I have some recipes (being pretty new myself) and a few cookbook recommendations..

A few tips: Vegan cheeses will never taste like the real thing. but some are good and some taste like rubber. being new to this I feel my pallet is still fairly descent still. (won't last much longer though I don't think) I like Violife brand vegan cheeses best for sliced and shredded, along with their cream cheese Best out there. for Parmesan I like Follow your heart brand. Coffee creamer (I used to use half and half in my coffee that is the flavor I like) so the closest one to that flavor I found is So Delicious coconut coffee creamer. The Original flavor.

Butters: I like best the Melt (say good bye to butter) and then I can't believe it's not butter Vegan.

My favorite meat replacers are:

Gardein Ultimate beefless ground, I use it in everything to replace ground meat.

Gardein Chick'n Scallopini, is a great replacement for boneless skinless chicken breast.

Gardein Porkless bites. Serve over rice

Gardein Turk'y Cutlets and gravy are Amazingly wonderful a little mashed

Gardein Italian Sau' Sages are Amazing. I use them in anything that calls for Sausage. Works GREAT! even just in a bowl of pasta with a little sauce and some vegan cheese.

Simple Truth has a lot of great stuff too. (they are kroger or fred meyer brand) they have a Great burger patty. Very tasty, a breaded chicken patty that is really good and their chick'n tenders are better than gardein's.

​

I have taken my favorite recipes and revamped them to vegan/vegetarian. they can be made either way.

https://www.copymethat.com/r/fubAxjB/ms-vegetarian-dairy-free-sloppy-joes-sau/

these are pretty easy for those lazy days

https://www.copymethat.com/r/tA5HqQn/ms-easy-black-bean-and-corn-quesadillas/

this is pretty easy and a nice comforting soup

https://www.copymethat.com/r/0WKwq1w/ms-easy-white-bean-thyme-pot-pies/

this one has a Ton of seasoning because I added the seasonings that would be in Spicy Italian sausage and didn't add the meat. it is really good though.

https://www.copymethat.com/r/u1xQ5vk/ms-spicy-lentil-soup/

https://www.copymethat.com/r/7qob7LA/ms-quick-and-easy-veganvegetarian-black-/

https://www.copymethat.com/r/s7HBHBq/ms-pan-seared-cauliflower-and-gravy/

https://www.copymethat.com/r/JAqzkGs/ms-vegan-irish-shepherds-pie/

https://www.copymethat.com/r/oe3CAFm/ms-vegan-ranch-dressing/

https://www.copymethat.com/r/cArRtzU/ms-vegetarian-goulash/

this can be a bit dry I am still working on this one

https://www.copymethat.com/r/k5td3wN/ms-best-ever-meatless-dairy-free-meatloa/

Okay these are yummy! I used sweet baby rays hot wing or buffalo sauce.

https://www.copymethat.com/r/Erb0RD8/baked-buffalo-potato-wedges/

https://www.copymethat.com/r/3d3zNp0/cheesy-vegan-breakfast-potato-casserole/

​

My cookbook recommendations are

I have these

https://www.amazon.com/Fuss-Free-Vegan-Everyday-Favorites-Veganized/dp/0147530350/

this is also a really good one

https://www.amazon.com/30-Minute-Vegan-Dinners-Plant-Based-Meals/dp/1624147216/

Everyone raves about Isa's cookbooks but unfortunately I don't have one yet. but plan on getting one soon

https://www.amazon.com/Isa-Does-Amazingly-Delicious-Recipes/dp/0316221902/

sorry for the HUGE post. Hope the information helps you.

Good for you for making that connection! It's not an easy thing to accept, but once you do, you're kinda stuck this way.

1. A non-vegan can live happily in a vegan household. My SO is non-vegan but, I do all the cooking for us so we have a vegan kitchen. I would be uncomfortable cooking and paying for animal products at this point and he knows better than to ask that of me. I would bet that you're a fantastic chef and will have no problem keeping your husband full and satisfied.
   
   
2. If you're comfortable using it then do so. But I warn you that it may desensitize you to eating/preparing animal products again or it'll make you feel disgusted. If possible, I would donate it to a local food bank or a friend.
   
   
3. Clearly, you care about your son so I don't think you will harm him. Keep a watchful eye and maybe contact your pediatrician for advice, there are plenty that are veg-friendly. I would also recommend following some vegan parent blogs.
   
   
4. Like all other weightloss or weight maintenance, if you're keeping an eye on your calories then you should be fine. You can easily keep carbs under 50%, but you may find that the volume of food you're consuming will increase quite a bit. Most people lose weight when going vegan so don't be surprised if that happens (just maybe don't add tahini to every meal like I did).
   
   
5. My best friend has IBS and it improved drastically after severely cutting down on her meat intake. I imagine that there will be an adjustment period (I had like 4 BMs a day and was cramping due to bloat for a couple weeks), but cutting out animal products could really help your IBS as well.. Only time will tell.
   
   
6. Yes, you can! I haven't frozen seitan for quite that long but it would be interesting to see how it goes. I imagine it would be fine though. Also this recipe for tofu nuggets looks really, really good. Cultured vegan cheeses will last quite a while and continually age in the fridge, Miyoko Schinner says they typically last about 100 days. But yes, you can freeze them if you don't use it in time.
   
   
7. Yess this is my jam right here. I read cookbooks like people read novels. It sounds like you would enjoy Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I absolutely love her book Isa Does It and I recommend it to everyone. Her other stuff is also wonderful (I'm sure amazon will show you the rest of her books in their recommendations)! Another one that I think you would enjoy is Miyoko Schinner's The Homemade Vegan Pantry and Artisan Vegan Cheese. After hearing her speak at VegFest it sounds like she has similar style: doing a lot of prep work beforehand so that doing the everyday meal making is simple. Lastly, I will recommend Plum Bistro's Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes. The restaurant is absolutely fantastic and while I haven't made anything in this book since I got it (because I am a little intimidated tbh), I have no doubt that you could get a lot of use from this with your culinary skills.
   
   I hope this was at least a tiny bit helpful! Good luck! :)

> Where do you suggest learning this? What do you think of my idea of hiring a culinary student to give me private lessons?

In nearly 10 years of professional cooking I have never met a culinary student with hands. Unfortunately, I cannot explain it more than having the right attitude, with there "always being room for improvement" and "oh he's asian." My first chef and cooking job told me I had "heritage knife skills." You are on the right track with Shun and simply wanting it. I can post some demo videos eventually, when I sober up and have more in my pantry than onions (I work ~80 a week between two kitchens, I don't eat much at home).

> I don't have any friends who work in the food industry, where would you suggest meeting such a person (similar question as above)? I would buy a whetstone, but I have no idea how to use it properly. Also, most of my knives are from Shun, and I know they have a service where you can send them off to get them sharpened for free. I haven't done this yet (knife set is pretty new). Would you suggest this?

Shun is good people, but I resharpen my knifes everyday for use in a professional kitchen, with volume ranging from cutting three bunches of celery to 100 lbs of onions on top of service--I don't like to play with dull knives. And it is a skill you never really lose, though I wore a hole in my finger the last time I sharpened knives, but I sharpened knives for the entire staff and was fairly drunk at the time--maybe you shouldn't be friends with us, unless you like waking up to a pile of dishes and beer cans in the morning... Once again, I would be willing to sharpening technique on youtube, but I'm certain there are videos of it there, "Japanese knife sharpening."

> I enjoy cooking and I absolutely find it cathartic and meditative. However, I have time constraints. I have a job, hobbies, chores, occasional medical problems that sap my energy, and I have to cook ALL my meals. I feel like I spend too long prepping vegetables as it is now. I realize for some recipes that getting perfect cuts is important, but 90% of the time, I would like to just go faster. Do you have any tips for this?

For me, speed come with knife sharpness and monopolizing a single cut. So if you have to julienne a ton of onions, do not try to do one at a time, cut them in half, clean/peel them all, then focus on the julienne so you are repeating the same motions over and over vs attempting different angles and having to move finished product into a container or off the cutting board.

> One major thing I have going for me is that I have great resources in terms of grocery and kitchen options.

>I'm not sure if you are familiar with the Seattle area, but we have an amazing variety of grocery stores/markets here. There is a farmers market every day, Pike Place market, Amazon Fresh (delivery), multiple organic co-ops, Costco, multiple Asian grocery stores, specialty international food stores, Cost Plus World Market, Whole Foods, upscale grocery stores, regular grocery stores, etc. etc. I can get pretty much any ingredient. The problem with most of the produce is that it might be sprayed with the pesticide that I am allergic to. CSAs only work if the produce comes exclusively from certain farmers that don't use this pesticide. When that stuff is in season, I buy huge quantities directly from the farmer and load up my chest freezer.

This makes me happy, but I was happy anyways since I had a few after work. In terms of recommended reading, I suggest looking into pickling assuming you are not allergic to citrus, even so you can probably still use refined vitamin C. Here are three pickling Amazon links: Balls. Can. Ferment, sorry, couldn't resist the urge.

Something else I borrowed off one of my ECs: On food and cooking, Harold McGee.

Another to add to your library: Food lover's Companion

Food is great in that it is a kinesthetic science, a lot of great cooks are also great "scientists" they just don't know it, they are just doing it by "feel, taste and smell." This is where organization and precision come in--know your objective/hypothesis and continue with experiment procedure from there, speed is a measurement: how long, how fast, etc, etc. "If you don't measure you cannot improve." I feel like recipes are more or less, just successful lab reports.

Since you mentioned vegetarianism I feel like I can discuss my on and off relationship with veganity. I do try to build muscle from time to time and so it is hard for me to ignore the nutrient/protein density of tasty decaying animal flesh. But generally in terms of vegetables and fruit there are few exceptions to them having more benefits apart from them being consumed raw: namely Goitrogens.

So this may lead you, as well as it lead me for a time to a "raw/vegan" diet. I dunno though, I get stuck between it and "Paleo" and sometimes just eating raw meat--I cannot tell if I am just becoming lazier as a cook or if I am making strides my personal health.

Back onto topic of sorts:

> My kitchen is already pretty good. I have a nice gas stove, which I feel makes a big difference. We are planning a remodel to enlarge the kitchen.

Hrmm, I am at odds with enlarging for the sake of "bettering," I feel like you can get away with great results with little space and a little ingenuity, but with great precision. I have a portable induction cook-top, a juicer, a blender and a shitty built-in electric range/stove, just missing a dehydrator, PID temperature controlled water bath, a blow torch, vacuum sealer and I wouldn't be too far from a NY test kitchen--I feel like I could feed a hundred people, no problem without using the electric ranges: it comes down to organization. You are one person, trying to feed yourself and your family at any given time, make prep easier for yourself by doing much of it at once or at least eliminating a step or two, prep for half the week or prep for the next step, for example: celery--strip all of it away from the root, throw it in water and save it for later, this keeps it springy and passively washes it; I was taught a long time ago to not drain root vegetables but rather pull them from a bath of water, in that the dirt sinks and stays at the bottom rather than being agitated and back on the vegetables after straining; then you can come back to cut it in any variety you wish. I've kind of made a habit out of bathing veggies vs spraying/rinsing, of course there are exceptions, things that you will peel anyways, that spot of dirt that needs scrubbed and that we need "RIGHT NOW."

The problem I have with recipes is the objectivity in creating "the dish," most of the time, my creations or "specials" come from leftovers or something that is on the verge of being completely useless. Simplicity is king. At my one restaurant we had some black beans that were starting to smell fruity (which is normal, but no one had a planned use for them), a few onions and peppers, some spices, a quick roast then blend with some lemon juice/vinegar and we had a black bean salsa, which I tried to pair with some fish and roasted tomatoes but everyone just wanted the salsa with chips--whatever, I'm Asian, I don't know.

So rather than filling your refrigerator with a dozen half eaten dishes, fill your refrigerator with an endless possibility of dishes: prepped greens for salads; portioned meats for cooking; pickled items for accoutrements, garnishments or just adding that extra acidity; gutted/peeled veggies or fruit--you picking up what I'm laying down?

From there you can experiment with single servings: a celery leaf salad--balsamic vinegar, pickled radish, mustard greens, olive oil, crushed red, salt, julienned carrots, diced red onion and toss in a soft boiled duck egg if you feel the urge. Professional cooking is just a hodgepodge of "stone soup" that everyone has grown to like and accept, everyone has something to add and or learn from.

Restaurant dishes are designed to sell. Try to keep in mind the overt commercialization and not take the small successes you have in just enjoying a simple salad with some boiled eggs, while not getting sick, for granted. Good health tastes great, don't let anyone tell you hard boiled eggs and some celery sticks isn't a meal--"It is until I eat again!"

Speed is just an increase in efficiency in carrying out the procedure. You'll get it, just know what you want and are doing first, then be deliberate. I'll help out best I can.

Greetings from Santa Cruz!

I think I may be the perfect person to help you here. My bar staff is about the same size as yours, and I've been doing exactly this and lending out books from my personal collection each month.
Everyone else has had some great answers, so I'll try and bring something new to the table:

How's Your Drink? by Eric Felten is my favorite easy introduction to cocktail culture. It's written by the cocktail columnist from the Wall Street Journal and reads in a very conversational way. Can be finished in one sitting. Quick read that I recommend you have anyone new start with.

The Cocktail Chronicles by Paul Clarke is a relatively comprehensive overview of the current state of cocktails. It is based around recipes, but I wouldn't call it a recipe book as each recipe has a lot of commentary that goes into context and history.

Meehan's Bartender Manual by Jim Meehan just came out and is incredible. His previous book, The PDT Cocktail Book, is an invaluable resource for recipes, and the Bartenders Manual is a complete guide dealing with all aspects of the job.

Distillled by Joel Harrison & Neil Ridley is a good introduction to different spirits and goes chapter by chapter from vodka to whiskey with an overview of production processes and other factors that influence the flavor of the drink.

Straight Up or On the Rocks by William Grimes is a history of cocktails in the U.S. starting with the first use of the word and going through the early '90s. The author is a food writer for the NY Times and the book is very well researched.

The Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan does a good job of explaining how cocktails are related to each other by putting them into families. His taxonomy may be a little odd, and in and of itself is not the last word in cocktails, but it offers a good perspective.

The Bar Book by Jeffrey Morgenthaler addresses technique. It's an opinionated book but he's usually right. Lots of great information. If I were starting off as a bartender and could only read one book, this is the one that would probably best set me up for success.

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh is based around historic recipes, but each of them has a lot of history incorporated and you also get a good introduction to some of the more obscure ingredients that have come back into fashion recently.

I've reached eight, so I'll stop there. If you would like additional recommendations in the future, please feel free to reach out. I've been collecting bar books for the last six years and have amassed a fair few and even read one or two.

You sound like you're in an enviable position. It's great to have support for making learning a big part of working with food/beverage. Pretty sure I've read a couple of your owner's books and have loved them and found them very useful. It seems like a really great company to work for, as well.

I'd also like to quickly mention Imbibe Magazine, which comes out every two months and is a great way to keep up with what's going on in the beverage world. I keep the most recent couple issues available for my staff to look through.

If there's anything else you'd like insight on related to bringing bar staff into the fold I'd be very happy to help.

For starters: If husband's goal is getting the kids to become vegan, then forcing them to becoming vegan is the absolute wrong way to do it. I didn't like being forced to eat meat as a kid, so I can't imagine your kids are too pleased with this forced diet either. It's one thing to raise your children to eat what you eat--but if you radically change that mid-stream, that's pretty unfair to them. Also, vegan diets can be perfectly healthy for kids, but only if kids will actually eat the right variety of food. Kids who aren't, probably won't be getting the nutrition they need. Again, I'm a reverse case of this--had an iron deficiency as a kid, but I don't as an adult, and I think it's mostly because I eat a better diet as a vegetarian than as a kid who avoided meat in a meat-centric diet. Your kids may run into issues if they're avoiding key parts of a good vegan diet.

Anyway, on to the actual food advice:

Here's the book I recommended as the vegan starter cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/000-Vegan-Recipes/dp/0470085029 is the first vegan cookbook that my husband started out with. I'd absolutely recommend it as a place to start! Aside from the three main proteins that most Americans aren't too familiar eating (tofu, tempeh, and seitan) there aren't many unfamiliar ingredients. And there are TONS of recipes in the book without any of those three--it's got 1000, after all. There are tons of rice and noodle based recipes that non-vegan wouldn't bat an eye at.

This blog (http://ohsheglows.com) has some pretty great stuff, and she also has a cookbook out that we use pretty often. Our favorite cookbook at the moment is https://www.amazon.com/Isa-Does-Amazingly-Delicious-Recipes/dp/0316221902 Both of these will get you into some more off-beat ingredients, though nothing too crazy. (The latter, for example, uses cashew creme--basically, cashews and water in a blender--in a number of recipes.)

Some foods are really easy to switch to vegan; some are not. Butter and milk are two relatively easy ones, unless you're a butter or milk lover. If you're just someone who bakes/cooks with butter (and not someone who relishes butter on bread), then it's easy to swap for vegan versions. Similarly, if milk is mostly for cereal or for eating with cookies (and not something you enjoy in and of itself), it's easy to switch to soy/almond/rice/etc. I'd suggest having both in the house for a while, and cutting down to just the vegan one as people adjust. And experiment with different milks--I prefer almond to soy, but maybe your kids would prefer soy to almond.

I'm not big on vegan yogurt yet, but others may not really mind the switch. What I'm going to recommend is that you stay FAR away from vegan cheese. There is no faster way, in my mind, to turn someone off to veganism than to give them vegan cheese. It is absolutely impossible to substitute cheese the way you can butter, milk, even ice cream. (And I used to LOVE dairy ice cream. Like, I was majorly snobby about ice cream. But I am perfectly happy with cashew-nut or coconut-based alternatives. Definitely recommend those over the soy based ones--the higher fat content makes a difference.)

Anyway, back to cheese--if your husband wants to get the fake cheese, that's fine, but it will send your kids screaming from the dinner table. The worst way to go vegan is to try to replicate standard favorites with non-animal products (i.e. pizza, mac n cheese, cheeseburgers). Meat and cheese replacements are okay for someone who's been vegan, but they are terrible tools for conversion. ;)

It sounds like you're into stir-fries--have you experimented with curries at all? They don't have to be spicy if that's a concern for you or for the kiddos. Chilis can also be a good meal that appeals to the (formerly)-omnivorous, and you can change up the ingredients so they don't get too boring. Sweet potato and black bean one week, tempeh and kidney beans the next. Frozen veggie burgers are "for emergencies only" vegan food, but homemade ones can be fantastic. (They don't stay together super well without eggs, but the look doesn't affect the taste. If the kids don't like food that "breaks," stick the patties in wraps instead of buns.) Lately, I'm really into using soaked walnuts in taco bowls (not the tortilla kind, more like rice and beans and salsa and guac)--basically you soak roughly chopped walnuts for a while, drain them, and toss with chili powder and cumin. No one's crazy enough to think it tastes like chicken, but it tastes good.

In the summer, I'd barely eat real meals if I wasn't living with my husband, who for some reason thinks that it's appropriate to have an actual dinner even when it's 90 degrees. What a weirdo ;) If your kids eat tofu and mixed veggies, it sounds like they're good eaters, so pump them full of fresh fruits and veggies while you can! A big salad along with corn on the cob can be a great summer meal. Pasta salads work well in summer also--just check the dressing's ingredients if using store-bought. (And, usually they're not vegan, so you're better off just using oil and vinegar + seasoning).

Where I can see having a harder time is when school starts. We bring leftovers to work, which isn't really possible for your kids unless they like their leftovers cold. I've noticed that bento-box style lunches seem all the rage (or is that so 2016?)...if you pack them some carrot sticks or pepper slices orbroccoli crowns, maybe with some hummus dip, a fruit or two, some nuts, some Triscuits--that seems like a perfectly fine lunch to me. Vegan sandwiches--at least, the kind you'd pack in a lunchbox--are harder to do, aside from peanut butter, but a hummus-lettuce-tomato slice-sprouts sandwich would work.

Congrats on considering going vegan!! I've been vegan for almost 2 years. In terms of energy and strength, I feel just about the same as I always have. I don't feel as sleepy after meals, but that's likely because I started eating healthier in general. I avoid processed carbs and overly sugared things, which makes me feel more energetic. My digestive system is also happier. I had heartburn and constipation problems (TMI, I know), which have entirely disappeared, likely from increased fiber intake and from cutting dairy.

I feel entirely healthy, but I don't think veganism is a miracle cure or magically superior diet. It's just like any other diet: it has the potential to be healthy and provide you with all essential nutrients as long as it is well-planned and doesn't involve too many processed foods.

Make sure you supplement B12! I recommend an actual vitamin supplement. Don't rely on B12 fortified milks and foods, I think they've been shown to be unreliable.

I highly recommend checking out Jack Norris' website for any questions you have regarding nutrition on a vegan diet. I also recommend the book Vegan for Life. It's a quick, comprehensive introduction to meeting your nutritional needs on a vegan diet. Overall, I don't think it's complicated to plan a healthy vegan diet. But I learned a lot about nutrition in general from the book, and I'm better at getting various nutrients now than when I ate an unplanned omnivorous diet.

As for protein options, my two favorites are lentils and tempeh. I have no problem meeting my daily protein requirements, but I don't target the suggested macros on this subreddit (mostly out of laziness). I haven't had any problems building or maintaining muscle. Here's one of my fave lentil recipes and one of my favorite tempeh recipes for inspiration! Any recipe by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is just delicious. I love the tempeh sausage crumbles served with marinara sauce over spaghetti squash. Yum!

I read /r/vegan a lot, and many new vegans report feeling weak or hungry when they switch. It's almost always because their initial diets are heavy on vegetables, but low on sources of carbs and fat. Fat in particular can easily slip out of a vegan diet, once meat and dairy are cut. Make sure you include nuts and other healthy fats, such as avocado. Don't shy away from oils entirely.

Finally, to make sure you're satisfied on a vegan diet, include umami-rich foods! I really believe that people who become vegan only to succumb to "cravings" for meat and cheese are lacking umami in their dishes. Here's an article that explains umami from another great vegan nutrition blog. And here's a list of ways to add umami to vegan dishes.

Okay...I'll stop writing my novel now! Good luck with your transition, I hope it works out for you :)

That is a broad question so my answer will be somewhat broad. Learning to hunt well is a long process but extremely rewarding. Most new hunters I've talked to and tried to help, end up stopping because it is difficult. You often come home empty handed especially in the beginning. You are very lucky to have an uncle to help. So here's my advice:

1. Get this book and read it: The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game: Volume 1: Big Game https://www.amazon.com/dp/081299406X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_3M4HzbCD358PY
   
   This as well as his following volumes are excellent starting points. Remember that you not only need to know how to find and shoot an animal, you need to know basic butchering to gut, remove meat, and pack it out which can be as challenging as anything else you do while hunting.
   
   
2. If you haven't already, find hunting shows to watch. I think Meateater is one of the best, you will find it on Netflix as well. I think his advice and philosophy on hunting is solid. But there are also a ton of other high quality shows. Solo hunter is great and he's on YouTube. So is Jim Shocky, amount others.
   
   
3. Get good equipment. A gun is just a start. I elk hunt Idaho every year and have experienced all kinds of weather and high mountain backcountry. You'll want high quality boots, layers for hot or cold wet weather, a good backpack that you could haul 100lbs of meat on at 3 am in the rain. I learned this the hard way last year hauling out 100lbs of meat with a mediocre pack in the middle of the night and it was a horrible experience. A good hunting knife, headlamp, etc are all important as well. Steve has a great review of what to have in his book.
   
