Wednesday, November 27, 2019

I had a new baby and the future has caught up with the Impossible Burger.

As some of you may know we just had a baby! Cute little Magnus! He's about 3 weeks old and doing very well.


We also bought a new house a few months ago with basically my dream kitchen (the island is bigger then my king sized bed!)



So obviously with these massive and momentous changes in life, I think it's about time I weighed in on the Impossible Whopper.


In case any of you have been living under a rock the Impossible Burger is a plant based burger which many people believe is the future of meat-like-eating. It's the most beef like substitute that has been created yet. The end goal being to reduce carbon emissions by reducing cattle production. Thus slowing climate change and saving the world yadda yadda yadda.

I've always had a fairly firm stance against plants pretending to be meat. Mostly because it sucked.... it sucked hard. Plus I LIKE vegetables and grains and beans and I really don't know why they need to pretend to be meat... Stop lying to yourself beans. You are beans, and that is good enough, you don't need to be a burger. Just go out there and be the best damn beans you can be!


When the Impossible Burger first came out it was pricey and really was only featured in high end restaurants, on the same menu with $25 grass fed beef burgers with truffle aioli. So how does impossible meat stack up against high fat content medium rare grass fed grain finish beef? It's an impossible conundrum in that setting, yes, you are indeed saving the environment, and it tastes like it. Eating an impossible burger instead of a high end restaurant burger is... is.... it's like eating a whopper at La Maison de la Haute Cuisine


Enter the fast food burger. In the age of mechanically separated texture beef protein, Designer flavors (why does Burger King's and McDonald's beef each taste unique?). The fast food burger is commodity beef with a race to the cheapest, engineered to be fool-proof, fast, and consistent. This is the recipe that fast food chains are following, and lets be honest, it works well. But grass fed beef this is not.


Enter the Impossible Whopper. It's texture is very close to beef. It's flavor is blasted with the same "Flame Broiled" taste as the regular whopper. It's not an artisan piece of meat, but it's not pretending to be. The Impossible burger has found it's home. Among Fast Food stalwarts like Burger king and McDonalds the impossible burger can finally fulfill it's potential.

It's a great alternative to fast food beef, I would say it resembles a high end burger just as much as a fast food burger resembles a high end burger. I tried The Impossible Whopper and a regular Whopper side by side and if I'm honest I liked the Impossible Whopper more then the regular Whopper. It tasted more flame-grill-y then the regular whopper and other then the patty being slightly more artificially shaped it tasted better and had basically the exact same texture.

Impossible meat substitute reaches the masses with fast food and can actually start to make a dent in meat consumption and as a result climate change, which was the whole point of the impossible burger. The only point not in it's favor yet is that it still costs more then a regular whopper. Hopefully with time the economy of scale will take care of that.

Which begs the question... why is meat so cheap in the US? But that's a topic for another blog.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Making the best hummus


Making great hummus is so simple and quick! I don't know why anyone would buy hummus if they have a food processor/Cuisinart!

The trick to good hummus is blend blend blend! Every ingredient should be blended for 20-30 seconds before adding the next.

tahini - 1/4 C
Juice of 1 large lemon or lime (always find the smoothest shiniest one available it's the freshest and filled with the most juice!)
1 clove of garlic
2 T good olive oil
1 15oz can of chickpeas drained and rinsed
1/2 t cumin
3 T water
salt to taste

Make sure you blend each component for 20-30 seconds before adding the next, you may have to add tahini and lemon juice before it starts mixing well. At the end make sure you taste your hummus and adjust the seasoning, you can add more garlic, salt, lemon juice, cumin according to your taste. Especially lemon juice, not all lemons are equal!!

Enjoy your hummus with a generous glug of high quality olive oil on top.

-Nom!