public blog post, obvs).
The format will probably be potluck-esque; I’ll definitely be providing a bunch of meat and veggies for grilling and some sides and drinks but it’d be great if other folks could bring stuff to grill and serve too! Also, due to COVID still being a thing I’d ask that people still maintain social distance and masking, and for non-vaccinated folks to limit their time indoors.
Regarding transport to my place, there’s a decent (but not unlimited) amount of street and on-property parking, and there are technically buses nearby but they aren’t the most convenient thing for folks coming from anywhere other than West Seattle or Burien or whatever.
But anyway it’d be lovely if folks could come! I’ve missed seeing everyone, and what better way to try to fix that?