   
4. Get in shape. Especially with elk hunting, you will typically cover a lot of area and hike a lot of elevation at higher altitudes than you are used to in California. If you are a drag on everyone and unprepared you might not get invited again. I was at 9000 ft last year going for Mule deer in Idaho and the altitude was tough, but I was in shape so I was able to keep up. Be ready for that, take it seriously.
   
   
5. Learn everything you can about the animals you hunt.
   
   
6. Be persistent. A hear people complain all the time about how there aren't a lot of great hunting areas in California. This is complete bull. There is a ton of public land and spots, but people take years finding them. Don't expect people to text you their best spot on a Google map. You're going to have to find them yourself or with friends, but I promise they are there. For all animals, deer, pig, turkey, duck,geese etc. if you want it easy don't waste your time, find another hobby.
   
   
7. Get to know other hunters. Other hunters are generally helpful and especially locals in an area can be helpful (not always). This is a way to get access to private land as well. Sometimes a hunter might want someone to come a long with them to private land for the help. The private hunting spots I have took years of me just getting to know people.
   
   
8. This should go unsaid but, know and follow the state laws. I think hunters have increasingly become conservationists and understand the importance of wildlife management. Know the regulations and follow them, it's good for the sport and will help ensure future generations will be able to hunt. We need the general public to be on our side.
   
   That's the best advice I can give for a beginner. As you gain experience there is so much more to learn.

We're omnivores, not herbivores nor carnivorous (before anyone says it: that means that we can eat meat, not that we must).

About the brain… that's not totally showed and it doesn't mean anything if we kill the oceans in 2048.

All the major dietetics and health organizations in the world agree that vegan and vegetarian diets are just as healthy as omnivorous diets. Here are links to what some of them have to say on the subject:

American Dietetic Association

> It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.

Dietitians of Canada

> A well planned vegan diet can meet all of these needs. It is safe and healthy for pregnant and breastfeeding women, babies, children, teens and seniors.

The British National Health Service

> With good planning and an understanding of what makes up a healthy, balanced vegan diet, you can get all the nutrients your body needs.

The British Nutrition Foundation

> A well-planned, balanced vegetarian or vegan diet can be nutritionally adequate ... Studies of UK vegetarian and vegan children have revealed that their growth and development are within the normal range.

The Dietitians Association of Australia

>Vegan diets are a type of vegetarian diet, where only plant-based foods are eaten. They differ to other vegetarian diets in that no animal products are usually consumed or used. Despite these restrictions, with good planning it is still possible to obtain all the nutrients required for good health on a vegan diet.

The United States Department of Agriculture

> Vegetarian diets (see context) can meet all the recommendations for nutrients. The key is to consume a variety of foods and the right amount of foods to meet your calorie needs. Follow the food group recommendations for your age, sex, and activity level to get the right amount of food and the variety of foods needed for nutrient adequacy. Nutrients that vegetarians may need to focus on include protein, iron, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.

The National Health and Medical Research Council

> Alternatives to animal foods include nuts, seeds, legumes, beans and tofu. For all Australians,
these foods increase dietary variety and can provide a valuable, affordable source of protein
and other nutrients found in meats. These foods are also particularly important for those who
follow vegetarian or vegan dietary patterns. Australians following a vegetarian diet can still meet nutrient requirements if energy needs are met and the appropriate number and variety of serves from the Five Food Groups are eaten throughout the day. For those eating a vegan diet, supplementation of B12 is recommended.

The Mayo Clinic

> A well-planned vegetarian diet (see context) can meet the needs of people of all ages, including children, teenagers, and pregnant or breast-feeding women. The key is to be aware of your nutritional needs so that you plan a diet that meets them.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada

> Vegetarian diets (see context) can provide all the nutrients you need at any age, as well as some additional health benefits.

Harvard Medical School

> Traditionally, research into vegetarianism focused mainly on potential nutritional deficiencies, but in recent years, the pendulum has swung the other way, and studies are confirming the health benefits of meat-free eating. Nowadays, plant-based eating is recognized as not only nutritionally sufficient but also as a way to reduce the risk for many chronic illnesses.

From Your vegan fallacy is:

Eating Animals Does Not Cause Disease

>Many human diseases come directly from animals. For instance, pigs and birds carry influenza, pigs and dogs carry whooping cough, and cows carry tuberculosis, smallpox, and cowpox. So when we raise and eat animals, we increase our risk of exposure to these and other diseases. Further, plants contaminated by animal agribusiness runoff can be vectors of salmonella, which is the primary way spinach, peanut butter, and other plant-based foods come into contact with the bacteria.

Other resources

Nutrition Facts

>NUTRITIONFACTS.ORG is a strictly non-commercial, science-based public service provided by Michael Greger, MD, FACLM, launched with seed money and support by the Jesse & Julie Rasch Foundation. Now a 501c3 nonprofit charity, NutritionFacts.org provides free updates on the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos. There are now hundreds of videos on more than a thousand topics, with new videos and articles uploaded every day.
>
>Dr. Greger is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety, and public health issues. A founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Dr. Greger is licensed as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition. Currently he proudly serves as the public health director at the Humane Society of the United States. Dr. Greger is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine. His latest book, How Not to Die, became an instant New York Times Best Seller. Dr. Greger receives no compensation for his work on NutritionFacts.org.

Vegan Health and JackNorrisRD.com

> Jack Norris is a Registered Dietitian and the President and Executive Director of Vegan Outreach. Vegan Outreach promotes individual outreach primarily through distribution of our booklets on college campuses through our Adopt a College program. In 2005, Jack was elected to the Animal Rights Hall of Fame.
>
>Along with Ginny Messina, MS RD, Jack has written the book Vegan For Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet.
>
>Jack writes a nutrition blog at JackNorrisRD.com. He is the author of Vitamin B12: Are You Getting It? and maintains VeganHealth.org. Jack earned a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Life University (Marietta, GA) in 2000 and finished his dietetic internship at Georgia State University in 2001.

100-year-old surgeon, WWII vet who retired at age 95 shares secrets to longevity

> Dr. Ellsworth Wareham, 100, a celebrated heart surgeon, still mows his lawn and trims his bushes. He credits his longevity in large part to his vegan diet, which he adopted midlife.

As you see, this is not some kind of 5 years of malnutrition. It's a perfectly viable option and more ethical and environmental than eating dead animals and using them and their products. You'll find more information and people who have been vegan for decades on r/vegan.

If there are red flags I'm doing in these pictures, please let me know.

edit:

1st batch: Craft-A-Brew APA Kit

2nd batch: Northern Brewer's 1 Gallon Bavarian Hefe Kit

3rd batch: DrinkinSurfer's Milk Oatmeal Stout Recipe @HBT

If I could start over I would go straight to the 3-gallon batches. I hovered around them but I think it's the perfect batch size for beginners -- 1) Most people have a stockpot lying around the kitchen big enough to hold three gallons, 2) The batches are small enough so you don't have to drink two cases of bad brew, but big enough so if you enjoy it [which I'm thoroughly enjoying my first APA], you'll have plenty to taste and rate the evolution of the flavors over various weeks of priming and give out to family friends who are interested to try out what you made, 3) I ordered 3 Gallon Better Bottles for several reasons including worrying about shattering a glass carboy as a newbie. They also qualify for free shipping on MoreBeer's website with purchases above a certain price. 4) Even though I brewed a 5 gallon batch, and since I'm brewing solo, I'm already not looking forward to bottling the whole batch at once so I plan on breaking up bottling between two days.

For resources, I lurk this sub like a crazy stalker. The Daily Q&A is full of information both crucial and minute. I listen to James Spencer's Basic Brewing Radio podcast and practically substituted it for all music recently. It's family friendly and entertaining [I heard the other podcasts aren't so much]. I read Charles Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 2nd ed. and For the Love of Hops by Stan Hieronymus to get a better understanding of the hops varieties and characteristics. I plan on reading John Palmer's How to Brew and Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers in the future, as well as Brew Like a Monk. Also, the HomeBrewTalk stickies in the forums provide good picture tutorials for several different styles of brewing.

I got into homebrewing so I can brew the, then, only beer style I liked: Imperial Stouts. But as I learned more about the balance and flavors of beer I surprised myself by branching out to enjoying other beers [even the odd IPA every so often]. My narrow scope of beer has broadened more vast that I ever would've imagined it. My brother got me this beer tasting tool kit used for blind taste tests so I try to keep good records and actively taste and appreciate craft beers. I even keep a couple in my wallet for tasting beers on draft.

I really wish I had an immersion wort chiller, a bigger boil kettle, a mash tun, and a propane burner. Those few equipment pieces hinder me from exploring more advanced style of homebrew. I intend to upgrade to all-grain but making the switch is really expensive. I'm still in the look-to-see-what-I-have-lying-around-the-house phase equipment-wise.

Which leads me to: don't be scared to spend money while DIY-ing. Many of you have probably seen my (and many others', most likely) shitty stir plate. DIY should be a balance of doing things on the cheap, but still making it work and function well. There's no point in DIYing if you're not going to be happy with it and just end up buying the commercial equivalent anyway. That's where I am right now.. I'm currently trying to salvage a cooler [no-spigot] I found in my garage and turn it into a mash tun instead of just buying a new cooler with a plastic, removable spigot. I'm certain it would make DIY easier but slightly more expensive.

But the suckiest thing for me about homebrewing is that I don't have a car so getting local, fresh ingredients and supporting my LHBSs is a piece of PITA bread.

Not diabetic but married to a T1, so although I don't really know what you're going through, I have a little insight.

You've recognised that you need to address your control issues, and that fact alone is huge. You say you have no motivation, but what motivated you to write this post? Think about that and draw from it.

I noticed you mentioned carb counting. My husband has had great success with reducing his overall carb intake. If you can, take a look at Dr Bernstein's book (or at least his website) - he is T1 himself, and after discovering the affect that practically eliminating carbs had on his own blood sugars, he went back to qualify as an MD in order to get his message out. Really interesting read and very informative :) Also his own example (he is a fit and healthy 76 yr old T1D) is inspirational!

Nowadays my husband and I barely eat any carbs and we love it (fried bacon every morning, mm), and his HbA1c's are coming down and down. Get your parents on board. They want to help you, and if they read and take in the contents of the book, I am sure they will get onside and help you make the changes you need to get this under control.

You don't need to talk about the things you've done in the past; they are over and done with. Tell your family and doctor that you want to do more to control your blood, and commit to testing more often and taking better care of yourself. At the end of the day it's your health that's on the line, and the only person who can make it better is you.

I hope this helps a little, and please do come back in a couple of months and update us on how you get on :)

Good luck!

I am in the same position you are in. Love cooking, no formal training, but love the science, theory and art behind it all. I have a few books that I find to be indispensable.

• How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian by Mark Bittman are two of my favorite recipe books. Loads of pretty simple recipes, lots of suggestions for modifications, and easy to modify yourself. Covers a bit of technique and flavor tips, but mostly recipes.
  
  
• CookWise by Shirley Corriher (the food science guru for Good Eats!) - great book that goes much more into the theory and science behind food and cooking. Lots of detailed info broken up nicely and then provides recipes to highlight the information discussed. Definitely a science book with experiments (recipes) added in to try yourself.
  
  
• Professional Baking and Professional Cooking by Wayne Gissen - Both of these books are written like textbooks for a cooking class. Filled with tons of conversion charts, techniques, processes, and detailed food science info. Has recipes, but definitely packed with tons of useful info.
  
  
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters - this is not much on theory and more recipes, but after using many of the recipes in this book and reading between the lines a great deal, this taught me a lot about how great food doesn't require tons of ingredients. Many foods and flavors highlight themselves when used and prepared very simply and this really shifted my perspective from overworking and overpreparing dishes to keeping things simple and letting the food speak for itself.
  
  And mentioned in other threads, Cooking for Geeks is a great book too, On Food and Cooking is WONDERFUL and What Einstein Told His Chef is a great read as well. Modernist Cuisine is REALLY cool but makes me cry when I see the price.

Hey there! I'm a beer-lover myself . . . and I've been enjoying homebrewing, which is very rewarding!

If you're interested in a more formal approach to beer tasting, you may want to add _Tasting Beer_ to your wishlist! I just finished reading it myself. It goes into much greater depth than I'll ever really experience, but it gives you a deep perspective on what the most serious beer-geeks and beer-snobs are doing when they take a sip, and it has seriously improved my own appreciation of the ancient beverage.

Also, if you're genuinely interested in homebrewing, in addition to the relatively affordable Mr. Beer (I haven't brewed with it, but I've tasted several people's results with it, and they've been consistently good) you may want to watch for the Groupon deal from Midwest Supplies. It's inactive now, but they do seem to keep bringing it back, and it's a very good deal for getting starting homebrew equipment.

Finally, I saw your discussion with AllOfTimeAndSpace about IPAs, and although I see it's not your favorite style, I thought I might recommend an IPA I tried recently that I thought was spectacularly good: Lawson's Double Sunshine IPA. I imagine it's hard to get outside of Vermont (though I'd be thrilled if I'm wrong, since I don't live there and just had it during a vacation), but it is one of the most delicious beers I've ever tried!

There's definitely more snobbery among wine lovers, but beer is easily as complex, varied, and interesting! Good beer goes great with all sorts of good food, and it's just as rewarding. Glad you're finding so much pleasure in it!

---

Haha! I see (having now actually looked at your wish list) that you have my two suggestions on it already. Good show!

Water has a huge effect on how beer tastes/smells/feels/etc. However, a company like Diageo can absolutely purify and treat the water at one location to be just like another.

In addition, all Guinness draught in the the UK and the US is made at the St. James Gate brewery in Ireland, though some other Guinness products may be made elsewhere.

A couple years ago, I was at the St. James Gate brewery the day before I flew home to the US. I bought a can of draught at both the brewery and then another at my local grocery store, and the day after I got home myself and about 20 other big nerds double-blind tasted them. The consensus was that they were different, though only just. Had I not had them side by side, I don't think I could have distinguished them. There was a slight preference among us for the one from Ireland, but it was not universal, as the beers were extremely similar.

We also all felt that what differences we could detect could be easily explained by the slightly different ages and markedly different shipping conditions experienced by the two cans.

I pretty firmly believe the differences between how we experience Guinness in the US vs. in Ireland are almost entirely due to psychological factors. We're excited to try it in Ireland, and we're relaxed and on vacation, priming us to enjoy the experience far more than we would having it at our local faux-Irish bar here in the states.

Whenever I think back to when I first discovered something I now love, I find that it was a time I was happy, relaxed and open to new experiences. Usually out with friends or family and having a good time well before I tried whatever thing I now love. I think drinking Guinness in Ireland has the same effect. It's not that the beer is different in Ireland, it's that we are different in Ireland!

Freshness, presentation, clean lines, correct gas pressures/mixtures, etc. certainly all play some role, but a good bar should have those pretty well dialed in in either country, minimizing the effect.

I worry about what it is going to be like being pregnant and vegan all the time, since I figure it's going to happen sooner than I think! So, I tend to remember some of the resources that I come across.

Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist, doctor, or medical professional, so these are suggestions for further resources, not scholarly advice.

When you say your diet is "pretty simple," does that mean simple as in a lot of "whole" foods where most of the preparation is done at home? If this is the case, eating a varied, calorically-sufficient diet will do a lot of good--that "well-planned" diet thing. Of course, processed isn't necessarily a bad thing--remember that basics like fortified nondairy milk, tofu, and even seitan are "processed." However, each of these can still be healthy (especially because baked tofu, rice, and veggies is easy and healthy for those nights you/your wife won't want to cook).

As far as supplements, B12 is of course the big one. For a complete look at general vegan nutrition, and some discussion both of vegan pregnancy/raising vegan kids, take a look at Vegan for Life, which is an accessible but science-based look at how to manage macro and micronutrient consumption while being vegan (including a look at supplements.)

You may want to take omega-3, but consult your doctor; I think research is pretty clear these days that they're good for you, but YMMV, especially during pregnancy. Ovega-3 has both DHA and EPA from algae sources; the conversion rate of ALA omega-3s, found in plants, is pretty low and not well understood, so flaxseed oil (while great) is probably not going to suffice.

Colleen Patrick Goudreau discusses supplementation and makes some suggestions for resources.

Pocket reference! The Vegan Guide to Pregnancy is pretty well-reviewed, from what I know, and I hear it recommended. Also, poking around Amazon from there will help you find some additional references. Probably worth it to have a few books on hand, as well as the internet.

Other thoughts:

• Find a supportive doctor! (This you'll probably have to Google.) While I/Reddit/the rest of the internet may kind of know what's going on, a doctor who knows you and your wife and isn't sneering at your diet will be invaluable. Veganism has become (somewhat more) mainstream lately, so you may be able to find resources for that.
  
  
• The people telling you/your wife that the baby needs eggs, milk and dairy probably (at least sort of) mean well, and everybody has a way they did it when they were pregnant, and just look at their little angel--it must be the best way! But most of them probably just don't know any better. So try not to get too upset with them (though if they carry on in such a way for the duration of the pregnancy, no one would blame you.) You can tell them that your doctor disagrees, your wife is in good health, the baby is fine, or something along these lines, and if they continue to harangue you, end the conversation. Arguing about it probably won't end well.
  
  
• Final note: The American Dietetic Association (now the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics), which is a large network of qualified medical professionals, publicly takes the position that a well-planned vegan or vegetarian diet is appropriate for all people in all stages of life, including pregnancy and infancy. The full statement is here. Long story short? The science/research is on your side here. Do your due diligence and get good prenatal care, and you, your wife, and baby will be fine.
  
  
  Good luck, and congratulations!

Spices are a great way to up your cooking game, but they definitely take some learning. It's almost like learning how to read a language - there are different symbols that represent sounds, and there are grammatical rules for how you put them together.

I recommend tasting examples of spice combinations - go out to eat at places that do interesting spices, like Greek, Indian, Ethiopian, Korean, etc. Then read up online about what kinds of spices and herbs they use for their various dishes. This trains your palate and smell along with your knowledge. Indian cuisine is the hardmode for learning spices, but it's super sophisticated in how it's used. You can and do prepare spices in all sorts of ways for Indian cooking - toast whole, toast then grind, toast whole in oil, grind then bloom in oil, etc. And their different masalas are an excellent way to learn blending of spices. 660 Curries is a great encyclopedic resource for learning about spices and how they're used in Indian cooking.

Try getting a couple spice blends to try - such as Herbs de Provence (French) or a barbecue spice rub - use them in cooking and look at the ingredients. Make it almost like flash cards - you try or smell something, then look up what it is. That will help you become better at recognizing spices and herbs when you encounter them in the wild (in food) and also show you the patterns where they fit together. Generally, spices give more flavor when they're heated with oil, so make sure that your test preparations include that element somewhere to get the most out of the spices.

I assign my partner to create spice rubs for our steaks now, because it's a way for them to practice using their nose and knowledge to make a blend that not only tastes good, but that fits their idea of the flavor experience they are trying for.

Lastly, consider getting The Flavor Bible, which is a great resource for suggesting ways to pair ingredients with flavors, including spices and herbs. While you personally may not like every pairing, it's a good way to practice combining flavors that are generally seen as compatible.

You obviously have more than enough individual suggestions already, so I'll just recommend three books instead in case you're a cookbook collector like me!

I'm also an omnivorous meat-eater but I'm happy to endorse these excellent, full-on vegan cookbooks by Isa Chandra Moskowitz:

Veganomicon. This is one of those comprehensive, encyclopedic things that could be—if you were a vegan—the only cookbook you own. It just covers everything, and I've never made anything from it that wasn't great. It's a manageable 336 pages, but they're dense; it's a book where every page has two or three recipes, not one where every dish gets a photo. Highly recommended.

Isa Does It. So this is like the sandwich-shop version of Veganomicon. Isa Does It (get it?) is vegan on easy-mode: here are sloppy joes and mac and cheese and, generally, all the casual vegan meals you could ever eat. Vegans over at /r/mealprepsundays should mass-produce burger patties from it. Not recommended quite as highly, but highly recommended for what it is.

Isa is just a really good cook, so her flavors and vegetable & grain choices have always been on point for me. My favorite thing about her writing, and what keeps me coming back to her as a meat-eater, is that she's never interested in creating meat substitutes. The vegetables are the point, after all, so she's making dishes where the vegetables are the showstopper. When she makes a burger it always feels just a little halfhearted compared to her rock-star vegetable dishes, which is why "Isa Does It" falls just short of "Veganomicon" for me. But it's still great.

For a really great chef who does somersaults to simulate meat dishes—burgers and chili and Thanksgiving turkey—it is well worth your while to pick up The Chicago Diner Cookbook by Jo Kaucher. I could tell stories about some large-scale orphan Thanksgivings I've helped to host, where we served a hundred people over two days with meat and vegan options flying everywhere. We practically scripted the vegetarian (vegan) half of these meals from the Diner cookbook. Here is what I know: a ton of starving Chicago artists of varying omnivore, vegetarian and vegan status absolutely destroyed Jo Kaucher's tofurkey year after year after year, while my SO's actual-turkey, which is damned fucking good, always took second place and became leftovers. Shit, I prefer Jo's tofurkey to real turkey and I'm the kind of guy who makes laap from scratch at home, which means I'll spend an hour mincing intestines on a cutting board that you wet with pig blood while you chop. That is, I don't go out of my way for tofu and still I adore Jo's tofurkey.

Anyway, I hope those are fun suggestions that might be useful. :)

The best thing your mom can do is self educate - learn as much about the current information as she can. Knowing how diet can help control T2D is such valuable information.

Here is a really good book, written by a medical doctor who is now in his 80's and has been a diabetic since his teens. https://www.amazon.ca/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-Achieving/dp/0316182699
I think this is a good place to start. He also has a web site with lots of video lectures on various topics for both T1 & 2D . Also, I have found trying to find ready-made Low Carb/Keto/Diabetic premade food was hard to find and VERY expensive. It is not that hard to make great food at home that is based on whole food and is high in nutritional value. Now that she is a T2D she must change her lifestyle and relationship with food to live a healthy and complications free life.
I have now been on a full keto diet for 4 years and my T2D is totally under control - with NO MEDS. I was taking 3 kinds of meds before changing my diet.
Here is my playlist of Keto foods that have keept my BS in the very healthy normal range. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWxb2cfHHa24T7pXv6ssnDw/playlists

If you want to help your mom, the best thing is to learn with her about T2D and how a very low carb diet can make a huge difference. Supporting her journey will encourage her and the support is so appreciated (I love that my family are 100% helping keep to my keto lifestyle- they see how much it helped me)> Let me just complement you – you are amazing for wanting to do this for your mom. Best of luck to her and may she get her T2d UNDER CONTROLE!

Hope this helps. CHeers

You don't hate healthy food, you just haven't found ways to eat healthy that you like. Look, I used to feel exactly the same. Then I got myself some cook books and learned how to cook beyond the "college" level (ie very rudimentary cooking skills).

It sounds old fashioned, but buy some cook books. Eating healthy does NOT have to mean (and shouldnt mean) eating boring, bland food. I have been eating quite a healthy balanced diet lately, but it doesn't suck and I enjoy everything I eat because I cooked it and it tastes really good. I am a pretty proficient cook now because I've learned enough from cook books that I can create something tasty on my own if I want to. But for the most part, I'd say I still follow recipes very frequently, mostly because a) I know it will turn out really well unless I royally screw up like forget an ingredient an b) I'm not that creative when it comes to meal planning - I'd prefer to flip through my cook books and pick out new recipes to try for dinner this week.

