Live Free or Die

One of the ridiculous reasons I'm a vegetarian is a sense of general unfairness for the fate of farm animals. It boils down to this, billions of animals are raised in this country and they basically have zero chance at a full life, they either die on the feed lots from disease or accident or their lives are prematurely ended at the slaughter house. At the very least there should be some sort of lottery or death match event where one cow, or one pig, through intelligence, or brawn, or something, manages to secure it's freedom.

Which is why this story brings a sense of joy to my heart;

Last week, she [Molly the cow] successfully dodged her fate of being reincarnated as umpteen New York cheeseburgers when she bolted from a Queens slaughterhouse and proceeded to star in her very own wild west cattle drive up 109th Avenue.

...

For a moment Molly's life hung in the balance. Would she be returned to the slaughterhouse or rewarded for her hutzpah? Whether as a nod to her new found fame or as an act of true altruism, her owner relinquished the 400-pound dairy queen to animal-care workers and the promise of greener pastures.

Which reminds me of this incident of years gone past.

Dinner

It seems that San Francisco's cheap and delicious cuisine combined with a lack of someone to cook with/for has resulted in some sort of cooking insouciance in me. And so it has come to this, a dinner of beer and a BBQ potato chip sandwich...though the sandwich was so good I made another.

What 200 Calories Looks Like

I'm loath to turn this blog into another digg link wonder-world but I thought What 200 Calories looks like was pretty cool. (Note: 3500 calories are required to put on one pound of weight)


Calories are weird because they are simply a measure of energy. Colloquially used they refer to how much energy a food contains. Incinerate some carrots and measure how much energy is produced and that is it's caloric value. Ditto for potato salad, etc. Interestingly, just because something has calories (say gasoline or wood) isn't an indication that our body can process that energy. Nonetheless, I've often been curious of the calorie content of some non-edible substances (gasoline has 242,187.5 per oz. and wood has 149,375 per oz. but numbers for fuel sources are easy to come by). For example, how many calories are in my work badge or keyboard.

Bubble tea

Okay so my new thing is Bubble tea, also known as Boba, Tapioca pearls, Sago, etc. Basically it is a flavored tea of some sort, usually with some milk to which is added Tapioca pearls, which are small black, gleaming balls of delicious chewing fun of about marble size.

A large straw is affixed to your drink and viola, you can suck the pearls into your mouth for a pleasant chewing experience. Plus they are loaded with caffeine. I’m suggesting the massive caffeine rush is what has got me all goggle-eyes over them, but it is a possibility. In any case I have been sampling these all over the bay area. Hrm, maybe a business idea?