Finally made some steam buns today! I felt bad because I hadn’t made them earlier but I really had other food items that needed to be used up first so they wouldn’t go bad. This week was an Italian week…pizza, pasta, ravioli, and more. I didn’t realize until this week that I tend to crave foods and then get over them for a few weeks.
Anyway, the buns came out great. I sauteed some green onions and garlic…dumped in the seitan and marinade and added a bit of rice vinegar. I feel kind of lame because I was supposed to add rice wine and not vinegar but it came out great. Added some cornstarch which gave the seitan a bit of a hard exterior and thickened the sauce. I don’t use bleached flour so the buns don’t have that pristine white look that most buns have. They also turned out smaller than I had thought since I cut down the recipe a tiny bit too much so I had to make them smaller. Mmm so yummy…they have the right amount of sweetness but a nice tangy flavor is noticable. Nathan even commented that it tastes like real Chinese BBQ pork/tofu. He’s been a vegan for about 2 decades (although he eats a bit of cheese now because he can’t resist things like my pizza). But anyway, he grew up eating a lot of chinese/southeast Asian food so he was really surprised how close it was to Asian cooking, especially since we tend to not have great luck using Asian recipes. He was a bit smug since he picked out the marinade so I gave him props for that. I took a picture while eating one to show the inside of the bun but I must have been focusing too much on eating and the pic came out a bit blurry…
They don’t look as round in that picture I suppose because I waited a few hours to take the picture but they taste great and it’s the first time I made them. I tend to not care about the aesthetics on the first go since I’m more worried it will taste like cat poo.
I’m a bit upset though because everytime I read about steaming the recipes suggest to put in about an inch of water. The first time I did that I almost burned my pot because the water evaporated by the time I started putting in some other veggies. So I usually but a quart or less of water because I’d rather have too much water than a burnt pot that cooks off the teflon. But I decided today I’d try out the 1 inch suggestion again and it totally screwed me over. I kept checking the water but by the time I got to the last one I could smell burning and sure enough the water was all gone. The poor little last bun got thrown away because I didn’t want evaporated teflon absorbing into my bun. So I’m pretty sure the pot is ruined but I suppose that gives me an excuse to buy a stainless steel one. Personally I don’t mind using stainless steel because I cook (and clean) so much that it doesn’t take that much effort for me to cook with it. Plus we get most of our fats from oil in the pan so I don’t think it makes a big difference in our diet.
In other news I listened to this radio program that featured Isabel Allende. I can’t remember if it was the BBC Word program or what because I tend to tune certain things out while I’m cooking. Anyway, I’ve read two of her works and I really really don’t like her. Firstly, I think she totally ripped off Gaby Marcquez and secondly I feel that she uses her cousin’s fame to her advantage while attempting to deny that she is in fact upper class (or at the very least upper middle class). I really feel like she thinks that because she’s latina/south american that she can’t be categorized as bourgeoisie. I guess she came out with a new memoir and she said she left out members of her family whose lives were boring because no one wants to read about that. Or if someone had a very specific difficulty she would have to present it in a way to come across to others or she just left it out. She justified this by saying she just loves to tell stories and that she has so many dramatic things within her family that she wanted to write about it.
And I know this topic might seem strange for a blog but I’ve had beef with her for years and she keeps popping up and U.S. lit just loves her because she writes magical realism and she’s a latin woman. But it upsets me that everyone makes her life to be so hard and yet she does come from an educated background and all these ‘experiences’ come from the many choices that were available to her. And yet I’m listening to her talk about excluding family member’s from her memoir because they seemed to have boring lives. So apparently readers only want to hear about her husband’s daughter who isolated herself and became a drug addict. Or some weird lesbian relationship between her son’s wife and her stepson’s girlfriend. Sure those topics are interesting but I don’t think everyday life is boring. I look at my life and I suppose for many americans it would seem boring and backwards and anti-feminist. I love my life…I love cooking and maybe I should have been a chef or maybe I should have gone into a fashion school since I love to create things. But just because I don’t have some crazy love life, etc doesn’t mean that my life (and other’s) are boring. In fact I think that is one reason why people are attracted to Indie movies. They tend to show micro aspects of lives within a larger framework.
I guess I just dislike her to the point that I am willing to pretty much disagree with whatever she says or writes…and that sounds really personal. But I just feel like there are so many experiences out there that are neglected because they don’t seem interesting enough. And I think it’s because the U.S. doesn’t want to know the truth about how horrible border crossings can be, or to see a community massacred and dumped into a ditch, or live near sweatshops where the chemicals burn skin and children might eat tainted food. I feel as though readers within the U.S. would like to read about a latina writer who has political connections who writes magical realism while writing memoirs about how interesting and difficult her life was. I’m sure certain parts of her life were difficult but I think many people in this time have difficulties regardless of their race or socioeconomic status. Maybe I just don’t find her life all that interesting and I think I really see her as a part of the upper class telling all these ‘white people’ about how she struggled. I’m being redundant but honestly I’ve known so many more interesting people who have struggled more than she claims to have. At the same time I know others who didn’t struggle in the same way but who have very interesting perspectives and experiences. I suppose what bothers me about the interview is that she gets so much publicity and she goes around talking about how great she is. And although I’ve never heard anyone say it, I feel as though people see her as a female Gabriel Marquez in terms of magical realism. She even said that her memoirs weren’t so much based on fact (which I understand that point) but rather storytelling. I think it can be argued that memoirs and biographies and autobiographies are essentially fictional outside of the given ‘facts’ that are noted in the books. I just can’t grasp why people like her and buy into ideas that her life is so interesting and dramatic that it’s almost seen as real life ‘magical realism’.
I should end this because I’m rambling. And I know lots of people like her and obviously she appeals to a lot of readers. I guess from my standpoint and background I can’t relate to her and she bugs me. I actually skip the A’s in bookstores because seeing her work bothers me to no end. I’m probably being childish but I know I hold grudges relentlessly and to a fault.