If you do take my advice and go the route of cook books, I will make a few suggestions below. You will notice that all of them are America's Test Kitchen. There's a reason I suggest mostly their books--they are totally idiot proof. Their recipes are thoroughly tested (it IS americas TEST kitchen after all...) They rarely have recipes that call for unusual or hard to find ingredients, and rarely call for unique appliances (like, most people probably do not have an immersion blender). Their recipes are very simple (I've come across a lot of books from other publishers that have incredibly drawn-out steps, or just countless steps, or a lot of unusual ingredients) and easy to follow, and they also include brief scientific explanations for something about every single recipe (example, why you would want to brown your butter when making chocolate chip cookies) which I have always found interesting, and theyre meant to help you build your knowledge in how to cook --ie its often concepts that can be applied elsewhere.

ATK/Cooks Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking

ATK Cooking School

ATK's The Make-Ahead Cook - great if youre into meal prepping

ATK Cooking for Two - great if you are alone or just cooking for yourself and significant other, and dont like having leftovers

ATK Comfort Food Makeovers - turns traditionally unhealthy foods into healthy meals

ATK Slow Cooker Revolution - if you have a crock pot, you NEED this book. I've made a ton of recipes out of here and every single one has come out great.

They have a ton of books out there, many of them for specific things (pressure cooker, paleo, gluten free, vegetarian, mexican recipes, etc.) but you may be saying, "Hmm, none of those books said "Health cooking/eating healthy/buzzwords about health" - they dont need to say that. Quite a lot of their recipes are generally healthy. I haven't encountered many things (outside the dessert chapters, that is) that I've said "oh, I don't think I ought to eat that, it's just not healthy" --but if youre a bit narrow minded in terms of what constitutes a healthy meal (and I find that is common with people who struggle to eat a healthy diet--this is because they think there's a very small amount of "healthy" foods out there) , then maybe these books arent for you. But if you mostly eat intuitively, and know that you should be getting a decent amount of vegetables and fruits in your daily diet, and a good amount of protein, and not an overwhelming amount of starch and net carbs, then youre golden. Get yourself a cook book and learn to cook. Once you eat food that's been properly seasoned and cooked, youll realize that eating asparagus doesn't have to be a boring, unpalatable experience. Brussels sprouts don't have to be awful. I used to hate brussel sprouts...until I had properly roasted sprouts. Holy shit, they are good!!! Peas can be tasty! Baked chicken breast doesn't have to taste bland and dry as hell if you learn about brining, seasoning, and proper cooking times.

TLDR - eating healthy doesnt have to mean eating bland food. You admit your cooking skills are rudimentary, so it's no surprise you are not enthused when you try to make something healthy. A lot of "healthy" foods (veggies, etc) are bland when you don't properly season them or pick the right cooking method. Get yourself a cook book or two and learn how to cook. You won't have a hard time eating something you previously thought unpalatable--like filling half your dinner plate with brussels sprouts and broccoli--when it's seasoned and properly cooked!

I'd highly recommend a canning book from a reputable source, for instance the Ball Blue Book or Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving are some very, very good places to start. I'd also recommend starting with water bath canning, and after you're comfortable with the mechanics venturing into pressure canning if you feel like it. Until you are very confident, don't deviate from the recipes at all. No extra ingredients, no halving or doubling recipes (especially jam, pectin's a finicky thing), and no subbing different sized jars. Once you get the hang of it, you can start to fudge a little bit, but at first I'd definitely play it safe and stick straight to the recipe; this is more fussy than regular cooking. Water bath canning is only for high-acid foods, and even tomato sauce recipes for canning require extra lemon juice, so definitely follow your recipe.

As far as equipment, technically all you really need are a pot to hold the jars as they boil, something to pull the hot jars out of the water with, and some kind of rack to keep them off the bottom of the pot (extra canning rings placed along the bottom, a cake rack, whatever works). Nothing else is technically needed, though I tried this method with just the extra rings and with spring-loaded tongs and made quite a mess, then immediately sprung for some toys.

I'd recommend this kit, the polypropolene basket doesn't melt even during long canning sessions and it's small enough to use in an eight or ten quart pot, which a lot of people already have at home. To make sure your pot's big enough, put a jar in the pot and make sure it could be covered with at least an inch or two of water. Taller pots are obviously more helpful than lower, wider ones. The kit comes with three jars, which is okay, and the recipe book it comes with scales down a lot of their most popular recipes so you can just make a few jars to test them out.

I'd also recommend a canning funnel, and a jar lifter. Something to measure headspace is also handy, there's a little plastic doohickey for that (looks like this) but if you don't mind keeping a plastic ruler around, it's not required. A set like this would definitely cover all your bases.

Keep in mind that while the jars and rings are reusable, the lids with the sealing compounds are not. If you feel a canning binge come on, be sure to buy an extra little box of just the lids because you'll be upset if you run out!

Good luck!! I'm still a novice canner myself, and I've only ever done water bath canning, but I've already got taco sauce, jams, jellies, pickles and canned fruit (I love canning pears!) under my belt so I've got at least a little bit of a clue!

Sure, tons! In no particular order:

1. Pick up a book. The two best intros are How to Brew and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. My girlfriend and I started with How to Brew. It can be a little science-y, but it was a great beginner's book that starts with the basics and gets more complicated as it goes. Basically the first chapter is enough to brew a beer, but the next few chapters help you learn how brewing works, and so on. I've never read The Joy of Homebrewing, but I've heard it's just as good, only a little less science based and more "fun and accessible." Really, either one is probably great.
   
   Also, How to Brew is based off a blog, and a lot of the book is on there. If you don't know which book you'd prefer start with A Crash Course in Brewing and decide if it's for you or if you'd like something a little more readable.
   
   
2. Google around and see if you have a local homebrew shop. Lots of them offer classes, and sometimes local breweries will have homebrew classes on groupon or living social. Often times the beer you drink is work the price of the class, and it's super helpful to see brewing done first hand. This is actually how I got into it: I used buy beer at my LHBS in Ft Lauterdale, and saw that classes were only $30 and came with beer and food. I signed up with my girlfriend - no intention to start brewing, just thought it'd be a fun Saturday - and wound up totally hooked.
   
   
3. Use the community, people love talking about brewing. If you're not sure how to make something work for you, someone's probably been there. Ask folks in your LHBS if you have one, post in /r/homebrewing, heck even just come back some time and reply to this post and I'll be more than happy to tell you what I know. I was worried because when I moved to DC I lost the outdoor space I used to brew in Florida, and couldn't get 5 gallons of beer boiling on a regular stove. I mentioned it casually to another brewer and he walked me through adapting recipes for smaller, more concentrated boils to be topped up to 5 gallons afterwards. Now I can brew on my electric apartment stove and haven't seen any loss of quality.
   
   Sorry if that's a total data dump, I just love chatting about and getting new people into brewing. If you ever give it a try, let me know how it goes!

U/4thShift offers a lot of the same sort of advice I'm following. I've recently gone through the transition to eating low carb in order to try and normalise my blood sugars. This is after nearly 10 years with terribly controlled diabetes, despite (almost) every effort - regular blood glucose testing, adopting the insulin pump , educating myself on carb counting including estimating etc. I was following the track that I can eat whatever I want as long as I bolus for it. But it really didn't work. Large amounts of carb cause spikes and I haven't heard of anyone who is able to normalise BGLs on a high carb diet.

BUT- the first piece of good news is that low carb is becoming adopted more as a solution that works among diabetics , both types. So there are lots of people who can share their strategies and there are resources to help. I don't describe myself as a "ketoer" but most of the recipes are diabetes friendly due to being low carb . I am picking a few of my favourite foods and drawing on keto recipes as well as the information in this complete guide to normalising blood glucose levels . It's a lot of information and I bought a little notebook to take important notes that I need to remember , and carry in my handbag and whip it out every now and then to go through to embed them into my psyche... A lot of what is in the book is here in video format

It's hard work but having my own highly supportive SO helps and he is also following the same sort of eating (in general, which I'm very grateful for, it really does help). Incidentally one of my favourite recipes is the fathead pizza. I weigh my dough and make own pizza to eat to ensure carb counting . It fills me more so I don't want to gulp down a whole piZza like I used to and I actually prefer the taste. I also get upset about missing out on certain things but there a loads of dessert recipes (some in the boook above). The pain is that you do have to make all yourself. Can't just pop into the cheesecake shop on the way home.

The second piece of good news is, because your SO is newly diagnosed, he will still have functioning beta cells. I remember my honeymoon period... those first six months were much easier to keep BGLs down because of those cells. If you can maintain their function by avoiding burning them out (as I understand ). I can't tell you how motivating and inspiring it is , after ten yeArs, to find out that I can potentially normalise BGLs as a type 1 diabetic. I'm hoping to achieve a normal A1C and consequently reverse my complications which have started to rest their ugly head. I wish I had the knowledge sooner, perhaps one way to look at the situation.

I miss being able to eat whenever I want, but less so each day I get into it. Meanwhile, when I do eat I am choosing things I always liked to eat (cheeses, bacon, mayo/Avocado chicken, breads but the low carb almond versions , lots of decadent creamy sauces in vegetables, low carb cheesecake etc) .

I wish you all the best. Hope something here and above helps. Your SO is very lucky to have you.

It's a big topic, so I'd suggest starting small and easy. One route is to find a good brewpub (a bar/restaurant where they serve beer brewed on the premises) in your area, using this directory on Beeradvocate. If that's unclear, just say where you're from and I (or someone else around here) will help you figure it out. Brewpubs often serve sampler trays, where you get a small serving of all of their beers on tap. This will usually give you a quick baseline for some popular styles and hopefully introduce you to some good local beers.

Another tried and true route is to find a beer store or a grocery store with a good selection (again, use the Beeradvocate directory) and ask their beer buyer for help. If no one is around or he/she seems like an idiot, you can always just grab some random bottles - look for single bottles or mix-a-six deals (some stores let you buy 12 oz bottles that would normally be sold in six packs).

Beeradvocate and Ratebeer are the two biggest beer websites and both have good intro articles on beer - BA's Beer 101, RB's Beer Reference. That might seem a bit boring at this point, but some people prefer that kind of thing (me). If you're really into it, there's also a fantastic intro to beer book - link - that is both fun to read and chock full of information.

As for examples and recommendations, it depends on your location to a large extent. Beer distribution is very regional because there are costs and legal barriers associated with expanding into a new state. There are some good breweries that distribute to most/all of the country (North Coast, Anchor, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, Rogue, etc.), but with >1600 breweries currently operating in the US, they're just a small portion and even some of the biggest breweries skip over a lot of states. If you want to give us your state (city would also help for more beer bar/brewpub recommendations), it would be much easier to recommend some beers for you.

Finally, you might want to try searching around /r/beer a bit, as there have been many past threads on this and similar topics.

Here's one more piece of advice: try new beers as much as possible. Be adventurous and open to new styles and unfamiliar flavors. You'll find lots of delicious beer even if you strike out a few times along the way.

Cheers and welcome to good beer.

Some additions to the Japanese section:

• Dashi Stock Granules (or you could make your own with bonito flakes and some big sheets of konbu). This stuff is the base of almost everything in Japanese cooking.
  
• Sake. The brand I get is Gekeikan. Comes in a green glass bottle. Not just for drinking.
  
• Rice Wine Vinegar. Used in sushi rice, dressings, sauces, and marinades.
  
  As an aspiring cook of Chinese foods, I got a book called "stir-frying to the sky's edge" and most of the recipes in it call for at least 3 of the following ingredients. I had one hell of a time tracking them all down at my local H-mart, but they were all there. It just took a very thorough inspection of the sauce and liquid ingredient isles.
  
  Chinese:
  
  
• Oyster sauce (Okay, just remembered you are vegetarian, but I'm gonna leave this up for the benefit of others.)
  
• Black Bean Sauce (Tenmen Jiang)
  
• Chili Bean Sauce (Douban Jiang)
  
• XiaoXing Cooking Wine (You might find different spellings... along with all of these Chinese ingredients now that I think about it.)
  
• Black Vinegar (ChianKiang Vinegar)
  
• Light and Dark Soy Sauce
  
• Sesame Oil (You can find this anywhere... Just mentioning because I use it all the time)
  
• Hoisin
  
• Red Fermented Bean Curd (Only if you want to make your own char siu. As a westerner I've never read about any other uses for it. This is what you're supposed to use instead of red food coloring).
  
  Don't know shit about Korean cooking (except that it requires good micro).
  
  Thai:
  
  
• I once followed a recipe for a very authentic tasting red curry paste that came out great. The only thing it called for that you haven't listed is shrimp paste. It's pretty foul stuff--smells horrible, tastes bad by itself, overpowering if you add too much. But, I added it anyway and, like I said, it tasted very authentic and I was very happy with it. I might just omit it next time to not have to deal with it, but I thought you'd like to know about it for the sake of authenticity. Gah, I just remembered you were vegetarian AGAIN. Sorry. Anyway, the recipe is here and they give vegetarian substitutes for all the ingredients.
  
  
• Also, if you want to cook Pad Thai, you need Tamarind Paste.
  
  Some posts in here have covered Indian starter spices really well so I wont repeat them, but I will tell you some of my experiences:
  
  
• Buy a coffee grinder to grind spices yourself.
  
• Even after buying tons of spices for indian cooking, it seems like no matter what, whenever I come onto a new recipe I really want to try, it calls for one spice I don't have. Be prepared to either plan your curries out well in advance or settle for omitting one spice from the recipe every now and then.
  
• Buy a cook book. After scouring the internet, all I could find were recipes by non-indians that called for "curry powder". if it calls for curry powder, chances are it's not authentic. I got a book called 660 Curries which is authentic and beginner friendly.
  
• I bought my spices online from Savory Spice Shop They are A+ would shop again. Not sure if they ship outside the US, though. Make sure you know how much an ounce of each spices is just so you don't do what I did... "Hmm, Coriander seeds... 1oz doesn't seem like much at all. Better go with six. OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE."
  
  Anyway, took me about two years to figure all this shit out and I'm still going, so hopefully you wont have to take that long. I find that after the initial cost of investing in these asian pantry items, you can just pretty much buy only meat, veggies, and grains and make nearly anything since you've got all the flavors on hand. Have fun shopping.
  

It's actually really easy. Beans + rice or beans + corn and you have a complete protein. I eat tacos, burritos, Thai, Indian (vegan curry), black bean burgers, and stir fry all the time. I thought all vegans were hungry skellies too before I gave it a shot, and it turns out it's really cheap and easy. It is only ever difficult to eat vegan at restaurants because everything seems to have milk or cheese, but I am doing the best I can and don't sweat the small stuff. My BF eats meat but these days at home he doesn't bother because he loves my cooking.

Edit: If anybody is interested in the nutrition of a plant-based diet or would like to try some delicious recipes, I would highly recommend

1. Vegan for Life which is written by two registered dietitians. This book discusses how to feed yourself properly and what vitamins you need (looking at you B12) to make a vegan lifestyle sustainable.
   
   
2. Thug kitchen Is a funny, no-nonsense book which showcases a lot of delicious recipes which I use every week
   
   
3. Some documentaries that I really enjoy sharing which are available on Netflix are:
   
   

• cowspiracy - the environmental impact of consuming meat and meat products
  
  
• Forks Over Knives - discusses nutrition and the effects of consuming animal products and oil and the links between these products and cancer. Big focus on the China Study
  
  
• Food Matters - another nutrition one.
  
  I want to point out that the last two really push the message that 'FOOD CURES ALL' and that is a bit of an extreme message imo. A good diet certainly leads to good health, but modern medicine exists for a reason.
  

6-year vegan here. /u/57001 has a good list. I'd add Oh She Glows to the blog list for healthy reasonably tasty things that don't take a lot of weird vegan ingredients. Also, Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Appetite for Reduction was my first vegan cookbook and is still my favorite. It's written as a diet cookbook but the macronutrient breakdown makes it really good for a runner's diet. It's written with a dietician gives you nutrition information on every page. Everything is super easy for weeknight cooking, budget-friendly, and delicious.

Hummus is your best friend. It's a good source of protein and carbs and you can find it everywhere. Very useful when you're traveling some place that's vegan hell. Although, probably pick a less greasy one than Sabra.

And yes, take your B12. A good proportion of omnivores tend to be deficient in it as well so it's not just a vegan thing. You can technically get it through fortified foods, but I would not rely on this. And sublingual or spray is better absorbed by your body than pills.

Happy to answer any other questions you might have.

I love being vegan, but I definitely didn't experience most of the health benefits you're seeing... it took me a while to adjust to the diet. Good for you nonetheless. Congrats on becoming vegan!

2) There are lots of good protein sources, and they'll add up throughout your day. Some major protein sources for me are beans, oatmeal, quinoa, peanut butter, peanuts and almonds, and soy milk. Veggies have some protein too. Also, I absolutely love Clif Builder Bars. They're vegan and have 20g of protein per bar. Perfect for when you can't cook.

3) When I was a few months into being vegan, I picked up Vegan for Life from the library. This book is amazing and gives you lots of meal ideas and solid nutritional advice for being a vegan in every stage of life. It told me a lot of things I wish I had known earlier, like getting omega-3s from flax and canola oil and where to get all my vitamins.

4) If you check the packaging first, there are many "accidentally vegan" snacks out there. Twizzlers, Wheat Thins and Triscuits, pretzels, Fritos, non-butter popcorn, lots of chips, Oreos, granola bars, Swedish Fish... the list goes on. Google "accidentally vegan" and look through some lists, I'm sure you'll find things you like. Not to mention you can find ways to veganize almost any baked good.

I've found the biggest reasons people quit veganism after deciding that it's the right thing to do is:

1. Not knowing what to eat or how to prepare it
   
2. Losing motivation
   
   I think that #1 is most important to nail down, because if you're already convinced that veganism is the right thing to do, you shouldn't have much problem sticking with it unless you run into food-related problems. This video covers just about everything you need to know about vegan food. Basically:
   
   

• Eat enough calories
  
• Have a few go-to recipes for each meal
  
• Use happycow.net to find vegan-friendly restaurants (virtually everything at Asian restaurants can easily be veganized)
  
• B12!
  
  Eating vegan won't feel hard or restricting at all if you know how, and what to cook. Just like non-vegan food, vegan food can taste disgusting or flat-out amazing. Don't be discouraged if the first vegan food you make turns out terribly, because it probably will. Figure out what you didn't like about what you made, and try to improve it for next time. Vegan cooking can be very different, and it will probably take getting used to.
  
  If you're willing to buy a cookbook, But I Could Never Go Vegan! should be perfect. It's recipes are split up based on common excuses or worries people have when it comes to vegan cooking ("But I love sea food!", "What about cheese?", "Why does vegan food need to be so healthy!", etc). Thug Kitchen also has a lot of great, and healthy, recipes. They have a trailer if you're interested in seeing the, uh, "tone" of the book. Lastly, there's Isa Does It. I'd say her recipes are a bit fancier and take a little more effort to prepare, but if you're willing to learn she'll teach you everything from what to stock your pantry with to how to the different ways to chop tempeh. There shouldn't be any problem following anything in any of these books if you're willing to read the directions.
  
  I don't personally watch a lot of vegan cooking channels on youtube, but it might be worth checking out TheVeganZombie, Peaceful Cuisine for asian food, and the channels here.
  
  On staying motivated, I think it's pretty much required to constantly be reminded by why you want to be vegan in the first place. Regularly visit vegan communities like here, watch vegan, environmental, or animal rights-related documentaries like cowspiracy, earthlings, or Forks Over Knives, subscribe to vegan youtube channels like Bite Size Vegan or The Vegan Activist. It takes a lot more willpower than most people have to stay vegan in a community where everyone around you hasn't given the ethics or environmental aspects of meat production much thought. Worst of all, they might even view you as... weird... for even bothering. Just try to keep in mind the reasons other people get defensive, or even hostile when bringing up veganism, stay calm, and all will be well.
  
  I wish you the best of luck, hopefully you found some of this wall of text useful :)
  
  
  

No one has mentioned it yet, but I learned a lot from cook books.

These are not just lists or recipes, but instruction about techniques and methods and processes.

Some good ones are:

• How to Cook Everything: The Basics
  
• Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book
  
• Cook's Illustrated Cookbook
  
  Having an actual dead tree book can be more convenient in the kitchen than a laptop or mobile device with an ebook.
  
  If you can find episodes of Good Eats by Alton Brown he is really good at explaining things. Videos can be good, but a lot of times but really only when you know what it is you're looking for. With a book it is going to give you topics that you might never have thought of.
  
  But for reals now, you are going to get the best value learning how to cook the basics. Your Instant pot is AWESOME for cooking dry beans. Get pound of dry black beans and 3 pounds of water (obviously you need a good kitchen scale). I just put the inner pot of my Instantpot on the scale, dump in the beans, tare it, then pour water in with a big cup till I have 3 lbs. Put in 1/2-1 teaspoon of salt. I also add granulated garlic and powdered onion and some cumin but you don't have to. Set your instanpot to manual for 45 mins and wait. Let it naturally release, if you manually release the pressure the skin on the beans will break, to me it still tastes the same but you have far fewer whole beans. Now you have a weeks worth of delicious, healthy black beans. No need for overnight soak or anything.
  
  Small white beans (a.k.a navy beans) can be cooked the same and they taste different but just as good. Or you can add the extra ingredients and make pork and beans.
  
  You can cook pinto beans with the same basic recipe, and they taste great too. When you want to take the extra time, then with a slotted spoon dish the cooked beans into a large frying pan with some lard or shortening and make your own refried beans. You smash the beans with the back of the spoon or a spatula, and use the bean broth to add liquid till you like the texture.
  
  If you can't tell I like cooking beans in my Instantpot. I have a rice cooker but you can cook rice in the Instantpot too. Beans and rice is healthy and cheap!!! (cook them separately and mix them after cooking).
  
  

To save money on food you need to:

• Plan your meals in advance, perhaps a week at a time but at least a few days in advance. This not only avoids impulse buys but also allows you to make the most of the food you have bought for example - day 1 roast chicken for dinner (maybe to share with a date?), day 2 chicken sandwiches for lunch, chicken pot pie for dinner, day 3 chicken soup for lunch, chicken risotto for dinner, day 4 left over chicken soup for lunch. A whole chicken used properly is so much cheaper than chicken breasts. Take at look at The Kitchen Revolution, this is the website for a book which very elegantly deals with weekly food planning.
  
  
• Eat seasonally - fresh tomatoes are ridiculous cheap in the summer, silly in the winter. You can usually tell what is in season because it is cheap!
  
  
• Eat mostly vegetarian, using meat as a flavour enhancer rather than the main item on the plate. In my chicken dinner example, although the chicken would be the main item for the first couple of meals, by the time you are getting your last few meals out of it, you will be adding a small portion of meat to enhance your risotto or soup. Other wise beans are the thing. See Mark Bittman's excellent How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for really simple yet delicious guide to well almost everything you could want to eat (except meat), it has a particularly good chapter on legumes including lentils. He has a very relaxed style of writing which I think is very easy to follow.
  
  Good luck!

Until about a year ago, I knew next to nothing about cooking but I've been learning. I wish I had known this stuff in college. What I did is I bought a copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and went through it. The regular How to Cook Everything is also good. Both of them give you lots of really easy recipes (like how to make scrambled eggs) as well as more advanced ones if you want to serve dinner to people for example.

Also, I watched every episode of Good Eats and learned a lot from that. Most if not all of those are on YouTube. Just start with Season 1 Episode 1 and start plowing through them.

I don't prepare meat because I'm paranoid about germs, but don't let that stop you. The things I've been preparing the most are:

• Eggs: fried, scrambled, omelettes. Hands down the easiest thing.
  
  
• Sauteed, braised, boiled, or steamed vegetables. These are all very easy and once you've done it a bit you start to understand what the best method is for different vegetables and you don't even need to look in a recipe book. Most recent thing I did is sauteed plantains.
  
  
• Rice dishes. Pilaf and rice with beans/peas/other legumes are easy and nutritious.
  
  
• Soups. Things like potato leek soup, french onion soup, split pea soup, lentil soup are all very easy.
  
  
• Simple baked desserts like muffins, banana bread, apple cobber etc.
  
  If you have an oven, it's really not very hard to make your own pizza, for that matter.

Starting resource: Bittman's How to Cook Everything: The Basics

Other tips:
Almost anything is great sautéed in olive oil with salt & pepper. You can get fancier from there, but once chopping & sautéing becomes no big deal, cooking gets a lot easier. You just have to level up!

If you are not yet readily chopping veggies into bits, there are lots of pre-packaged bags of salad greens & veggies. I have found veggie trays (carrot & celery sticks w/ ranch) are a quick & easy fix, and more fun to eat as it seems like you're at a party. Other quick finger foods like grapes, nuts, berries, turkey pepperoni or string cheese are handy to have around for a blood sugar boost for meal-making energy.

You can never go wrong with PB & J, grilled cheese, or scrambled eggs.

A slow cooker/rice cooker is your friend. Chili is easy to make and will keep a while. Delicious over brown rice, add cheese.

Good luck!

The piece of equipment that I decided wasn’t being used enough in my kitchen is my mandolin. I got it in a 4 blade set from Oxo. In order to really delve into it, I decided to make 3 dishes which featured the mandolin. First, I decided to make these mini-potatoes Anna. These were really easy and incredibly delicious. The paper-thin potato slices were melt in your mouth bites of deliciousness. I next wanted to make some kind of chip, but didn’t want to use potatoes again. Instead, I made these baked beet chips. I liked them because I didn’t have to fry anything. They took way longer than expected to crisp up (like 30 minutes or so) but ended up tasting a lot like potato chips with a slightly earthier flavor. Finally, for my main course, I wanted to make something with zucchini noodles. I have been trying to make more vegetable dishes and this seemed like a great opportunity to try this out. I went with this zucchini lasagna recipe. I did make a number of changes to the dish, as suggested by many of the commenters. To start, I added a couple cloves of garlic into the onions. Instead of a 28 ounce can of tomatoes, I went with a 15 ounce can, and then started adding things. I added a handful of minced sun-dried tomatoes, an 8 ounce can of tomato sauce, a squeeze of tomato paste, a squeeze of chili pepper paste, and a large splash of the pasta sauce I had in my fridge. I also added some parmesan and mozzarella to the ricotta layers and topped the thing with some mozzarella. This was delicious and I will definitely be making it again in the future.


For my MetaTheme, I wanted to finally use the Boston Shaker that I have had in my bar cabinet for a couple of years now. This also let me use another piece of underused equipment, my Hawthorne Strainer. Because I was going to use the shaker as my theme equipment, I needed a cocktail that really featured the shaker. In my mind, that means a cocktail with an egg white in it (which needs a dry shake). I decided to go with a Whiskey Sour because it is one of my favorite drinks, when done well, and I somehow haven’t done it in the 93 weeks I have been making cocktails to go with my theme dishes. I had to crack out two different books for this one. I used Liquid Intelligence for the recipe but needed my Bar Book to learn the technique behind using a Boston Shaker. This was a great recipe with the right balance of sweet, sour, and smokey.

I'd echo the 'kitchen stuff' idea. http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/12/gift-guide-basic-kitchen-essentials-home-cook-starter-kit-presents.html has a decent and thoughtful list, along with http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/12/gift-guide-essential-pots-and-pans-presents-for-home-cooks.html but if I could tell you to get a few things, I'd pare it down to:

• Enameled cast-iron pot
  
• Cast iron skillet
  
• A chef's knife (most people need an 8" knife but my hands are very small, so a 6" works for me -- the key is to buy what works for YOU)
  
  Eventually, add in a few high-quality knives (I love Wusthof and Henckels but not all of their lines are created equal) -- I lean on my paring knife and chef's knife for much of what I do, though having other knives can be nice
  
  These items are good, but equally important is to learn how to use them. Long-term, you are going to save yourself much heartache, frustration, and money if you do something terribly unglamorous: take some basic cooking classes before you start buying physical things. Learn how to use these implements properly before investing, so you become a smarter investor. What you've bought for life: knowledge. Start with knife skills (http://www.surlatable.com/product/CFA-2976678/ might work) and work up to learning other basic cooking techniques. You want to look for classes and books that don't just teach you how to make a single recipe, but to understand methods, like braising and sautéing and frying. This way, whenever you hit a rough patch in your life, you can always take care of yourself.
  
  Also: get a library card. You can then go pull books like these for free, absorb the learning, and save your money to buy only the items that YOU want to keep as a permanent reference:
  
  
• Cooks' Illustrated "Science of Good Cooking" - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933615982/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_2
  
• The Food Lab: Better Cooking Through Science - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393081087/ref=pd_sim_14_1

I pretty much only read non-fiction, so I'm all about books that are educational but also interesting :) I'm not sure what your educational background is, so depending on how interested you are in particular subjects, I have many recommendations.

Naked Statistics and Nate Silver's Book are both good!

Feeling Good is THE book on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is good, as is Eating Animals (granted, Eating Animals is aimed at a particular type of eating)

Guns, Germs and Steel is very good.

I also very much enjoyed The Immortal Live of Henrietta Lacks, as well as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman :)

edit to add: Chris Hadfield's Book which I haven't received yet but it's going to be amazing.

In this post, I'm going to link to examples. They are examples: I'm not necessarily recommending that specific item. (I'm pretty much doing a search on Amazon and linking to the first thing in the search results that is actually what you need.) It's just an example to let you know what you're looking for.

Yes, you will need a metal stockpot. Five gallons should be sufficient.

You will need some type of stirring apparatus. Some would recommend a large metal spoon, but I recommend using a plastic mash paddle.

I would recommend getting some type of thermometer to put on your stock pot. A candy thermometer is where I'd start, but, if this is a hobby that you'll stick with, it's probably worth investing in something better.

Also, I see that they put a hydrometer in your kit. If you want to take measurements with the hydrometer, you'll need either a turkey baster or a wine thief. I'd start with the baster.

If you need a book on homebrewing, Palmer's How to Brew is pretty much the standard, but Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is well regarded. Palmer's book is in its third edition, but you can get the first edition of the book online for free.

Depending on the ingredients that you use, you may need common kitchen items like scissors or can openers.

You'll also need bottles. If you brew a five gallon batch (which is pretty typical… at least in the United States), you'll need about fifty-four twelve-ounce bottles. However, you can't use twist-off bottles; they're no good.

Lastly, you'll need ingredients. Different recipes call for different ingredients. My advice is to buy a kit from a local homebrew store (LHBS) or one online. Some kits make you buy the yeast separately. If so, make sure that you purchase the right strain of yeast.

Hey, that's awesome!

First and foremost, educate yourself about nutrition. Seriously, nobody wants to further affirm the stereotype of the malnourished vegan, especially as an athlete or with somewhat athletic ambitions.

For nutritional information I would recommend the following resources:

Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet: A book with a lot of nutritional information.

Veganhealth: Website that has all the information about nutrients that need attention in a vegan diet and more. (Especially read up about B12 and take a supplement! I take the one I linked, because it's super cheap and vegan.)

Learn about complete proteins.

 

There are websites aimed at vegan athletes like these:

Tips from a Vegan Athlete plus meal recommendations

Meal Plan, information and a real life vegan bodybuilder

Some possible problems and their solution


 

Other stuff:
List of vegan athletes: Great as an inspiration and for that moment when people will try to tell you that it's impossible to build muscle on a vegan diet.

I love tofu, which has a lot of (complete) protein and I especially like this recipe.

Eat tofu, seitan and for the cheapest option rice with beans, lentils, chickpeas etc. Also plant milks, bananas, spinach, oatmeal, nut butters...


 

As a new vegan, you might find some of the things useful I posted yesterday. Skip the text at the beginning and especially take a look at the things about nutrition. I like to recommend the accidentally vegan foods as well.

Good luck! If you have any questions feel free to ask :)

Since I see this topic is posted twice, I'm posting my thoughts here as well:

You're missing How to Brew, and Extreme Brewing (while it has a few decent recipes and has lovely photos) isn't that great a book IMO. Designing Great Beers is good, but a bit outdated and IMO is a lot better after you've gotten a few batches done. Haven't read Jamil's yeast book, so I can't comment on it. Brew Like a Monk is a great volume, but doesn't have the general information you want when you're starting out.

I recommend:

How to Brew - The best single reference on brewing I've seen

Radical Brewing - Great for creative recipes and information on different ingredients

Also, just go and brew something. I brewed my first batch without reading any books and it turned out fine. Brewing will help make the texts make more sense, and the texts will then make the brewing make more sense.

It all depends on what you're looking for. If I had to go for one general book to start out with it'd probably be The Essential Bartender's Guide - great intro with some history, as well as discussion on what different types of drinks are, etc. Good Jack-of-all-trades book. As you get a little deeper, the standouts for me are Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Bitters, Imbibe!, and Punch. Vintage is a great resource to get an idea of what's been done (and lost) over the years, and is a great place to learn about what types of flavors work well together, plus there's a great blurb about the history of the drink with each recipe. Bitters is pretty self explanatory, but it has a nice intro to cocktail history, and s ton of great recipes, both new and old. Really interesting to see how slight tweaks in the bitters used (Fourth Regiment vs a Manhattan, for example) makes a huge difference in the ultimate product. Imbibe and Punch are simply brilliant history lessons, with a few recipes thrown in for good measure. Cheers!

I don't take any supplements, but I really, really, really should be taking b12. Like other's said, b12 is only really available from animal products.
I eat a LOT of spinach. Like, half a bag a day. I've not found it too hard to substitute meat in my meals. One pot meals like curries, stir fries, chilli, etc are really easy to veganise. You can swap the meat for chickpeas, other beans, lentils, soya mince, soya chunks etc, and still get a great tasting meal. The key is to use the right herbs and spices.
Tofu is delicious, but only if you cook it properly, otherwise it can be like...pannacota type texture. Make sure you press it!

I bought myself this book: Appetite for Reduction and it was a massive help.

Good luck! And don't give yourself too much grief if you slip up every so often. Give yourself a grace period to ease into it.

Just a couple of links to help you out.
The stonesoup has great (mostly) 5 ingredient recipes and can be easily made vegetarian.
I highly recommend How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Appetite for Reduction for simple, basic recipes.
Also, quesadillas are a great, quick meal on a stove. If you're looking for a good vegan recipe, these Smoky White Bean Quesadillas are awesome and can be made easily without a food processor.
And this Easy Breezy Cheezy Sauce (scroll down) is delicious, cheap and easy with pasta or steamed veggies. I had a kitchen this size when I studied abroad in France a couple years ago and it can be done. You just have to learn to be creative. :) Good luck!

They teach you the "easy way", and by easy way I mean using sour mix and taking shortcuts like that. There are plenty of good resources online and amazing cocktail books you can buy that have the original recipes for classic cocktails, as well as the proper way to do things behind the bar.

Learn from reputable sources and from good bartenders. If you're interested here's a couple good reads:

• [Jerry Thomas Bartender's Guide] (http://www.amazon.ca/Jerry-Thomas-Bartenders-Guide-Reprint/dp/1438241747/ref=pd_sim_b_13?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Dave Wondrich's Imbibe!] (http://www.amazon.ca/Imbibe-Professor-Featuringthe-Selection-Contributed/dp/0399532870)
  
  
• [Great book on Bitters] (http://www.amazon.ca/Bitters-Spirited-Cure-All-Cocktails-Formulas/dp/1580083595/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Harry Craddock's Savory Cocktail Book] (http://www.amazon.ca/Savoy-Cocktail-Book-Harry-Craddock/dp/1862057729/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Jeffrey Morgenthaler's Bar Book] (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Bar-Book-Elements-Technique/dp/145211384X/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Craft of the Cocktail] (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Craft-Cocktail-Everything-Bartender/dp/0609608754/ref=pd_sim_b_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails] (http://www.amazon.ca/Vintage-Spirits-Forgotten-Cocktails-Alamagoozlum/dp/1592535615/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Boozehound] (http://www.amazon.ca/Boozehound-Trail-Obscure-Overrated-Spirits/dp/1580082882/ref=pd_sim_b_9?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  
• [Liquid Intelligence] (http://www.amazon.ca/Liquid-Intelligence-Dave-Arnold/dp/0393089037/ref=pd_sim_b_17?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A8ZRNN8WZB4R6P9GVGN)
  
  As far as knowledge goes, you can learn a lot from reading and studying. For me personally, I love this kind of stuff and I'm constantly trying to learn as much as I can so I could hardly say it feels like actual studying. As for technical skills, learn from people better than you. No matter how good you get, there is always someone out there you can learn from. A lot of how I work I've picked up from watching great bartenders, everything from small stuff like the way I carry a bottle to the way I move behind the bar has come from watching, learning and implementing it into how I bartend.

Okay, I suck at responding, but here's some stuff I do!

I recently kicked my butt into gear and what helped me:

1. Cooking for myself and eating a primarily plant-based diet.
   
   I looove cooking. Making vegan food has helped me tremendously. My favorite vegan blog is Oh She Glows. She makes my favorite kind of vegan food which is the kind that doesn't have non-vegan substitutes (the food just happens to be vegan, no faux meat or fake cheese etc) and it has reasonable ingredients that I can find in the grocery store by my house. Everything I've made from that site was delicious. I own this book and it is fabulous.
   
   
2. Drink a shit ton of water
   
   I bought a water bottle like this and it makes it easier to drink than wide-mouth ones. I have an app on my phone, Water My Body, so I know how much I have left to drink that day.
   
   
3. Green Smoothies. All the time.
   
   Green smoothies are fucking delicious. I feel better every time I have one. The most basic is Almond Milk + Banana + Spinach but you can make all kinds. The 30 Day Green Smoothie Challenge starts July 1, so sign up for free! There are a lot of other great recipes at Green Monster Movement.
   
   
4. Getting enough sleep
   
   I am a horrible person with no sleep. Coffee helps, but only so much. I had to start changing my habits so I could sleep on time. I set an alarm to tell me to stop doing what I was doing and start getting ready for bed. I got f.lux so my bright screen wouldn't keep me up (they have it for Android and jailbroken iPhones too!). I started reading before bed and taking melatonin. You gotta do what you gotta do.
   
   
5. Meditation
   
   Meditation has helped tremendously. It isn't exercise, but it makes me feel better. Even if I do it for five mins a day.
   
   
6. Exercise
   
   I am going to be honest. I've been lazy lately with exercise. But my favorite places to get the job done (since I don't have a gym membership at the moment)
   
   Hang Tight - MarC will kick your ass. Her southern drawl will make it hard to hate her, though.
   
   Blogilates - My favorite YT exercise guru. I love her workout calendars, because it makes planning exercise super easy.
   
   Let me know if you need me to explain or elaborate on anything!

I've been experimenting with vegan cheeses for awhile and I've found that to really get a good cheese-like substance, you need to have some lactic acid and fermentation going on. Here is the recipe I use from Miyoko's Homemade Vegan Pantry. I love this book for so many homemade staples, it is my go to for many recipes, but Miyoko is like the queen of vegan cheese.

Yield: one pound

Ingredients:
1 cup cashews (raw)
1 Cup Rejuvelac (I use sauerkraut juice because I am often making krauts; but you can also find recipes online and make rejuvelac pretty quick and easy with quinoa--just search for a recipe online)
*1 1/2 tsp sea salt (def. sea salt and don't substitute coarse...I tried once haha)

• 1 tsp nutritional yeast
  1 tsp white, yellow, or chickpea miso
  1/2 tsp onion powder
  *1/2 cup plus 2 TBSP water
  1 TBSP agar powder
  2 TBSP tapioca starch
  
  Directions
  
  Place the cashews, rejuvelac, salt, nooch, miso, and onion powder in a blender and puree until smooth. Transfer to a clean container or jar, cover with a lid, and let sit at room temperature for 1-2 days, until the mixture has thickened, risen, and formed air pockets. It will also taste tangy. You'l notice the texture change to something somewhat gooey and thick. I usually use a spoon and test it.
  
  Put the 1/2 cup of water in a small saucepan with the agar and whisk it well so the agar is nicely distributed. Cover the pot with a lid and bring it to a simmer over low heat--it'll take a few minutes (3-4ish). It'll look like it solidified after the first 2 minutes or so but let it keep bubbling until the after is dissolved. When the agar is fully dissolved, pour the cultured cashew mixture you made a day or two ago into the pot. Whisk vigorously and while the mixture heats, dissolve the tapioca starch in the remaining two TBSP of water and add it to the pot. COntinue cooking until the mixture is stretchy and shiny. Cook it until you get just about the desired texture--don't overcook it as it will continue to solidify once you put it in the fridge. Pour the mixture into a glass container and refrigerate until set, at least 4-5 hours (I usually let it go overnight). Wrap the cheese in wax paper or cheese cloth. It will last in the fridge for 2-3 weeks (I often don't mind it at a month to be honest, but it kind of depends how fresh my kraut juice is).
  
  Enjoy!

Vegetarian options are usually the cheapest, but if you're hankering for some meat check out pork and chicken. You can get chicken leg quarters for under $1/lb, sometimes even preseasoned. If you're up for it, you could try buying a whole chicken and butchering it yourself. Pork chops are also really cheap where I live (central TX).

A pretty great book for basic cooking tips and recipes to practice them is the Cooks Illustrated Science of Good Cooking book. I consider myself a naturally good cook (I have a good understanding of flavor and can throw things together without recipes) but this book expanded that knowledge further. It also helped me understand the "why" behind some of the things I figured out. When you get back in the swing of things you should pick up a copy (or add it to your Christmas wish list!)

Edit: oh, also--check out bacon ends and pieces or irregular bacon. It's like half the price of normal bacon at least, and tastes the same. Use it for flavoring (and save the bacon grease to cook other things in), or just eat it straight. Baking is also your friend. You can make a ton of breads with simple pantry ingredients. The only thing you probably don't have is yeast, and you can get 3 packets for about 50 cents.

There are a lot of good books out there.

This is a really good one.

There are a lot of rules to make sure that you don't make yourself or others very ill, though. Make sure to know these rules and only use approved recipes that follow USDA and NCHFP guidelines. These are both great free resources to help you get started.

The biggest thing is that only high-acid foods (like fruit, pickles, and jams) can be safely canned in a water bath canner. Low-acid foods (like vegetables, broth, meat, beans, and soups) must be processed in a pressure canner (not a pressure cooker - they are different). Additionally, not all recipes are appropriate or safe for home canning.

That being said, it's a very rewarding hobby, and, done right and depending on your existing eating habits, can save you money on your monthly grocery bill.

Check out /r/canning for more. It's easy to get started, and you really don't need a lot of extra equipment to get started with water-bath canning. :)

EDIT: This book is also currently free on Amazon. I haven't read it yet, so I can't confirm the content. However, in combination with the other resources that I mentioned, this could be another good one.

Absolutely! We got ours from Amazon after a bunch of research. I can't recommend the one we got more. They are not cheap, but this is a tool that you will buy once and it will be inherited by your next generation.

Called All American pressure cooker. We got the 21 1/2 pint unit. Was just under $250.00 Again, they are not cheap, but this is a unit you will buy once.

I just opened a can of salmon that I had on the shelf for 4.5 years, and it was as good as the day I made it. Pressure cooking for canning and long term storage is the way to go, and something that our grandparents used to do. It is really neat to see it coming back into the public eye again.

I also highly recommend the Ball Complete Book of Home Canning. This is the bible on how to preserve all kinds of foods. It is my one and only go-to book for knowing how to get things done right.

Hope you get into it! I scour thrift stores and yard sales for canning jars you can never have enough glass. And the glass is reusable! I have jars that were handed down to me that are from the 70s, and still are great.

Once you get into canning and preserving you will never go back and wonder "why didn't I do this sooner?"

Best of luck, let me know how it goes. I love sharing the information and insight.

PS: I would not go under the 21 1/2 pint size pressure cooker. Pressure cooking takes time (the fish I do takes 90 minutes per batch at 10LB of pressure), so you want to do as many cans as you can at one time. If you can go bigger, do! You can never have too much space to can in, but it is easy to not have enough. But bang-for-buck I found the 21 is really the best overall size and deal going.

Since everyone else is touching on the other stuff, Appetite for Reduction is one of my favorite vegan cookbooks. Unfortunately it's not loaded with pictures (and the pictures it has are kind of... funky...), but the food is good.

The Post Punk Kitchen is also worth checking out. This black bean and quinoa soup is one of my favorites that I don't make often enough.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. My SO's mother has several conditions including fibro, rheumatoid arthritis, and some super fun neurological disorders that the doctors haven't been able to pinpoint. She doesn't have CP, but I know her arms and hands are very, very weak as well. She has good days and bad days. I've known her for about five years now, and her best days seem to pile up when she's drinking plenty of water and she gives herself a break physically. Her doctors have recommended trying yoga over the years, though I don't think she's ever followed through. Swimming seems to help get her going, and I know for a while she was saying she was using very light weights (1 and 3 lb) to do some basic arm and shoulder exercises.

You are totally welcome to PM me if you want to, I'd be happy to pass along anything from my SO about his mom's routines. They've been dealing with this for about 25 years now, so I know there's a boatload of information I don't have.

All the LHBS staff in my area swear by The Complete Joy of Homebrewing: Fourth Edition by Charlie Papazian.

I’d recommend it as a good read but with a few caveats. Some of the advice is a little outdated compared to methods that homebrewers are using these days, for instance, I haven’t seen a single mention of brew-in-a-bag in the advanced chapter of the book. The author also regularly plugs his other book intended for a more advanced audience. I don’t find this too egregious because the quality of the information he provides is sufficient for a beginner IMO, but if you really want to know everything the author knows/thinks about a certain topic, you essentially need two books.

There are also a few things I like about this book. First off, the history of beer and brewing is covered to an extent, and I found that to be a great read. Secondly, there are some pretty good charts and reference tables that you can use as a guide if/when you start thinking about developing your own recipes. Also, on the topic of recipes, the author provides a selection of 45 recipes to get you started (in my experience, your LHBS will also have some recipe sheets available most likely). Finally, the author also cracks dad jokes routinely, so you’ll get a chuckle every once in a while to break up the information overload.

Overall, my opinion on this book is that it’s a great entry to homebrewing, but it shouldn’t be the only resource you use.

When I became vegan, I frequented the frozen a bit too much.

I love to cook but found myself in completely new territory when I went vegan; home coooking was intimidating (thus making frozen an easy transition choice).

I got a freq books and learned some of the pantry and meal prep basics and I've been on a food journey since! Here are two of my favorites (easy, healthy, delish, and all meals covered):

• Isa Does It - Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week
  
• Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking
  
  
  Edit: awesome choice and welcome! 🙃😊

I think it depends on what kind of person you are. If you think you'll be happier doing it yourself, knowing how it was done and learning while you go then you should take the leap and give it a shot. It's really not that hard to mess up and the learning experience will be invaluable. I'm by no means a professional but I always do it myself and like it that way. I know exactly how it was taken care of, I've done it how I want to and I've been in control of the whole process. It can be daunting, no doubt but the best way to learn, like most things, is to jump in. And in the end, if you found that it's just not for you then, then at least you know what it involves and can move forward with that knowledge next time.

If your worried you don't know enough or don't know anyone to help you through it then there are now lots of places to pick up good information. If you have netflix, throw on Meateater, season 6, episode 6. Steve Renilla is a great example of how to do things right and I wish he was around when I started hunting. You could also pick up Renilla's book (link below) which is great for many reasons besides being well worth the cheap price.

One note, I know Renilla doesn't like vacuum sealers for big game but I found it works fine if you don't bang them around. His method is most likely more durable (and probably cheaper) but if you want to vacuum it, that will work too.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Hunting-Butchering-Cooking/dp/081299406X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1503768517&sr=8-2&keywords=hunting+and+butchering+wild+game

Yes!!!! Like the other post says - unless you're an athlete protein isn't really a concern, assuming you eat a fairly balanced, healthy diet. If you are an athlete I can't recommend this book enough. Actually, all of his books are great.

I went vegan over 4 years ago and have never felt better or been healthier in my life! Plus it's nice to know that I'm doing my part to help animals and the planet. Here's a list of some other books/resources that have helped me immensely along the way, for anyone else who might be considering the transition:


Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss

The Forks Over Knives Plan: How to Transition to the Life-Saving, Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure

Oh She Glows (Food Blog)

Keepin' It Kind (Food Blog)

It takes work and is difficult at first, like most things in life that are worthwhile, but I promise you that it is very, very rewarding once you understand that you have made the commitment to live in a healthy and kind way. :)

I am 100% all for the pursuit of knowledge behind the bar. I believe it's a great way to show initiative to get behind a craft bar, elevate your cocktail game, and just to learn something cool. Feel free to message me if you have questions on where to get started, what to do after you've read some of these books, what to expect when you're working your way up, etc. I'd be more than happy to lend some helpful advice!

Here are some of the books I'd recommend:



"The Bar Book" by Jeffrey Morgenthaler

I'd start here if you're interested in and are brand new to craft cocktails. Morgenthaler's Bar Book is threaded with great insight on what and why certain techniques are used behind the bar and is riddled with beautiful photography.

"Imbibe!" by Dave Wondrich

Hands down, the first book you should read if you want to get into the lore behind craft drinks. It opens up with the story of our great forefather, Jeffrey Thomas, and then continues to discuss the various eras of bartending and what they represent, as well as the drinks within those eras.

"Craft Cocktails at Home" by Kevin Liu
If Bar Book is your high school Geometry, Liu's, "Craftcocktails at Home" is your college Linear Algebra class. Provides you with hard science on what exactly going on in the glass if we shake VS stir or the happenings in an egg-based drink. Awesome read.


"How's Your Drink" by Eric Felten

Felten runs through history and entertains with stories behind some of the biggest drinks in cocktails. Did you know the Vesper (a vodka/gin Martini hybrid of sorts) was created in a Jame's Bond book and was named after the sultry villain? That President Theodore Roosevelt loved himself a good mint julep and even had his own mint bed to supply himself plenty when he wanted one? Fun read.

"Drunken Botanist" by Amy Stewart

Alcohol is derived from things. This is the best book that talks about those things. Agave, Juniper, Barley, Cinchona Bark. Understand the drink from a Botanist's point of view.


"Bitters" by Brad Thomas Parsons

Bitters are an incredible way to add both aromatics and flavor into a cocktail. This book will help you not only understand what they are and what they do, but will kickstart your own bitter brewing process if desired. Homemade Orange Bitters kick ass.

Barsmarts

Last but not least, Barsmarts is a great online tool to help rundown the basis of what we with cocktails. It goes through the various spirits, a brief look at cocktail history, and even has a "drink builder". Definitely worth the $30.

Here's a list of some good General Books on beer.

I'm fond of Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher. It does a great job of introducing the history of beer, the different styles, and other great info. I recommend it to everybody who wants to learn about beer. http://www.amazon.com/Tasting-Beer-Insiders-Worlds-Greatest/dp/1603420894

If you're interested in the history of American beer, Ambitious Brew is a great read. It's limited in scope to just the history of American beer, but that proves to be a rich subject. http://www.amazon.com/Ambitious-Brew-Story-American-Beer/dp/0156033593

Beer is Proof That God Loves Us, It's not the greatest book, but for free on Kindle, it's worth checking out. The guy knows his beer, he just is a big time Macro brewing apologist, and his constant praise for the big brewers, and his disdain for hops make it not my favorite book. There are some good anecdotes, and history of beer. http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Is-Proof-God-Loves/dp/0137065078

And I've heard good things about the Oxford Companion to Beer, though I haven't read it myself. http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Companion-Beer-Garrett-Oliver/dp/0195367138/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z

Here's what I'd buy if getting a home bar set up quickly with good stuff but not spending a ton.

Beefeater gin, Tito's vodka, Angostura 7yr rum or Barbancourt 8yr, (I don't know tequila, sorry), (don't get TN whiskey) Old Grand Dad Bourbon (get the 100 proof if possible), Rittenhouse Rye, Johnny Walker black scotch (JW black is very middle of the road, but I'm assuming you are not an accomplished scotch drinker), (I wouldn't bother with Irish Whiskey unless you particularly like it, and definitely don't bother with Canadian).

You should also get: Angostura bitters, Orange bitters, sweet & dry vermouths (Nolly Prat is fine). You may want to consider some liqueurs that are common in cocktails, such as Contreau (needed for Margaritas), Campari (Negronis), Absinthe (Sazeracs), etc. I always have a bottle of green Chartreuse, but it's not cheap. You will also want limes, lemons and oranges for garnishes and juice. You will need sugar, you can usually use cubes or you can make a simple syrup. Keep the syrup and the vermouths in the fridge. If you don't have one, you may want a basic bar tools set.

I would recommend getting The Bar Book to learn techniques and some good recipies as well. Start with classic cocktails, learn them well, and go on from there: the Old Fashioned, the Manhattan, the Martini, the Daiquiri, etc.

Good luck!

The Homemade Vegan Pantry by Miyoko Schinner: http://www.amazon.com/The-Homemade-Vegan-Pantry-Staples/dp/1607746778

Vegan, not vegetarian, but there are some amazing recipes for really basic staples in there, like condiments, cheese, milk, stocks and broths, meat substitutes, pasta, breads, crackers, and a few simple desserts. There are also some recipes that build on others, like certain soups and stews, or using leftovers and scraps of one recipe to make something new. It's a beautiful book and everything I've made from it so far has been pretty simple and has tasted wonderful. And it's under $15 on Amazon for the hardcover physical version! I highly recommend it!

I'm vegan and limiting caloric intake, but I can manage it with protein shakes! This awesome mix with 2 cups of unsweetened almond milk and a banana is about 300 calories and keeps me full for hours, while giving me nearly 1/2 of my daily protein!

My second favorite safety net is using Isa Chandra's Appetite for Reduction recipes (she's my favorite chef of all time!), especially chickpea and quinoa salad - it's so versatile and super high in protein.

If you cut out the dairy, you'll probably have an easier time reducing your overall calories, so look for vegan alternatives if necessary. If you have any questions, feel free to PM!

IMO you can make pretty decent beer with bottled spring water. Depending on the chemistry of that spring water, it'll make some beers better than others, but spring water generally has a mixture of minerals that tastes pretty good and this often translates to good-tasting beer.

I'd say that the differences you get from water treatment are subtle but effective in making the difference between a pretty good beer and a very good beer.

This book is generally regarded as the classic source for water treatment in homebrewing.

You do not need a pH reader if you use a calculation like that in Bru 'n' Water. I don't have a pH reader, but I definitely want one now.

I was vegetarian for almost 8 years. This was very upsetting to my carnivorous hunting family. They saw it as an act of rebellion and the "big" city I moved to changing me. The reality for me was: factory farmed meat disgusted me, both on the ethical and quality levels. I quit all meat and dedicated myself to an extremely balanced and healthy eating lifestyle.

If you are willing to cook for yourself and try new things, you should never have to worry about your food choices as a vegetarian. "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" by Mark Bittman is a fantastic and EXTREMELY thorough cookbook that walks you through the A-Z of vegetarian/vegan eating without being too complex or condescending. Especially if you locally source your tofo and produce, you can take care of yourself quite well without meat. Another great book (ignore the stupid hype-y praise on the outer covers, it does actually have a lot of good info) is "Eat to Live" by Joel Fuhrmen, it breaks down a lot of what is in basic foods and underscores the protein/fiber richness a lot of common veggies have.

With all that said, especially after my chickens started laying eggs, I realized I wanted meat in my diet. So, I turned to my family members that still hunt and get fresh/pristinely-sourced/humane meat and split the cost of a pig that lived a happy life from time to time.

I think what is vastly more important than what people end up eating is how they eat it and how mindful they are. Up until the 1950s, it was common to have backyard chickens for eggs and/or meat as well as shared access to a cow or backyard goats for milk. I am grateful to live in a city where this is becoming common again.

Best of luck with eating. :-)

Type 1 is definitely a shock. I got diagnosed when I was 19. No DKA fortunately, but my HbA1c was 9%. I don't know what caused it, can be a lot of things. I suppose I won't ever get to know that. I can be something as little as a virus that made your immune system go haywire. Even something that has been dormant for years can cause your immune system to fail when it stops being dormant.

​

I remember feeling lost in the beginning as well. Going to do groceries and just thinking; I can't eat anything.

Over time I came to realise actually a lot is possible, you just have to actively be a pancreas on the side. I've seen this tip from others already, but I'll repeat: get a CGM or FGM (continuous / flash glucose monitor). This helps you be a pancreas(: CGM is probably nicer, as it provides warnings when your BG is acting up, but already having an FGM provides you with more comfort, since you can check you BG just with your smartphone with NFC.

​

As to weed, definitely possible (I live in the Netherlands). Though I would wait until you've got a better grip on your BG. Alcohol is also possible, but again, I'd wait until you know better how your body responds. Sometimes you just feel like drinking a few beers. CGM/FGM helps you more easily keep an eye on your BG. And I'll admit, sometimes I have a few too many, have my BG shoot up to 20-25 mmol/L (360 - 450 mg/dl). Yeah that's not good long term, but if you have Type 1 you are still a human being. If you're at those levels once in a while, you'll be fine. The thing is to find what works for you and how strict you want to be for yourself.

​

As a snack; I like 90% chocolate with peanut butter. Check to make sure there's no added sugar in the PB though. I recommend not starting with 90%, but working your way up. Start with something in the 70 range, from there to 80, then 85 and then finally 90. Otherwise it might be a bit too much, haha.

​

About half a year ago, I read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-Achieving/dp/0316182699

Basic premise: small quantities of carbohydrates in, means smaller fluctuations in your blood sugar levels. Might be a bit too much in the beginning, but it might give you some structure if you are looking for it.

​

Anyway, I think I speak for everyone when I say, you're not alone. We've all had ups and downs, but kicking its ass is definitely doable.

Congratulations! My wife is 7 weeks pregnant (woohoo!) so we are in the same boat, and we have tried to do our homework, well beforehand, and making sure we're doing well right now too.

Here is a great book for vegan pregnancies and infants http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Life-Everything-Healthy-Plant-Based/dp/0738214930

But really, there isn't much to it, and you can learn from online free resources
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2011nl/jan/pregnancy.pdf

The healthiest way to eat for you and your baby is to eat a whole food plant based diet with a variety of whole grains, sweet potatoes, beans, vegetables, and fruits. It doesn't change when you are pregnant. But to many people, it's the one time they want to make absolutely sure they're doing it right :)

Keep in mind, a lot of women just eat whatever they can keep down during the first trimester. The body stores a ton of nutrients, and if you're feeling sick and can only eat a few things, just eat those things and trust that your body can provide other essentials like every other pregnant woman who can't stomach much. Eat well when you can, and if you are not able to consume everything every day, don't sweat it. My wife finds that she feels best when she eats small amounts throughout the day. Her morning sickness is kept down best that way.

Supplements: I do not suggest a mutli-vitamin. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it will have positives and negatives. Vitamins are concentrated isolated substances that in general overload receptors in the body and are not well-handled out of the context of real food. There are a few exceptions to take though: Take B12 (about 2500 mcg once per week) and iodine (150 mcg/day). And vitamin D (2000 IU daily) if you are not getting regular sun and live below 30 degrees latitude in the winter.

Despite what the whole world tells you, Folic acid is not a good substitute for actual folate in humans. Eat beans and leafy greens, which are great sources of actual folate. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/can-folic-acid-be-harmful/

Other than that, just eat a variety of whole foods, with lots of whole grains, beans, sweet potatoes and potatoes, and as much of vegetables and fruit as you can. That is the best thing you can do for your growing baby.

Also, keep your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio down by not consuming a lot of nuts, and If I were you I would totally avoid oils. Ground up flax is a great source of omega-3 if you aren't eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, and beans. (you can absolutely get all you need from those) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4TNhU3HR3o&index=1&list=PLchGiszWnMPjdtf47Bs4XIeE7gQptbX0q. If you still want to eat a lot of nuts and oil, you will need to bypass trying to get that ratio right (because no amount of flax will fix eating that much oil etc), take a DHA/EPA supplement http://nutritionfacts.org/video/algae-based-dha-vs-flax-2/

Yotam Ottolenghi came out with a followup on his Plenty cookbook a few months ago, its called Plenty More. Used to see vegetables as only a side dish but he really changed my mind and enabled me to see that they can really be the star of the table. There are many interesting combinations. And as a man who is an omnivore himself, he often makes his dishes hearty enough that many of us wont even miss the meat.

Another book which you should look into is Thug Kitchen. If you haven't seen their blog, you should really check it out.

You should also look into Deborah Madison's books. This one is practically the Bible among vegetarians due to how comprehensive it is. Ironically, she also is an omnivore.

Theres also the Moosewood Cookbook which is great for weeknight meals as many of the recipes are simple and quick.

If you like Indian, I would really recommend 660 Curries which has some of the best Indian food I've ever tasted. I often compare food I get in Indian restaurants to what I've cooked from this book. Yes, its not completely vegetarian but the vast majority of Indian cuisine is vegetarian so it should still be a valuable resource for you.

Speaking of Indian food, Madhur Jaffrey (who is known for her Indian cookbooks) has a great cookbook dedicated to vegetarian cooking.

Oh yeah, I used to be vegan...I am into it.

Taste: It is very bland by itself, but no one that I know eats it straight. It can be made into many tasty things. It is in a lot of faux meats. It is a lot like tofu in that it takes up the flavor of things around it. I think that Isa Chandra is like... the wheat gluten goddess. All of her recipes involving wheat gluten that I've made I've been a fan of. I'm a big fan of her "Chickpea Cutlet" recipe ([recipe here] (http://www.theppk.com/2010/11/doublebatch-chickpea-cutlets/)).

Check out [Veganomicon] (http://www.amazon.com/Veganomicon-The-Ultimate-Vegan-Cookbook/dp/156924264X) and [Isa Does It!] (http://www.amazon.com/Isa-Does-Amazingly-Delicious-Recipes/dp/0316221902/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427495938&sr=1-1&keywords=isa+does+it). Both of those books have winning recipes that use wheat gluten as an ingredient.

Expense: Varies wildly. If you find it at a hippie woo-woo place in an individually sealed package (e.g., Bob's Red Mill), the markup can be insane. On the other hand, you can get it cheaply per pound if you can find it in a bulk bin at a place like Whole Foods.

You can get it at an extra "discount" if you find it in a bulk bin but label it as some kind of flour. ;)

My Experience: I made some dang tasty recipes with the stuff, but eventually, I stopped eating it because I personally find that I don't tolerate it as well (it just made me gassy). But more importantly, the recipes I like it best in have a higher protein to carb ratio than I'd prefer during a cut...and when I'm bulking, I'm too busy filling my face with all the things so I usually forget about wheat gluten.

Hope this helps!

Your post inspired me to put up this awesome five ingredient tofu recipe over on r/veganrecipes. I'm calling it LPT: Life Pro Tofu as it's the best tofu recipe I've ever seen. The recipe comes from Miyoko Schinner's book and combines tofu with flax seed gel. The results are amazing; for me, truly mind-blowing. Thinking back, it's amazing how far I've come with good tools and recipes. Here's hoping you might gain some inspiration!

I would always recommend people start with 'The Compleat Meadmaker, by Ken Schramm'. This has been the meadmaking bible for a very long time. You can find supplementary information about staggered nutrient additions, pH buffering compounds, new sanitizers, etc online in various articles and forum sites. Of course, understanding your ingredients can also be very good for any brewer, and water is a huge ingredient. So besides the other element series book 'Yeast' by Christ White and Jamil Zainasheff I highly recommend 'Water' by John Palmer and Colin Kaminski. For those of us making mead in Ferndale, our water is a very key ingredient which comes to us from an underground aquifer treated by the city of Ferndale, and is of very high quality (even compared with the high quality water from the City of Detroit). Understanding honey is a huge area of study. There are many classic textbooks on honey and honey-hunting by Eva Crane that are considered primary sources (but these can be prohibitively expensive for most mazers, and honestly, Ken's book does an awesome job of summarizing her contributions, as well as other historical information about meadmaking, honey, etc). I feel a basic understanding of beekeeping can be highly instructive for meadmakers, and so I recommend that you get your hands on some beginner beekeeping books, e.g. 'Beesentials' by L.J. Connor and Robert Muir and/or the 'Beekeeper's Handbook'. A solid background in wine or beer-making doesn't hurt, either, and there are multitudes of books I can recommend to you on the subject of beer specifically (this is my homebrewing background). My two absolute must-haves for beer brewing are 'Designing Great Beers' by Ray Daniels and 'Brewing Classic Styles' by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff. Learning to brew beer can help you if you decide you want to try your hand at braggots.

Rice milk is generally low in fat (and calories), but it's a little too sweet for me. Your mileage may vary. I like almond and cashew milk, but that may be a little too high in fat for you.


Daiya is a soy-free cheese alternative, but I haven't tried it. I've heard good things about it, though, and it's supposed to melt like "real" cheese.


As for yogurt, I've only had soy and coconut, so not a lot of recommendations there. So Delicious is a good brand.


Edited to add: Appetite for Reduction has some good low-fat vegan recipes that you could easily incorporate meat into if you'd like.

I would love this as well because I'm geeky like that. Books that I found interesting that you might as well:

-The Comic Book Story of Beer: A fun way to learn more about the history of beer as beverage. It goes into I'd say a medium amount of detail, enough that if you wanted to go deeper you'd have the right search terms. Plus it's a comic book...bonus! Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Comic-Book-Story-Beer-Revolution/dp/1607746352

-National Geographic Atlas of Beer: Another medium level detail book about beer all over the world for a more global perspective plus it's National Geographic so the photography is gorgeous. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Atlas-Beer-Globe-Trotting/dp/1426218338/

-Radical Brewing: Even if you don't homebrew I feel like this book is worth picking up, especially early on in your beer journey because it gives you an idea of what wide range of styles and ingredients can make up a "Beer" (with a capital B). Also, it's a good introduction to Randy Mosher who is a Beer Geek (with a capital B and a capital G). Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Brewing-Recipes-World-Altering-Meditations/dp/0937381837

If anyone has any other books along the same lines they enjoy, feel free to share them.

Cheers!

I recently made some really fabulous Chili-Lime Rubbed Tofu (from Appetite for Reduction ) the other day. Here's the basic recipe for it. It calls for 1tsp of oil, which is all you'd need for the recipe. If you wanted to omit it, you probably could do so without too much trouble.

I served this with sauteed spinach (in garlic and a little lemon juice + water for sautee-- just a smidge), corn kernels, and slices of bell pepper all over some warm brown rice. You could also make it over quinoa and it would be delicious! The marinade in the tofu makes a bit extra after cooking, so you can probably pour it over the bowl and have it be a bit extra flavor. Or, you could top it off with Salsa Fresca (which should naturally have none of the things you're looking to avoid).

Now, that does make for a 1-bowl-per-person meal. I love it, but if you're looking to do something fancier, you certainly can.

These Raspberry Truffle Brownies have no fat. They also can be made using sucanat or another sweetener that isn't sugar. I'm familiar with an eating plan similar to your mom's, and generally the issue is added sugar (with the recognition that special events are special, and you can have an occasional treat).

If she can't have any added sugar, you may want to make some quick banana soft serve, since most "dessert" recipes-- even vegan ones, have generally some oil or some added sugar (maple syrup, agave, etc.). So if you can't do any sweeteners or any added oil, peel and freeze a few bananas. When you're ready to have your dessert, break them into pieces and toss them into the food processor with a bit of non-dairy milk, and a touch of vanilla extract. If you're feeling fancy, you might add peanut butter or cocoa powder. Whiz it together til you get a decent consistency. You may need to scrape the sides down a few times.

Good luck, and enjoy!

I'd take no more than half a normal glass (1dl) of vinegary stuff and a peel a half-centimeter thick scoby for the new batch. Save the rest, liquid and scobies as well! You can use it in case of mold on your production scobies, can make kombucha candy from extra scobies, use the liquid as vinegar for salads and if there's no sugar left, it makes a great cleaning fluid.

edit: candy recipe: http://epistlepublishingblog.mymiddleearth.com/2013/03/23/kombucha-ginger-candy/
I originally found the idea in "The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World" by Sandor Ellix Katz , here's an excerpt:

"Nata is a candy made in the Philippines from the thick layer of cellulose that develops on the surface during vinegar fermentation of coconut water (nata de coco) or a pineapple juice infusion (nata de pina). I’ve used the nata method with a kombucha mother, and the result was a sweet, squishy candy, barely sour, with a hint of tea flavor, which almost everyone who tried it, kids included, liked. The process is extremely simple. A jun mother or mother-of-vinegar could be used with exactly the same process.


Take a kombucha mother, at least ½ inch/1 cm thick, rinse it, and cut it with a sharp knife into small bite-size pieces. Soak the kombucha pieces in cold water for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse, and soak again. Then transfer the kombucha pieces to a pot, cover with water, and boil for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse, and boil again for 10 more minutes. The reason for the repeated soaking and boiling is to remove as much acidity as possible from the kombucha mother. You may find that you prefer it more acidic, with fewer rinses and boilings. My friend Billy tried it after tasting mine and omitted the rinsing and boiling altogether. He preferred the flavor with the acidity intact. It reminded him of apple pie. “It’s my new favorite way to enjoy the kombucha!” he announced. “It’s better than drinking it.”






The nata method of candying the kombucha pieces is to cover them with sugar, roughly as much sugar as kombucha cubes. Then heat this mixture and boil the kombucha pieces in the syrup that forms, for about 15 minutes, then remove from the heat, and allow to slowly cool. After cooling, drain off any remaining syrup, crisp up in the oven for a few minutes or air-dry, and enjoy kombucha candy.


Billy loved it so much he invented his own method, without de-acidifying the kombucha and without cooking it, except at the end to dry it out. (For a live-culture kombucha candy you could air-dry, or use a dehydrator instead.) In a bowl, he alternated layers of sugar and still-acidified kombucha, then poured a cooled sugar syrup (also with butter and vanilla) over them and left it marinating overnight. In the morning he dried them, along with the extra sugar syrup, in a low oven. Finally, he sprinkled the crystallized sugar syrup on top “for a caramel flavor.”"

(the book: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X )

I saw a recommendation for Alton brown’s Good Eats, which I second.

I highly recommend “The Science of Good Cooking” from America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s illustrated. It has guides to kitchen equipment, measuring, and other important skills. The book goes through 50 cooking concepts that are easy to learn and you can apply to many other recipes or improvisations. Each concept section has an explanation on the science behind it, and has recipes incorporating that concept. Each recipe has fantastic explanations for why certain techniques or ingredients are used. It has certainly been the most interesting and helpful cookbook I have used.

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Good-Cooking-Illustrated-Cookbooks/dp/1933615982

Edit: I forgot to mention that Gordon Ramsey has a great series of YouTube videos on basic kitchen skills. Good recipes and helpful techniques to learn.

Little bit of a different issue, but I would also suggest having a homebrew session with the staff before you open one day. Nothing will teach you about the process of making beer better than doing it yourself, and it really isn't hard. If you still want to accompany that lesson with literature, two great books on brewing are How to Brew by John Palmer (aka the home brewer's bible, full text is also available for free online) and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian

As far as general history and beer tasting knowledge, I'll back up those who have recommended Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher, and pretty much anything written by Michael Jackson. Many of Jackson's books are separated by regions, so it would be helpful to find which one applies to the area your pub/the beers your serve are from

You said that you do not want a paid bartending gig, and that's good, because very few places will hire a person from bartending school, ANY bartending school. Those schools are a rip off.

But, you said that you just wanted to learn some bartending skills. You're in luck because that's easy . Pick up some good books on bartending and read them, make drinks, and share those drinks with your friends.

Jeffrey Morganthaler just put out a really good book on the craft of bartending, and I highly recommend it ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/145211384X?pc_redir=1405569504&robot_redir=1). Read this first.

Look at how much money and time I just saved you! Plus, you'll learn a lot more useful information.

Good luck!

Wow.

OK, so I'm not used to such reasonable and cogent responses on reddit. Especially since I was being all ass-holey. You'll just have to give me a moment or two.

...

OK, yes I read what you posted. To be honest, it struck me as being a bit defensive (not by you, but by those who have a chip on their shoulder concerning foie gras). I'll be even more honest... I don't like pate, so even if there was a "humane/free-range" variety of foie gras (and in fact, there is ), I still wouldn't eat it. I just listed it because, along with sow-stalls and battery farms, it's considered a poster-child example of the "evils" of modern industrial farming.

I'm an omnivore. I eat meat. I actually often consider going vegetarian for both health reasons (our guts do not handle the huge amount of meat with which we stuff ourselves) and for ethical reasons (I don't really like the idea of killing other creatures). But then I smell the wonderful aroma of a lamb roast, or friend bacon and my resolve crumbles. Therefore, when I do decide to eat meat, I make a personal decision to only eat meat and meat products that I know come from producers that minimize (or at least reduce) the suffering of the animals concerned. I'm sorry, but in all that I have read and heard, foie gras is a product that is produced cruelly. I will concede there is an interesting article here on this argument.

These are the same reasons I don't eat veal (animals forced fed milk; their locomotion reduced; quite often the flesh is dyed etc). It just doesn't appeal to me.

When I eat chicken, I choose free-range. The same for eggs and, most definitely, the same for pork. It's a personal decision and it's not something I crusade about or indeed try to convince other of. As such, I think I'm perfectly entitled to hold such views.

I read The Ethics Of What We Eat and I would recommend it as a reasoned and reasonable approach to this problem. I have heard good things about The Omnivores Dilemma, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Thank you for restoring my faith in reddit a bit.

I got started using this book Complete Joy Of Homebrewing I felt this book was super friendly as introductory material.

There is also this book How To Brew I think most people will tell you John Palmer's book is better but honestly both will contain all the information you need to get started. I am sure someone more resourceful than me will be able to direct you to some great (and free) internet resources to take a look at as well.

Edit: A quick Google search yielded This Have fun and welcome!

If you are interested in that stuff you should check out the book The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz if you haven't. It's got a lot of good info in it.

I too love what people like Beyond Meat are doing, and I think it's definitely a critical part of food in the future. I'm working on my masters and just doing consulting gigs in the mean time, but I would love to work for a company doing stuff like that.

In terms of software in the food space I think that there is going to be a lot of application in food processing automation. It's something that is a difficult problem to solve, especially when taking manual dexterity of robotics into account, plus cost. Software wise I think it would be really cool to apply image recognition to every day items that need to be processed (take a potato for example) and be able to properly assess size and shape and create instructions for cutting (diced, sliced etc.) for an automated system. Basically just a more human eye for an automated kitchen worker.

In that kind of respect I think we are much further ahead software wise than we are hardware wise, but I feel like that is going to change rapidly over the next 5-10 years as more quick service restaurants push towards cutting costs, of which labor is almost always the highest.

Find an experienced shooter to take you to the range... Practice some marksmanship fundamentals with them on a small round (.22lr would be ideal) and then transfer that to the .308. Stepping up through a couple intermediate calibers while practicing (like .223 which lots of shooters will have for plinking or .243) would help.

The .308, as others have said, is NOT a 'small' gun. But, I think you're absolutely right that it is a "One Gun to Do Them All" chambering. You can take any huntable game with a proper .308 load.

Putting aside the gun whargarbl for a minute, here's some stuff on your more foundational question:

1. You should find and enroll in a hunter safety class first. Period. Hands down. You _need_ the training, really, and it's a great way to meet new hunters to go into the woods with or more experienced hunters who will be willing to be mentoring resources for you.
   
2. I'd point you to Steve Rinella's _Complete Guides_ if you're looking for a generalist resource to get started. There's two books focused on different classes of game (small/large), and a lot of helpful information for the hunter entering the sport. I am/was that guy. I quickly found myself wanting to move on to other, more in-depth resources on the specific things I was interested in, but these are no-brainers for 'first books'.
   
3. Rinella's podcasts and Netflix show (MeatEater) is excellent, too.
   
4. Get out in the field NOW. Start going to the woods or marshes (I'm a waterfowler) or fields and just walk. Get your body in shape for walking/hiking long distances. Start walking around and REALLY looking at what's around you. Begin training your eye to just 'see stuff'. You might not know what you're seeing, but snap a pic of it and google stuff when you're back home. Learning to navigate and observe in the field is the most important thing a hunter can do, based on my own experience. So, get out there now. If you can find someone more seasoned to go with you, all the better.
   
   ​
   
   Hope that helps. I'm 4 years into learning myself. Happy to chat more!

Your options vary from 40 - 95% ABV (vodka, Everclear/NGS and other spirits as well). Your choice will depend on several factors:

• Availability. Some only have access to a max 75.5% (151 proof) spirits.
  
• What you're extracting. Generally, the higher the ABV, the faster and more complete the extraction. Certain components, like black tea or coffee, may overextract and be too tannic for your liking @ higher ABVs.
  
• Do you want to macerate for one week or six? Timeliness sometimes matters. Also, certain components will give up some aromatics completely in a longer infusion, while leaving unwanted characteristics behind.
  
• Desired final ABV, if this matters to you.
  
  I generally tincture with a base of 80% 151 proof spirit and 20% lower proof spirit(s). This yields me a base @ 60 - 68%. Given a base in this range, when tincturing is complete, I can usually expect a batch of bitters around 50% ABV. Just where I like 'em. I tend to extract components individually and blend a final bitters. For fresher components (read: with higher water content), like fresh citrus peels and herbs, lean closer to a 68% base. For dried components, like spices, lean closer to a 60% base. With a 60-68% base range, I can normally control the extraction process entirely with time. I can overextract if I want to, or be more controlling with less time.
  
  I hope this makes sense.
  
  I highly recommend Mark Bitterman's Bitterman's Field Guide to Bitters & Amari. At <$9 for the epub version, it may be the best resource currently available. I also recommend Brad Thomas Parson's Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas.
  
  ~Good luck!

I recently got Tartine #3 when it was posted here for 5$ a few weeks ago. In it there is a recipe for Oat Porridge bread, this website has the recipe basically. I also have Sandor Katz' The Art of Fermentation, and it in it is a technique for making a fermented oatmeal, where you basically just do a 2:1 ratio (or more if you like a thinner porridge) of rolled oats to water and let it sit out over night or longer. Its good, you get a tangy taste to the oats and I find it to get a really creamy texture. So what I did was combine the two. I took the suggested amount of oats and water for the porridge bread in Tartine, then just left it out for a week, stirring once a day. By the time I did the bread it smelled reallllly great, very yeasty and sour. I blackslopped some of it into the initial dough of the bread, then cooked and incorporated it as per instructions.


Came out well, but I used a little bit more water than suggested in the porridge and so I probably should have added a bit more flour into the dough. As I said, it stuck to the banneton and deflated a lot, so it ended up more of a disk than a boule, but even so, I got a good bit of oven spring. Taste wise, the bread was very good. Well soured, and very hearty with all the oats in it. As they mention in the recipe, the crumb is super tender, and this bread holds up very well, I was eating it 5 days later and it still felt just as fresh as when I first made it, barring a bit if dryness where the cut was. Really an excellent loaf, just kind of hard to work with and very easy to over hydrate if you aren't careful.

In my opinion I think that as a beginner, looking online for recipes can be so overwhelming and it's hard to find what's good and what's garbage without an established sense of taste/cooking. Sure, you can look at the comments, but it takes a lot of time and without knowing how to cook it's hard to know what you're even looking for.

I would highly recommend trying out a beginner's cookbook (Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything: The Basics or How to Cook Everything Vegetarian are great ones). Look through it, read up on techniques/skills, and pick something you think you'll like and cook it.

Also, you can probably check out cookbooks from your library if you want to try them out before investing money on them.

Remember that we all started somewhere. Nobody is born a good cook, it's a learned skill that you have to practice. Same with taste - if you're used to tasting the same types of foods, you're going to have to adjust to trying new foods. I didn't eat any vegetables at all growing up and now I love them! I just realized you need to put salt and cheese on them, lol. But really I also just needed to get used to the taste, which took some time.

Absolutely. I'm not sure what your training/goals are like, but you can go all the way up to 1xLBM if you're hitting weights hard. Anything over that and it's diminishing returns. This will also help you burn more calories as the higher your LBM is the more calories you burn just being alive.

Phinney and Volek have an excellent book called low carb performance, another great read is by Phil Campbell called synergy fitness. Both go over low carb diet combined with resistance training. I find working out fasted is the best for me, Campbell talks a lot about HGH production and how it is spiked by fasted workouts. r/ketogains is also a great source of info.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Low-Carbohydrate-Performance/dp/0983490716/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493138282&sr=8-1&keywords=low+carb+performance

https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Go-Synergy-Fitness/dp/0971663386/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1493138304&sr=8-5&keywords=synergy+fitness

Awesome! Welcome to the greatest hobby there is. If you are really interested in creating your own recipes, Designing Great Beers and Radical Brewing are two of my favorite resources. The former is very technical and contains detailed information on ingredients and how the play with other ingredients to affect the flavor of your beer. The latter is a great, well-rounded brewing book that focuses a lot on brewing with non-conventional ingredients, and how to use them in your recipes.

Radical suggestion: no bad snack foods. They don't sate you and are typically more expensive per-pound than something home-cooked. Replace with things like roasted potatoes, hummus and veggies, fruit, or a portion of a real meal. Plus, you'll get to work on your cooking! Opening a bag or a box does nothing for cooking skills.

Use meat as a condiment instead of a foundation of a meal, like an exception instead of a norm. Use rice and beans to bulk up the rest. Stir fry is a great way to add veggies, rice, and beans while reducing/removing meat. Try going vegetarian once a week; you'll be surprised with what solutions you come up with! Then up the frequency.

I typically have meat once a day, if at all. Plain oatmeal for breakfast. Rice, beans, veg, onion, garlic, and whatever meat (if any) I prepped for lunch this week. Eggs, potatoes, fish, fruit, veg, protein shakes, spaghetti, and peanut butter for the evening.

Full disclosure: I keep my grocery budget under $110 per month for myself shopping almost exclusively at Aldi and Giant Eagle for anything else (fresh ginger, tofu, frozen veggies typically). This does not include alcohol ($60 budgeted per month for bars, state stores, and wine shows; not always social) and restaurants ($50 budgeted per month, once or twice a week; always social).

How is your comfort in the kitchen? $5000 saved * 2 (current expenses) / 12 months = ~$833 per month. I hope you're feeding a family. In that case, implementing vegetarianism will be slower and harder but not impossible.

Links to explore:

• How to Cook Everything: I consult this each week and am trying to cook my way through it via my own odds and ends cross-referenced with the comprehensive index. Many, many recipes use the same ingredients and I typically buy one or two missing ingredients each week to complete the meal. Last week was eggplant curry with potatoes. There is also a vegetarian version that I plan to purchase when I'm done, but I can't speak to its quality.
  
• Budget Bytes: what I used before "How to Cook Everything". Similar deal: Beth is great about staples and taste, giving a price breakdown on each meal.
  
• /r/MealPrepSunday: I cook all lunches and portion them out so I don't have to worry about going out to lunch when I forget to prepare a meal.
  
• /r/slowcooking: I used a rice cooker with a slow-cooking function at the start of my frugal journey. I only use it to prepare rice now because I love using the range to cook. :)
  
• Frugalwoods' Rice, Bean, Mushroom, and Chili Lunch: I use Sriracha with red pepper flakes and yellow onion instead. Surprisingly tasty for how bland it seems.
  
• ERE Wiki Cookbook. Never used, but seems solid in practice.

Depends on the food item and your infrastructure.

Drying is good for a lot of fruits and for herbs and such.

Cold storage. We have multiple freezers. A stand up 23 cu ft, a 19 cu ft chest plus the regular fridge freezer and the freezer on the back/beer fridge in basement. We have been buying half pigs and half or 1/4 cows for the freezers and we freeze a lot of vegetables. Sweet corn does really well frozen, so do a lot of the squashes and green beans.

Canning. Canning does quite a lot of foods. There are two types, pressure canning and water bath canning. The water bath canning is for high acid, high sugar, low risk foods like jellies and most tomato sauces if prepared correctly. Pickling is also usually water bath. All the low acid, higher risk stuff goes in a pressure canning systems.


Root cellar storage. Cool/cold room storage. If you have access to the right conditions, this is a great way to store lots of stuff like potatoes, carrots, beets, etc.

Some sources to get you started:
The starter book that is indispensable for canners: Ball blue book

The more advanced Ball full book
You can find either one at a book store, online, or at most used book stores.

USDA site has a lot of info. You want tried and tested recipes and methods. Botulism sucks. https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html


Purdue University has a really good set of links and add ons to the USDA guides as well. https://www.extension.purdue.edu/usdacanning/

You can also search the (food item, canning, extension) and there is probably a state agricultural extension that has some guide for it.

NDSU has a good guide for freezing stuff. It will get you started. Each food item will have specifics to getting a good freeze. Some things need blanched and some don't. Some need to be pre-frozen spread out on cookie sheets then dumped in a bag and some don't, etc.


Interesting root cellar idea that can be done fairly cheap. https://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/root-cellaring/a-precast-septic-tank-root-cellar-zbcz1503

Root cellar list of what to store and what conditions. https://extension2.missouri.edu/mp562

Best way to get started: get a big ass boiler and a couple of dozens of pint mason jars and a couple of dozens of 1/2 pint mason jars. Start with a couple of batches of different pickles/pickled vegetables. Make a batch or two of jams and jellies. If you get a couple dozen wide mouth jars you can practice a little freezing as well. The idea is to build up your equipment.

For a full canning rig you need all kinds of stuff and if you really get into it usually large stuff. Like the ginormous pressure cooker that holds a goodly number of quarts or two full courses of pint jars in it. something like this guy. But you can start with whatever you have available. If you do the water bath stuff and start to get into it and want to get into pressure canning you should get a larger pressure canner that will do at least 6 quarts at a time. We have a medium one that we can do a limited batch of stuff in, or one round of jars and then a huge one like I linked to. Just slowly build up your equipment as you can and get the best quality you can when you buy stuff. If you try and do the I will buy the cheap one, and see if I like it, it costs you more. Usually the cheap one is crappy and wont do a good job. And you will either decide it is not worth the trouble or will eventually realize the quality one is worth the money and buy it anyway.

Get a good set of tools. You can can without them, but shouldn't. Decent set with the basic pieces.

I also find that a pair of the latex coated gloves are helpful. We have one person pull jars form the hiow water bath (keeping them sterile) and the second person will put the funnel in and spoon the food into the jar. You have to wipe the top of the jar and place a heated lid on it and screw the top onto the jar. The jar will be close to 200F. I will be the jar person and wear the heavy latex coated glove on my left hand to hold the jar stable and to screw the lid on so I don't get burned. Never have seen anyone give the tip before, but it works really well and I have less burnt fingers and fewer spills or dropped jars that way. Something like this.

You want this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Science-Carbohydrate-Performance/dp/0983490716

The authors do tests with cyclists and runners.

Now the Pro's are doing a high carb diet, so you can only store about 2000 calories from glucose, but even a very fit person has 40,000 calories of fat on them. which one sounds like a better energy source?(referenced from above book) The Pros need to "re-fuel" (keep food with them)because they burned their glucose and are hitting the wall.

A keto athlete never hits the wall and runs off their own fat.

Now that being said, I race mountain bikes and I have tried taking coconut oil before a ride and it doesn't help. I do notice a better boost when taking energy gel with less sugars (like GU). Lately I have been trying not to eat atleast 6 hours before a ride and I have been doing better. I guess it might be I'm accessing my stored fat better, but thats just a guess bro science, but its working for me.

First I will say brewing extract isn't necessarily "cheating". Brewing with extract is the same thing as baking a cake with one of those mixes from the supermarket - at the end of the day you still have cake, you just didn't have to measure out all the ingredients.

That said, if you want to jump into all-grain first that's fine but I think you might have read way too much into it! It's not nearly as difficult as it sounds like you might have convinced yourself. You don't need to worry about water chemistry, washing yeast, or quantum physics to brew beer. Your best bet to start would be the online version of How To Brew. It is the 1st edition of the popular How To Brew. I would recommend picking up the book, however, since the print edition is the 3rd edition, and there have been some updates. You can also check out The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

For your first batch you can do something simple, you don't need to worry about water chemistry or getting crazy with your yeast. If you have any more specific questions, there is a daily Q&A on this sub as well.

YTA

Jesus I don’t even know where to begin with this. I’m gonna break it down the way I would for my toddlers.

I understand that you feel badly for being mean to Sarah, but do you think the problem will be solved by being mean to Luke and Scott? How would you feel if they sat you down and said “listen dad. We’ve been giving mom a really hard time lately so we’ve decided that for Mother’s Day this year we’re going to send her on an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii for the weekend. You’re gonna go too, but you have to pay your own way. Also, we’re giving you a new set of grill tongs for Father’s Day. Fair is fair!” You’d probably feel like they don’t care about you as much right?

The way to solve this problem is not by throwing money at your daughter and shoving your other kids’ faces in it. You could have avoided this ENTIRELY by not telling them IN FRONT OF SARAH exactly what you were giving her as a birthday gift. Also, once weekly veggie burger night is like the bare minimum you can be doing for your daughter food wise. Buy this book and do better.

I made a vegan gift basket for a friend and her boyfriend this last Christmas and it contained:

• The Homemade Vegan Pantry cookbook Essential.
  
  
• Dickinson’s Purely Fruit spread The blackberry one is my favorite.
  
  
• Bee Free Honee So good in a mug of hot green tea.
  
  
• Carrington Farms coconut oil Good for cooking, body care, or a silky and sexy massage!
  
  
• Some pretzels, fresh sourdough bread, and a banana loaf made with this recipe.
  
  
• Also some mason jars filled with chia seeds, hemp seeds, and flax meal.
  
  
• A few cute little strawberry shaped reusable bags.
  
  

I agree that we probably are coming from different sets of values, but I believe there is enough of an overlap for us to make headway. But there's only so much I can try to communicate through typed comments on reddit, so this will be my last post.

> but this is still based on a meat-inclusive diet so my point still stands that meat eating has been historically important to humanity.

The fact that it was historically important in no way justifies the continued eating of meat.

If we're talking about people in third world environments, of course I'm not going to deny them a potential food source. If this is about starvation, then it's about food. What you've been reading in my comments has more to do with the ethics of eating meat when there's so much more available to you (i.e. in the first world such as the US).

I think we're on the same page on managed commons. I just wish that the standards they're forced to follow were based on what's ecologically feasible than what the companies controlling food production/catching/distribution think makes a large enough profit. (I'm a capitalist as long as business practices are transparent.) (On another note, you might be interested in Dan Barber's TED talk for an idea on sustainable fishing practices. It's the sort of thing I think we're going to have to move towards.)

Clearly, our views on the nature of both human and animal rights are different. If you'd like to get a better look into the reasoning behind my thinking, these two books really made me change the way I view how humans produce and consume food. Give them a read if you're interested. They'll make much more articulate arguments than I'm capable of making.

Also, if you get a chance, I highly recommend this book if you're interested in global poverty. It blew my mind.

I am pretty sure that esdee is just a jackass who thinks s/he knows more than s/he does, but I suspect the point about nutritionists may be that it is a field of science that is still in its infancy.

I came to stop listening to nutritional science thanks to Michael Pollan's books. In Defense of Food is a great book that calls out nutritional science as little more than a ploy to move "value-added foods." It goes into why the science in this case is more a shot in the dark at keeping healthy than is asking your grandmother what to eat. (tl;dr version: Nutriotional science is too reductionist and focuses too much on specific molecules in food rather than heeding conventional wisdom of "if we survived on it for two million years, we should eat it." Pollan sums it up himself in only seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Oh, and avoid processed foods.) Great book. If you end up liking it, read Omnivore's Dilemma by Pollan to enter the world of food politics.

I saw Pizza Dough in B&N and it looks interesting. Shows how to make different pizzas from a few different dough recipes. Lots of pictures of pizza. Plays directly toward his desire for pizza. Also, even mediocre homemade pizza with Prego branded sauce is better than Pizza Hut, let alone Papa John's.

I find Rachel Ray terribly boring, but her Week in a Day book has a enormous quantity of recipes that can be pushed and modified in different directions and it's filled with a ton of pictures. I think her books are best for getting ideas on other recipes. I wouldn't make too many of her recipes straight, because she tends to add a ton of calories to her meals and I just couldn't eat that much.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz has a bunch of Vegan books. She has an irreverent style I like that doesn't resort to the multitudes of F-bombs that Thug Kitchen has to throw out there. It's vegan, so you'll have to be OK with that, but otherwise, she has plenty of good looking recipes. Her latest, Isa Does It looks like a good place to start.

That’s awesome. Glad you have a good solution, sounds like a rad store! Sort of related- If you haven’t ever made your own yogurt, I strongly recommend it, it blows the store bought stuff away. I usually use Westsoy Original soy milk, normally I like unsweetened but the fermentation cultures like the sugar so I get the original. One of these days very soon, I will try the feta recipe from that book...

You may eventually want to check out Miyoko’s “Homemade Vegan Pantry” cookbook. it came out pretty recently and the recipes seem a little updated, not as many in depth recipes on specific types of cheese but the recipes I’ve used out of there have been stellar and I find that I reach for it more often than the Artisan Cheese book. It really depends on what you’re into making. She includes the recipe for her cultured butter and the ice cream recipe is also perfect.

Hello, I used to be a type 2 and use Metformin. While I was on it I was at 2000 mg a day, and it didn't really seem to work to well for me. It made me relieve my bowels way more often than I'd like to admit, and was really giving me hell. I told my endo that I refused to use it anymore, and he then prescribed me something called Glipizide which worked wonders in comparison.
Now I'm not saying this is what you should do, but I will say that 2000 mg of metformin didn't do much for me, probably because I wasn't producing much insulin anymore and was losing my ability to produce insulin, which they did not catch. However, whatever the glipizide does different, worked a lot better for me, and my sugars would even drop under 100 again. And this is after spiking up to 300+ after even the lowest of carbohydrate meals.
Glipizide was the wonder medicine for me.
However your situation is different as I wasn't put on Lantus until after I went into DKA and they found out I had LADA.
So what I would consider doing if I was in your shoes is the following:
Eat a "Meal (or snack)" with right around 20 carbohydrates. Before you do so, test your sugar levels and write down your number. Now set a timer on your phone for 2 hours, test your sugars again and write down the number that pops up on your meter again, and then check it again 1 hour later. After about 3 hours, it should peak, or have already started moving downwards.
Do this a few times to notice the trends. This should give you an idea of what a measly 20 carbs does to your body, with your current medicines you are on. If 20 carbs causes huge spike with your current medications, then maybe you need to bring that up to your endocrinologist.

Next: When I was on 2000mg of metformin/day I took 1000 in the morning, and 1000 at night before bed. Metformin was not a fun experience for me.

I can't really give you advice on your Lantus as we all have different insulin sensitivity. However, as a type 1.5 now I take 16 units at bedtime, and that seems to be my magic number.

My last A1C was 6.0. I have a strict breakfast and lunch diet and only really vary my dinner diets daily.

Your numbers you show above are close to what mine were when I was type 2. Swapping from metformin to glipizide made me a lot happier, although glipizide did make me go hypoglycemic every now and then, which was okay with me since I could eat more, instead of less, which I had to do on metformin.

Good luck in your future diabetes journey. One last thing youtube a documentary called "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", and watch it and pay attention to what is being told to you as a viewer especially about type 2.
If you enjoy reading I'd recommend Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars, it really is a life changing book with tons of amazing information.

Edit: Forgot to mention I have zero experience with Glimeperide, sorry!

So I just got done with a 4.25 mile run (35 minutes 4 seconds so I'm not exactly the Flash yet) and I became a vegetarian back in March, so I'm still relatively new to it, not exactly a distance runner but I regularly put in over 12 miles a week.

First: This is a very good book http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836

Second: The biggest thing you'll realize about being a vegetarian is that after you're done eating, you don't feel bloated or weighed down like you normally would after eating an enormous steak or something like that. Obviously this helps with running (like in the morning if you just eat some cereal with milk, a banana and some juice)

Third: People say eat a lot of nuts and peanuts. I can't do that or I will die (allergies), so I eat a lot of soy, eggs, eggplant, mushrooms, stuff like that.

Fourth: I really hate diet supplement stuff for workouts but I buy like four protein shakes a week from Ensure to offset what I might not get from meat. I get the Ensure ones instead of something like "MUSCLE MILK" because I'm not some juicehead muscle dude.

Fifth: Whenever possible, go whole grain/whole wheat when eating pasta/bread. There's a really good vegetarian/vegan-friendly pizza place near me that offers a lot of whole wheat stuff, so I always get whole wheat pizza crust. So good.

A lot of the time, people ask why I became a vegetarian. Really, the answer is "I felt like it." It started as a challenge (can I go the whole month of April without eating meat? Yes, I could, so now why should I stop?) Also I'm 6'4"~6'5" and about 200 lbs and I'd like to get down to 190 lbs or ideally 180, hence all the running.

TL;DR - sorry but there is no TL;DR, you have to read the whole thing!

I'm going to actively try to avoid recipe books here in my links (that said, that means you're missing out on Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, Death & Co, Potions of the Caribbean, and The Joy of Mixology so.... YMMV)

Liquid Intelligence - IMHO must have guide on the technical aspects of bartending. This book is amazing and is the first thing I share with my coworkers that want to broaden their knowledge

The Drunken Botanist - In depth examination of the plants that go into making our favorite drinks, beers, booze, and sundry

Bitters - Has history of bitters, along with instructional on how to make your own.

Shrubs Kind of recipes but also talks about how to make shrubs and good proportions for them, which isn't super common.

Wine Folly Do you want a good intro-to-wine with good, clear reference sheets about styles and pairings? Here's your book

The Wine Bible Want to know way more than you ever thought you wanted to know about wine? This is what you want to be reading.

The Beer Bible - Same as above, but for beer instead of wine.

Holy Smoke! Its Mezcal Mezcal can be hard to pin down and I've found this one to be decent. Includes a table of things that were available in the US at time of publishing and the author's opinions on quality.

Vermouth - pretty in depth history on vermouth, focusing on its place in American cocktail Culture

Imbibe! In depth history of early cocktail culture, focusing on Jerry Thomas and the Bon Vivant's Companion

...I'm sure I could think of more, given the time. I'm trying to just delve into things currently on my shelf, and not in my wishlist.

Ah, this is always tough when starting out. It's a matter of association. You just need to be able to express what you are tasting, smelling, feeling etc. The tough part is that everyone smells things a bit differently and has different sensitivities. When I started out I would get a beer and as I drank it I would read beeradvocate or ratebeer reviews and see if I agreed with any or if any gave me an Ah HA! moment in looking for a descriptor. You can also use the Beer Flavor Wheel to help you narrow down descriptors.

Another thing to do is start reading up on how beer is made and where certain flavors come from, it can help with your associations and understanding of WHY the beer tastes the way it does.

You can also get Tasting Beer, a fantastic book by Randy Mosher. It's a well informed, well written book on how to make associations, how to describe what you are tasting, how beer is made and where the various aromas and flavors come from. I had the pleasure of judging at a table with Randy this week and he is an awesome guy, extremely knowledgeable and very nice.

Thanks!

• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Cronon, William.
  
  
• Selling 'Em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food. Hogan, David Gerard.
  
  
• Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. Levenstein, Harvey.
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan, Michael.
  
  
• Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed. Shiva, Vandana et al.
  
  
• The Jungle. Sinclair, Upton.
  
  
• Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras & the United States. Soluri, John.
  
  
• The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Stoll, Steven.
  
  
• Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Warman, Arturo.
  
  Very cool to see the actual course listing information. I'd forgotten what it was like to flip through an actual paper course catalog with that kind of stuff in it. Thank god for the internet.
  
  Also, you helped me figure out what book I was trying to remember in this comment! It was The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. IIRC, it was an awesome concept and 75% of it was an absolutely fantastic read, but one of the sections (maybe the third one?) was bit uninspired. Still overall worth the read, for sure, just be prepared to slog through one section. (And don't skip it, because what it discusses is still relevant to the final section, even if it's not as entertaining as the rest of the book.) It's worth it in particular for anybody living in an industrialized "modern" nation; it provides some of the come-to-Jesus moments that we all need to hear periodically. It's not on the level of Fast Food Nation in that regard (which is required reading for every American and Canadian, as far as I'm concerned), but still.
  
  EDIT: And that helped me remember another book I've heard recommended, also by Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
  
  You're on a roll, friend.

background: i'm a keto runner, currently training for my second marathon (marathon in mid feb, so i'm tapering)

when i first switched over to keto, my legs felt like lead for the first week or two - that's normal because i wasn't keto adapted yet, so it was akin to bonking for the entire run, as my glycogen stores were depleted (by keto adapted, i'm talking about the ability for the body to convert fat cells into energy efficiently)

once i became keto adapted though, it was amazing - i can now run fasted 13 milers in the morning for training, and come out feeling great. and when you carbo load for the actual race, you'll feel like you have wings, because you're powered by both carbs and fat. and you never hit the wall anymore, it's more a gentle slowing down.

a lot of marathon/ultra runners have been breaking records by training low and racing high (keto while training, carb loading the race) i highly recommend checking out the keto running group on FB, and Stephen Phinney/Jeff Volek's book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance

hope this helps, and good luck with your recovery!

I typed out a really long response to this and it got deleted before I could post it.

Here's the gist of what I wanted to say:

• You want to lose weight, but, as you've seen, exercise alone won't do it.
  
• This likely isn't a matter of self-discipline either. You exercise a lot which means your energy requirements will be much larger than someone who's sedentary. You're just hungry and it's fine to eat when you're hungry IF WHAT YOU EAT IS HEALTHY.
  
• I often hear it said that strength is made in the gym, while abs are made in the kitchen. If you want to lose weight, diet is what you need to focus on. You could stop working out and probably still lose weight with a healthy diet.
  
  And now for something completely different... Let's define healthy because the popular opinion on what is healthy is laughable.
  
  
• Insulin inhibits the enzyme, lipase. Lipase is responsible for lipolysis, the breakdown of fat for energy. Blood insulin concentration and lipolysis have an inverse relationship, meaning if one is high, the other is low and vice versa.
  
• Blood insulin levels are increased by meals high in carbohydrates. So, if you want to maintain optimal fat burning, you'll want to restrict your carb intake. For more information about this bullet and the last one, see this book.
  
• A carb intake of <50g a day will usually keep your body in "fat burning mode". We call this ketosis. To learn more about ketosis, you can check out /r/keto and this link. Sometimes, a carb intake of <20g is recommended.
  
• By now, you're probably thinking the well-founded question: "Uh... What will I eat?" A high-fat, moderate protein, low carb diet is very good at maintaining nutritional ketosis. Not only that, but a high fat, low carb (HFLC) diet has been shown to reduce appetite and lower weight more effectively than a low carb/low calorie diet^[1]
  
• And now you're thinking, "Why would I eat so much fat?! Won't that clog my arteries?" Saturated fat has been shown to improve the blood lipid profile (increases HDL, changes small, dense LDL to large LDL which is benign, lowers triglycerides). Check out this link for information about fat consumption. And check out the sources of his claims, too!
  
  TL;DR: Saturated fat isn't bad for you. Trans fats ARE bad for you. Eat as much saturated/monounsaturated fat as you want. Avoid anything that says "hydrogenated" or has trans fats. Limit polyunsaturated fats. Limit carbs to <20g a day. Bonus points if you remove wheat and sugar from your diet completely. Weight will start flying off, you'll stop feeling hungry all the time, and after the induction phase (first 1-6 weeks, depending on the individual) to a HFLC diet, you'll notice an increase in energy during aerobic workouts.
  
  If you want more information, let me know and I'll scrounge up some more papers/articles for you to read.
  
  EDIT: You CAN lost weight and beat 195!

Don't be afraid of lifting and keto, especially if your goals are related to body composition (rather than Olympic-level performance). Here are two reader-friendly articles for you to think about, if you want to keep things data-driven:

1. This article is the best in existence on the subject of nutrition and muscle gain. You'll have to adjust some things to fit with keto (such as the 4 meal/day recommendation - most folks on keto eat 1-2 meals/day), but that shouldn't be too difficult.

tl;dr version:

• 20g protein right after exercise, 0.25-0.40g protein/kg body weight/meal (I would up this if you're eating 1-2 meals/day)
  
• muscle failure during lifting is the most important exercise-related factor in muscle growth. Look at figure 1 for other factors, and a good summary.
  
  Morton, Robert W., Chris McGlory, and Stuart M. Phillips. “Nutritional Interventions to Augment Resistance Training-Induced Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy.” Frontiers in Physiology 6 (2015): 245. Web. PubMed link
  
  
  

  2. This whole article is great, but the table and figure on p. 45 are a good summary (and include a sample weightlifting plan to be used during low-carb diet): Direct pdf link
  

  
  
  
  Also, if you get way into the combination of keto and exercise, check out Volek and Phinney's book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Science-Carbohydrate-Performance/dp/0983490716
  
  Have fun!

I gained 60 pounds being a junk food vegan and now I've lost all of it by trying to eat whole foods and count calories. I still love fries, cookies, bread, pasta, chocolate, etc. I just try to eat healthy most of the time and occasionally indulge. I would suggest using myfitnesspal or a similar app to keep track of calories and macro nutrients.

If you just cut out meat, dairy, eggs, animal products, sugar, processed carbs and soy... Oh Boy! That's a lot all at once and most people who go vegan for health reasons don't stick to the diet because they see it as... well a diet. It's a lifestyle change that involves making an ethical choice at every meal.

Having said that, going vegan was one of the best decisions I've ever made and I've never looked back. Check out Appetite for Reduction . It's full of healthy vegan meals and it lists the nutrition info for each recipe! Good luck :)

I'm a picky eater too and a new vegan. I feel like 90% of my diet is soy at the moment haha. I find that making alternatives of the foods I liked helps a lot. This book has been amazing the past few weeks. I like it because it shows you how to make staples to use in your diet instead of these crazy recipes that are overwhelming. I made the nuggets in the book the other day and they're super nice and I'm making some of my own mozzarella now!

Also train your taste buds and try new things. We are picky normally because of a mental block that causes us to be repulsed by certain foods and it helps to slowly break it down as much as possible. I personally have made a lot of progress with new foods in the last couple of years.

I hope this helps a little :)

The complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian

I think is by far the most approachable book for any novice. Palmer's book is certainly great, but far more technical and just plain overwhelming for a beginner. Perhaps unless you have a strong science or engineering background (as I understand Palmer does) I find Palmer's book more like a textbook, and Papazian's more like a handbook.

How to Brew was my first book and it was tough, I was often confused and just powering through chapters trying not to get confused. The Joy of Homebrewing takes a much softer approach and simplifies a lot of the more advanced concepts, and is written in much more casual language.

"Relax. Don't worry. And have a homebrew."

Interesting, nicely researched.

One observation, it is reasonably well understood that excercising in ketosis does indeed raise heart rates as per “The Effects of a Ketogenic Diet on Exercise Metabolism and Physical Performance in Off-Road Cyclists”, see also The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance

Anecdotally this threw me entirely when attempting maffetone training (heart zone 2/3), I basically couldn't go slow enough until I found out you need to add 5-10 bpm to your heart rate if in ketosis, and then it worked fine. FWIW even though I'm pushing 50 I can comfortably maintain 190-195 bpm for a minute or more i.e. half my age according to 220-age handwavium.

Mechanistically, instead of just supplying oxygen to muscles in glycosis which just burn the glycogen already present (until you hit the wall), in ketosis the bloodstream has to mobilize fat, and until full fat adaption send it to the liver to be converted to ketones and then transport to the muscles, so unsurprisingly the heart has to work harder (after full adaption fatty acids can be used directly by muscles). On the flip side there are less nasty metabolites to clear which allows the heart and other muscles to run faster and longer.

This is my full list of books from /r/homebrewing but it includes pro level books:

New Brewers:

• How to Brew - John Palmer
  
• Brewing classic styles- Jamil Zainasheff
  
• Designing Great Beers - Ray Daniels
  
• The Complete Joy of Homebrewing - Charlie Papazian
  
  Continued Learning:
  
  
• Water - Palmer and Kaminsky
  
• Yeast - Zainicheff and White
  
• Malt - Mallet
  
• Hops - Hieronymous
  
• Experimental Brewing - Drew Beechum and Denny Conn
  
• Radical Brewing - Randy Mosher
  
• Brewing Better Beer - Gordon Strong
  
  Specialty/Advanced/Other:
  
  
• American Sour Beers - Michael Tonsmeire (/u/oldsock)
  
• Brewing with Wheat - Stan Hieronymus
  
• IPA: Brewing Techniques - Mitch Steele
  
• Farmhouse Ales - Phil Markowski
  
• Brew Like a Monk - Stan Hieronymus
  
• New Brewing Lager Beers - Gregory J. Noonan
  
• Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers- Stephen Harrod Buhner
  
• Drink: a cultural history of alcohol - Iain gately
  
• Principals of Brewing Science - George Fix
  
  Business Books:
  
  
• Brewing Up a Business - Sam Calagione
  
• Brewers association Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery - Cantwell, among others
  
• SO you want to start a brewery - Tony magee
  
• Beyond the Pale: The Story of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co - Ken Grossman
  
• Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery Paperback –Steve Hindy & Tom Potter
  
  Technical Readings (Textbooks might be expensive):
  
  
• Brewery Operations Manual - Tom Hennessy
  
• Beer Packaging - Master Brewers Association
  
• Technology Brewing and Malting - W. Kunze, 5th Edition
  
• Malting and Brewing Science, Volume 1 - Many Authors
  
• Malting and Brewing Science, Volume 2 - Many Authors
  
• Brewing yeast and fermentation - Boulton and Quain

Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything the Basics is really good for beginner stuff. Thug Kitchen's new book is also a great starting place for learning how to cook cheap and healthy.

My all time favorite cookbook is Mastering the Art of French Cooking which is a great intro to French techniques. The recipes themselves are not always cheap and healthy, but the skills you learn are super super useful for any type of cooking. It is by far the cookbook I have learned the most from.

Find a good vegetarian cookbook. Two fantastic ones for vegetarians are How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. Both of them have tons of recipes which don't use fake meat or processed ingredients.

If you're serious about reducing or avoiding all animal products, you might want to look for a good vegan cookbook as well. I like the Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romano. It's good because it covers a huge range of dishes, and if there something you're especially craving (like Sloppy Joes or Chicken Pot Pie) you can usually find a reasonable analogue.

I'm basically vegetarian for practical reasons when I eat with friends or at restaurants, and vegan when I cook for myself at home. If you're going to be relearning how to cook without meat, I've found it's really pretty easy to take the extra step and cut out dairy and eggs as well.

I'd take a look at The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver. He's the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery and world renowned for his beer/food pairings and experience.

One caveat: he loves his superlatives. I remember one passage where he discusses how cheap and widely available Schneider Weiss is and how it's surprisingly a "tour de force," or something like that. Not sure why it's a surprise that one of the most highly respected/awarded breweries in the world turns out a good beer. Still, for beginners who are serious about learning beer it's a good read.

I've also really enjoyed Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher. If you have any interest in brewing it's highly informative and a great historical look at all kinds of different beer. Michael Jackson (the wine critic, not that other guy) wrote the forward, which is about as much endorsement as I needed.

I'm late to this party, but let me chime in with what I've learned over the years of being a fermentation fan. Now, I don't know what they do in labs, but growing cultures in labs is a fairly modern development anyway.

But, outside of the lab, how do you maintain a consistent strain? Generally, you don't. ;)

Because it doesn't matter if the English Ale Yeast we have today is genetically equivalent to what was used 100 years ago, as long as it's a strain of yeast that makes something that tastes like English Ale, right? The point is the product, not the particular strain of microbe.

Generally, people are receiving their cultures from others who are already producing it; those who know what the product is supposed to BE. Smell, taste, texture/mouthfeel can be very precise tools. If a particular culture comes up different, they either toss it or propagate it based on what they view as the ideal product.

Studies have shown that the particular makeup of sourdough cultures, for instance, can depend on the ambient temperature and "rhythm" of feeding, the flour used, the water used, etc.

So, the consistency comes down to human tradition. One thing people can do is attempt to control all aspects of the fermentation. The same ingredients, from the same sources, used in the same processes, in the same environment, made in the same rhythm. This can't stop random mutations, but it provides consistent selection pressure and can provide a better baseline to notice when things have changed.

Anyone who's attempted to maintain a culture long term "in the wild" has had a batch go off. You learn to keep backups frozen, dried, or multiple concurrent batches to account for that.

If you'd like more reading on the topic, Sandor Katz has an entire section in The Art of Fermentation titled "Fermentation as a Coevolutionary Force" that's more or less related. The book as a whole is a fantastic resource for fermentation enthusiasts.

It's not that hard if you're not one of these reddit hivemind 'bacon is teh sex' type of people. Just be open minded. Be willing to try new foods that you've never heard of (e.g. tempeh).

I've been sort of vegetarian for 4 years, I guess. Since I am doing it for health reasons, I am willing to eat meat when I feel like it. I'll eat a delicious piece of meat if it is a special occasion. Fish more often than anything else, but definitely minimal red meat (once every 4-6mo maybe).

In terms of diet, research the nutrients that you need. A full amino acid protein profile takes thought (rice+beans, soybeans are the only vegetarian source with all the necessary AA) and this is especially important if you lift weights (I usually overload on skim milk). Maybe talk to a nutritionist if you worry about these things, but you will pick it up with time. Do not eat too many processed foods in an attempt to maintain your vegetarianism.

One big pro for me: it forces me to work on my cooking skills. It is easy to prepare meat to be pretty good. It takes a bit more thought for me to make a delicious vegetarian meal.

This cookbook is good. So is this one.

Good on you for deciding to make a healthy change! Definitely check out the /r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ sub. It's a kind and helpful group that routinely gives great tips and recipes.

If you're just starting out, investing in a basic cookbook is an excellent way to learn cooking skills at your own pace. I'd get one that starts with boiling eggs and such basics, then progresses to simple recipes. How to Cook Everything: The Basics and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian are good ones, both by Mark Bittman. Another good resource is BudgetBytes.com.

Also, you might do some reading up on meal planning. IMO, it's just as important as the cooking and eating.

If you want to learn a whole lot about the subject of brewing water I found this book to be really useful (if a little dry to read).

https://www.amazon.com/Water-Comprehensive-Brewers-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381993

I think it is actually easier on some level to start with RO (for brewing purposes RO water is very close to distilled and generally way cheaper) and then just "build" your water from scratch at least for some styles. Pilsners are a good example because Plzen, Czech Republic has famously low mineral water and very few other places have such water. So the best option for an "authentic" Czech Pils is to start with water with essentially no minerals and add back tiny amounts.

Other styles of beer became what they are in order to make the best possible beer with the water the brewer historically had to deal with. So Irish stouts are obviously well suited to Dublin's water profile and English IPAs well suited to Burton water, etc. And with RO water, a good scale, and a few powdered minerals you can pretty straightforwardly replicate the water from anywhere in the world.

If you don't use RO water it gets a little bit trickier in that you have to know what you are starting with regarding minerals in your tap water. That's harder for some than others. Where I live, my municipal water is pulled from three different sources, they all have slightly different mineral profiles, and it's not as though the city tells you when they switch from one source to another. On top of that, because they are all sourced from surface water, their mineral content will change depending on time of year (winter water vs. spring runoff water for example). So unless you pretty routinely have your water tested (expensive to do often) you don't necessarily know what your starting mineral levels are... which makes getting your mineral additions right tricky. Luckily I have pretty good water for brewing IPAs and that's what I brew most often. But when I brew a pils I start with RO (and add very little), when I brew a stout I try to get a little closer to Dublin water by using filtered tap, baking soda, and chalk, and like I mentioned when I do American IPAs I only have to add a little gypsum. I don't try to replicate water from around the world exactly, but I do try to get my water closer to the recommended ranges.

You can get as deep into water profiles as you like, from trying to completely replicate the water where a style originated to just adding a couple of minerals to get somewhat closer to those "ideal" ranges. It's one of those subjects we can nerd out on as much as we like.

>Tofu is gross

Yes, it is. It is an acquired taste, and even then you have to do it right. It is still probably my least favorite protein as a vegetarian. What is less gross are the latest fake meats like http://beyondmeat.com/, but if you do eat meat, I'm not sure there is a compelling reason for those. For that reason, I'd suggest going with

http://www.amazon.com/Isa-Does-It-Amazingly-Delicious/dp/0316221902/

Everything in that will be good. Add meat to the ones you want to, but they're all pretty good in their original vegan state. It is cheap and healthy, but you must have the "well-stocked pantry". So if you do get the book, pop the bucks for Mirin, peanut oil, olive oil, sesame oil, tamari, etc.

If you have a slow cooker and want to do Indian, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572841303/ has a lot of great recipes too. It also has non slow-cooker recipes, but if I recall correctly they were more often ones involving a slow cooker.

Yeast. Highly recommended.

Brewing With Wheat. Great book, but you'll get the most out of it if you feel comfortable taking some basic parameters and building a recipe yourself.

Radical Brewing. Lots of weird stuff, but I thought it was surprisingly strong on the basics, too.

Brewing Classic Styles. Good resource for tried and true recipes. One or two recipes for each BJCP style might be either a strength or a weakness, depending on how varied your brewing interests are.

Like most water reports, that one lacks most of the brewing-specific pertinent info. Call or email your provider and they'll give you the complete report.

Taste is FAR more important than content, IMO. Make sure you enjoy drinking the water out of the tap before you brew with it. I personally HATE my local water, so I get the filtered dispenser water at my grocery store. For hoppy beers, I add 2-4g of gypsum(/5gal), for non-hoppy beers I add the same amount of CaCl. Either way, the yeast need Calcium. I like to keep it simple, unless I know I want a specific mineral profile for a beer style.

Generally on water:

Palmer does a great job setting the foundation. http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter4.html
If you really have not read anything yet, this is an excellent place to start (you will likely be told a lot of conflicting info on this topic, which would be confusing even IF most people used a common vocabulary, which is of course not the case).

The "Water" addition to the Brewing Elements series is pretty new, so the stuff discussed in there won't be common knowledge most likely. http://www.amazon.com/Water-Comprehensive-Brewers-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381993/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383162459&sr=8-1&keywords=water+book
That one is next on my list, "Yeast" was the best brewing book I've read since "Brewing Better Beer."

Cheers!

Hi! The easiest way to get started canning is to read over the National Center for Home Food Preservation's site (they even offer a self-study program you can do at home!) or the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving . It's VERY important to know what you are doing when you are canning, as while canning is easy, you can also improperly can items, which can lead to botulism, which can make you very sick and can kill you.

Water bath canning is a great for getting your feet wet in the canning world (ha ha! Feet wet. Water bath. I slay me). Water baths are for items like fruit and tomato products. All you need for this is a pot tall enough to cover the canning jars that sit on a towel or some kind of rack with 2 inches of water and a lid for the pot. I use a stock pot, and when I went to buy it I took along a jar and measured it in the pot to make sure I was getting the right size. Then you need jars, lids, and rings. If you get the jars new in a box, they come with the lids and rings.

If your budget can swing it, or if someone else would like to go in on it with you, a canning kit is really nice to have. It makes canning a lot easier and less frustrating.

When your sister has gotten the swing of water bath canning, and if she wants to try canning meat or vegetables, your family might be interested in getting her a pressure canner for the holidays. The nice thing about a pressure canner is that it can also be used as a water bath canner.

If you get her the Presto canner linked above, get the three piece weight to replace the mushroom looking weight. This way she won't have to relay on the dial gauge (which can be unreliable), all she has to do is listen for the steam escaping and the rocking.

This book brought me from making inedible soups (literally I would have to throw them out) to making awesome soup. https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836

There's a page about how to freestyle your own soup. The basic is start with a fat (like olive oil) and add aromatics (like garlic), and cook until it smells good. Then add vegetables and liquid (I'm forgetting which order the author recommended but it would probably be fine either way). He has lots of suggestions for how to get wild with different ingredients, and there's even an exciting page about how adding cabbage at different points in the cooking process can change the soup.

Also, treat yourself to an immersion blender. Makes vegan soups taste like they are full of butter and cream. (Also super handy for salad dressing recipes!)

On my bookshelf:

• How to Brew : Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time by John Palmer
  
  
• Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew by Jamil Zainasheff
  
  
• Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation by Zainasheff and White
  
  
• Radical Brewing: Recipes, Tales and World-Altering Meditations in a Glass by Randy Mosher
  
  
• The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charles Papazian
  
  
• Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles by Ray Daniels
  
  
• Great Beer Guide: 500 Classic Brews by Michael Jackson
  
  
• The Brewmasters Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food by Garrett Oliver
  
  
• Beer is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing by Charles Bamforth
  
  
• Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World by Christopher Mark O'Brien
  
  
• A Year of Beer: 260 Seasonal Homebrew Recipes by Amahl Turczyn
  
  
• Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for 150 Commercial Beers by Tess and Mark Szamatulski (outdated version)
  

I'm looking at the same thing. I'm tempted by the cheaper course but was hoping to hear that the $35 course would get more actual hunting information through to me.

I may just go that route and hope for the best since it's pay only when you pass and it is a once in a lifetime thing.

Edit: I'm in Texas as well.

Thought I'd mention that I picked up This book based on recommendations from this sub and it's good. I'm thinking I'll get what I was hoping for from the hunters education course but just through this book.

My go to place for Indian recipes has become Manjula's Kitchen. That lady is like the Indian grandmother I never had. Here's a few noteworth recipes:

Paneer, this homemade cheese is really, realy easy to make and used for a lot of stuff.

Palak Paneer: Very quick and easy diesh that is very good.

Achari Paneer, I know, more paneer, but it is good stuff.

The spices in most of Manjulla's recipes are pretty basic, too. With the exception of asafetida you can find everything else easily at a local big box store.

If you would prefer a cook book, 660 Curries is also a great way to get started.

Above all, keep it simple and focus more on finding deer than lugging around gear. Time to hit the range with your rifle and practice, and not just with the rifle sitting on the bench too. Reduced recoil rounds are great so you can get in more trigger time without developing a flinch, though be aware you'll need to re-sight the scope when/if you switch to full power loads. .22 rifles are excellent for practice too.

I have a couple Hunter Quick-fire slings and really like them, they adjust quickly and look/feel good.

I got [one of these gas mask bags] (https://swisslink.com/british-dpm-gas-mask-bag.html?language=en&currency=USD&gclid=Cj0KCQjwv_fKBRCGARIsAL6R6ehradc0oDfyXVdpTtaD2rJOVAEydJs4MUsEwJjUMvYdvIf8HMoeGmUaAsLvEALw_wcB) for $5 at a Mill's Fleet Farm and it is the perfect size to hold my gear for the day (knife, water, food, calls, gloves/hat, rope, etc). Goes over the shoulder and sits nicely on your side. I prefer hunting on the ground over sitting in stands and carry a camo foam canoe pad with me that I clip to the bag strap with a carabiner so it hangs out behind me while I'm fudding around.

Visit and read /r/hunting for advice on finding deer. Also [get this book] (https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Hunting-Butchering-Cooking/dp/081299406X), it is an excellent read for beginners and experienced hunters.

My meat eating husband and I have a very similar situation. He makes dinner once a week, sometimes he gets creative but usually it's fried egg sandwiches! If you like cooking and are interested in learning some Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is really great and will help you with tons of general cooking basics too. A go-to favorite of ours is this Black Bean Posole

This recipe comes from the EXCELLENT (and very large!) cookbook, "660 Curries" by Raghavan Iyer. I got it this past Christmas and have been trying new recipes out almost every week. It's not a vegetarian/vegan cookbook, and has plenty of non-veg recipes... but wow, there are a TON of veggie ones. Like hundreds of pages. It's been a really great resource, and tons of fun/very instructive to work through. This recipe has become a regular in our rotation, because it's such a delicious way to pack in the veggies. We've been using sweet potato/cabbage/carrot (and we use vegetable oil instead of ghee), but I'm looking to switch it up for spring next time we make it.

Edit: Sorry, I don't think I'll be able to put up a recipe format before it's removed. I have tendinitis in both my hands atm and it hurt a ton to type up the above paragraph - I will edit it tomorrow morning after they've had a day to rest.

That is actually true, because happy = it grew up like a chicken should, the right food and freedom to move and have social chicken interactions. Makes for much better meat. These guys, made famous by the hugely successful book "The Omnivores Dilemma", use that simple truth for their commercial advantage.

Find your local cheap grocery store...Sav-A-Lot, Aldi, etc. I think it depends on where you are...but...a discount place will help you b/c they usually have smaller packaging, and cheaper ingredients.

Find a basics book like this. You can get books from your library, I also use Overdrive app to borrow ebooks (I use it through my local library, but you can sign up with an email). These kinds of books will explain the steps and process, more than just give you directions on putting ingredients together.

When using a recipe: read through the whole recipe and ingredients first. If you don't recognize everything...look it up, but consider that if you have to look up a bunch of stuff, it might be beyond your scope for the time being and attempt something else.

On supplies: You really don't need a lot, utilize thrift stores, craigslist, FB marketplace - a lot of people give these things away when they get new. For basics:

• Wood spoon, pancake turner, rubber/silicone spatula, whisk, slotted spoon, measuring cups (even dollar store cups are fine), teaspoons. For the pancake turner, I have two - a metal one for my heavy metal pans, and a plastic one for my non-stick stuff...but my non-stick is on it's last legs and I will probably toss them soon and when I do - the plastic turner goes with them. Maybe one or two large bowls (I started with dollar store plastic bowls...they were AWFUL, but they worked and I got them for cheap).
  
  
• Pots/pans: if you're cooking alone, don't worry about getting a bunch of stuff. Maybe one medium pot with a lid (about 2 quarts), one skillet (about 14-16 inches), one 8x8ish dish, one 9x13, and maybe a baking sheet (though in a pinch, if you can't get this/don't want to get this - bake in your 8x8 or 9x13 dishes).
  
  
• Other things...a decent knife (even though I have a knife set, I really just use the one large knife for everything most of the time). Maybe a tiny food processor...you can get these for like $9.99 sometimes, they're really small, but helpful when you don't have all the skills down. Easy to chop, mince, and puree with one small machine. Cutting board.
  
  A lot of this stuff might be sitting in relative's kitchens unused...and they might even give you a few things if you let them know you're looking for some supplies.
  
  In the future, also look into a crock pot. You can use it with minimal effort and make enough to save food for later (large pot of soup - split it up into quart freezer bags and thaw for meals later).
  
  Meal planning for beginners...Find 3 or 4 dishes you can learn how to make and keep making them until you know how to do them without messing up at all. Basic dishes. A rice dish, a pasta dish, a soup, a casserole (like chicken pot pie). Don't worry about trying to make everything from scratch...You can buy minute rice, and pre-made pie crusts, canned and frozen vegetables are cheaper than fresh and don't go bad in the fridge if you can't use them quickly. But frozen tends to be better for most varieties...and you can even buy frozen diced onions...and since many recipes start with cooking onion...using frozen saves you time and effort. You can also buy minced garlic in the jar...which I prefer to powdered, and lasts longer than fresh.

Honestly, as long as you're not being stupid (i.e. not eating bread and cheese and nothing else), you're probably going to be fine to go vegetarian or vegan without professional support. Most people do, and millions of people in e.g. India are life-long vegetarians with no ill effects. Getting blood tests done after a year or so would be a great way to check you're doing okay.

I have this book and it's very good: https://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Life-Everything-Healthy-Plant-Based/dp/0738214930 - it has a sample eating plan and tranisition guides. It's written by two vegan dietitians who clearly know their stuff.

Otherwise, something like the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating's recommendations of the number of serves of different foods to aim for is a good way to check your diet is balanced: https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/node/add/calculator-servings

But as everyone is saying, if you are keen on seeing a professional for whatever reason, make sure it's a dietitian - anyone can call themselves a nutritionist regardless of their qualifications.

If you don't want to read much, skip below to #7 and the helpful resources.

Food ("nutrition") sets your performance ("fitness") ceiling. It will define what you can achieve in the gym. If you want better performance, you'll have to eat better first. Period.

1. Forget calories. They're a giant red herring. In response to your question, others have brought up "calories in, calories out." This is such an oversimplification that's it's basically wrong. 500 doughnut calories =\= 500 sweet potato calories, NOT EVEN CLOSE. The sugar and other refined carbohydrates in a doughnut will break down to glucose very quickly, then spike your blood sugar. Next, insulin response rushes in and causes a few things, the blood sugar gets pulled into cells for use but also gets pulled into fat stores. Insulin promotes development of fat tissue. To simplify: some of the 500 doughnut calories end up used for energy very quickly after you eat it, the rest ends up stored as fat, but you'll absorb all 500 one way or another. Sweet potatoes don't spike your blood sugar because they're digested very slowly. You get a slow steady stream of carbohydrates (blood sugar) to use all day, especially during that workout. So long, in fact that you'll likely end up flushing some of the carbs 500 carbs in that sweet potato down the toilet because it won't stay in your body long enough to fully digest it (thank you dietary fiber.) To simplify, you'll absorb some and what you do absorb, you'll use to your benefit to crush WODs.
   
   
2. Focus instead on macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats). Which brings me to my next point...
   
   
3. You're going to have to "track." That means you're going to have to get a scale and weigh your food as you plate it for your meal.
   
   
4. Meal prep. Get a plan together. Then cook up some food and weigh off into containers. This will help stay on track. This is important because:
   
   
5. It takes about 2 weeks for all the hormonal changes to happen to your body when your start to eat better. That means no cheat meals. Cheat meals are for when you've reached your goals. They bog down your progress. Stay away as long as possible.
   
   
6. Regarding food, you should be buying groceries (veggies and fruit), meat, fish and some dairy. If it comes in packaging, you should probably avoid it (except obvious things like milk has to come in a gallon, duh). MOST IMPORTANTLY: NO REFINED CARBOHYDRATES. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS. If it's made with bleached, white flour (often labeled "enriched"), sugar, high fructose corn syrup, rice syrup, agave nectar, rice syrup, and all the other misleading terms, then you simply don't eat it.
   
   
7. If you don't believe me about the above, don't take my word for it, go on YouTube and watch videos with the elite CrossFit athletes and watch what they eat and what their coaches (Ben Bergeron, coach to Katrin davidsdottir and a few other big names) has a bunch of nutrition related videos) tell them to eat. Mimic what they do. They don't eat that way because they're elite, they're elite because they eat that way (and train according obviously).
   
   Helpful resources:
   http://journal.crossfit.com/2012/03/nutrition.tpl
   
   In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143114964/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_q7qAH63DLB7ov
   
   Enter The Zone: A Dietary Road map https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060391502/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_GVpEDeq7jqJIA
   
   The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143038583/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jYyDDbGSYE54S
   
   Edit: spelling typos

Yes, 1 year and spots fill up for the taste test fast. We are fortunate enough to have a big enough group and couple of high ranking judges to allow us to get our own exam for our study group. They recommend you sign up for a taste test before taking the entrance exam.

I assume you have already visited this page but it will give you everything you need to pass the entrance exam. http://www.bjcp.org/examcenter.php Also if you like reading, Yeast by Chris White and Jamil Zannishef, Hops by Stan Hirronamous and soon Water by John Palmer are great advanced books that will be great resources for brewing, judging and making recipes. That said to pass the exam all you will need is the study guide, the procedure manual, and the BJCP style guidelines is all you need.

If you're nervous about getting him a beer he might not like, you can always spring for something like glasswear or an experience. For example:


Glasswear - very few beer drinkers have a good set of tasting glasses or a nice Teku glass. They tend to spend their money more on the beer than the proper glasswear. Here are some to consider:


Teku Glasses
Tasting Glasses

Experience - This is completely scalable based on budget. Need to do something cheaper? Check out Yelp reviews and Beer Advocate reviews to find the best local brewery near you and take him there, followed by dinner at a great tap room or gastropub. Have more budget? Take him on a beer roadtrip or brewery tour around some of the local breweries in your area.


Beer books and merch - There are a lot of great books about the history of beer, tasting beer, etc. Here are a few to check out:


Tasting Beer
Oxford Companion

You can also get merch from his favorite brewery's online store or taproom. They'll have shirts, branded glasses, etc. All of those things should score points with any beer drinker.

Sorry for the delayed response!

• The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz is the backbone of any book collection on the topic of fermentation, and has inspired many other others.
  
• Fermented Vegetables by Christopher Shockey is my favorite book for most of my ferments. It's a super-practical recipe book for a ton of awesome krauts, kimchees, etc.
  
• The Art of Natural Cheesemaking by David Asher opened me up to a whole new world of making my own yoghurts, cheeses, etc., and more importantly, to kefir.
  
  Kefir has been the most wonderful source of probiotics for me. My lactose-intolerant wife has been able to drink it without problem. I've actually even heard of people being able to cure their lactose intolerance with the stuff. If I drink as little as a cup of homemade kefir every day, I have zero G.I. tract problems. I've noticed that if I stop using it for long periods of time, they frequently return. If I were to select one thing to try, it'd be kefir. The best source of information on kefir came from a series of webpages (1, 2, 3)from a guy named Dom. He has a ridiculously crazy sense of humor, but he's done more experimentation with kefir than I've seen anywhere else. I'd encourage you to buy some kefir grains off of Craigslist for $5 and experiment with it for a while.
  
  I hope this helps. Please feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.

If you're interested in learning more about fermenting, Sandor "Sandorkraut" Katz is a name you should search. He's kind of "the" guy for fermenting.

His Website

His most recent book

The books is a great resource and one of my favorites. Very inspiring to try new stuff. I'm actually going to see him at a workshop he's doing in Rhode Island late this month. Should be awesome.

Good luck!

[Health And Fitness: Running] The BibRave Podcast | Episode 27: Weirdest. Half Marathon. Ever

SFW

iTunes

Episode Summary
In Episode 27, Tim and Julia chat about a recent track Half Marathon they both ran. Yup - 52.5 laps, in the rain and cold, and it was awesome (at least Tim thought so. Julia however...).

Then they move to their second favorite subject, food! Tim and Julia talk about foods they are willing to spend more money on for quality, some of the differences between high/low quality foods, and they close with a bunch of useful takeaways on how they shop, plan their meals, and set themselves up to make good decisions. As often as possible... 😇

Episode Show Notes:

• The Bill Aronson Track Half (and the BATH reviews on BibRave)
  

• Run Oregon's BATH report
  
• Tim's 3rd place finish at the 20176 BATH
  
• Racing Weight
  
• Omnivore's Dilemma (not specifically discussed, but very relevant)
  
  Podcast Summary
  The BibRave Podcast is a show about all things running and racing! We cover a random assortment of topics, (almost) all of which relate in some way to running, runners, health, fitness, nutrition, races, and GEAR! If you like what you hear, please subscribe in iTunes and tell your runner buddies about us. Thanks for listening!
  
  Twitter //
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  Facebook

So I've finally decided to get serious about my beer brewing after making a half dozen or so more-or-less successful batches in my basement over the past 3 or 4 years. (Partial mash style for now, all-grain will come later.)

I picked up this book which seems to be a fantastic resource; I knew what all the steps were, but that book really cleared up why each step is necessary. And now I finally know what the actual difference between an ale and a lager is!

So now I'm planning on converting my propane-fueled outside burner to natural gas and to pick up a used chest freezer so that I can use it as a fermenting fridge. This is turning into an expensive hobby... but that should be the last of the capital equipment expenses (except for that really, really sweet looking conical fermenter).

Mark my words: I will master Pilsner.

Ultimately, I'd really like to compete in Beau's Oktoberfest homebrew competition. The winner gets to make a batch of their recipe at a commercial scale at Beau's facility and then they'll actually sell it in store alongside their own!

For B12, I pop one of these every few days. I've never heard of it being affected by alcohol/marijuana use. It might also do you some good to also take a vegan vitamin D supplement, since most people are deficient anyways.

The nausea is not likely to be related to any specific nutrient deficiencies (a B12 deficiency usually takes years to manifest in any noticeable symptoms), but it is very possible that since you're probably eating different foods now than you did as an omni your stomach hasn't quite adjusted yet.

I'd highly recommend this book as a guide for healthy long term vegan nutrition. It's full of reliable science and teaches you how to be healthy as a vegan as opposed to some resources that try to convince people that a vegan diet is a silver bullet for anything and everything.

At this point, your blood results will be more likely to reflect your previous diet than they are your new vegan diet, so anything you see next Tuesday don't go 'OMG veganism is making me anemic/deficient/etc' based on those results. Also if you do have any deficiencies there are vegan solutions for all of them, so feel free to come on back and ask for more advice :]

If you're just starting to cook, I would recommend just getting a good cookbook, and hold the kosher cookbook until later. I would start with How to Cook Everything and/or How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. They are both by Mark Bittman, and are incredible - they have tons of recipes with tons of variations. If you're looking for a good "Jewish Food" cookbook, I would recommend Joan Nathan The Jewish Holiday Kitchen. She has a new cookbook, Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: Jewish Cooking in France that's great - I've already used it a lot and I only got it in August! Also Leah Koenig's new Hadassah Cookbook is getting wonderful reviews - I haven't picked mine up yet. I don't much care for the Suzie Fishbein Kosher by Design cookbook series. I find her recipes gimmicky and weird. Here's a good online recipe resource.

I recommend picking up Randy Mosher's 'Tasting Beer'. Here is an excerpt regarding pouring for a creamier head:

"To get the best head on a beer, pour boldly down the center of an absolutely clean glass. It will foam up, but this is good. Really. Allow it to settle and then repeat until you have a full glass. By delaying gratification and allowing a large amount of foam to build up and then shrink, you have created a dense, creamy foam, filled with tiny, long-lasting bubbles. As a side benefit, you have knocked some of the excess gas out of the beer, and the result will be more like the smooth creaminess of draft beer."

Are you just bartending casually at home or are you looking to do it as a job in the future?

Jefferey Morgenthaler's book is great:https://www.amazon.com/Bar-Book-Elements-Cocktail-Technique/dp/145211384X

You'll want to get a jigger, I recommend oxo's graduated jigger, a barspoon, a mixing glass, a strainer, a set of shaker tins (get a small and a large, and seriously splurge for koriko not the other bullshit)

Those are all of the essentials, beyond that everything is fairly unnecessary but there are tons of other things you can buy. I guess a vegetable peeler could be handy for peels but you can just use a sharp paring knife for zest garnishes.

For glassware you can spend as much or as little as you want, depending on how much you care about appearance. When I first starting making drinks at home I had glasses for every variety of drink. I still have those glasses, but basically use these for everything, regardless if it's shaken stirred or whatever. Gimlets taste delicious out of them, manhattans taste delicious out of them.

One little handy thing I've found is these seagram's bottles. Buy a 6 pk of the little glass club soda bottles. Once you use the soda, rinse them out and they're perfect for storing syrups, juices, etc. Plastic caps won't deteriorate like metal will in other styles of bottlees. They're short so they fit in weird parts of your fridge, hold enough syrup for plenty of drinks, etc etc.

> Roasted malts will lower the pH of the mash more than pale malts

The gold star answer right there! ::cheers::

You have to tailor the water to the specific grain bill of each recipe, so that you end up with both the correct mash pH as well as an appropriate mineral balance for the desired flavor.

(As an aside, this is a key factor in how different regions adopted certain beer styles way back when... they didn't understand the chemistry going on in the mash, but they learned through experience that certain types of beers came out better or worse than others, because of the water available to them.)

I cannot recommend Bru'n Water highly enough... I've been using it for years, and the quality of my beers -- which were pretty good to begin with -- skyrocketed. Some beers were substantially improved, others had an "intangible cohesiveness" that they never had before.

I also went for the paid version, more to give Martin some compensation for all of his hard work than the added features (although the added features are nice).

I will also mention that once I got a pH meter, the measured results were nearly spot-on to the calculated results in Bru'n Water.

IMO Bru'n Water is far far far far far better than the water chemistry module in any of the major brewing software.

I also recommend the Water book, although it's not for the timid. I have no chemistry background (I'm a designer and audio engineer/musician, much more right-brain than left-brain!) and it's taken me a while and multiple re-reads to wrap my head around some of it... but IMO it was well-worth the effort.

I'm new to hunting as well, just started duck hunting last season and still haven't gone after any big game. First mammal I got was some cottontail.

I found Steven Rinella's books to be extremely helpful, he has two volumes: The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game: Volume 1: Big Game and The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game: Volume 2: Small Game and Fowl

Very reasonable prices and packed full of knowledge. In my opinion one of the best starting places to start learning hunting before you dive into more detailed books on specific species. That being said, if you can find a mentor that's really one of the best ways to start but educating yourself through books, videos, etc will help you understand the tactics much better. Like any endeavor you'll probably have disappointment your first few times out but that's just part of the experience and learning. Good luck!

I don't really have any specific rules, per say, other than drink what you like. If you read enough around here, you'll notice that vodka doesn't exactly get put up on a pedestal by many. I personally find I use gin in almost any situation that calls for vodka so I don't really sweat which brand I have in the house (currently Tito's).

As for tequila, it's not so much about avoiding gold tequila (my house tequila is the lunazul reposado which is a gold tequila), it's making sure that you're using a quality 100% de agave tequila. Most brands that produce tequila this way will let you know somewhere on the label, but brands like espolon, lunazul, milagro are all safe bets. Otherwise, they're making the tequila from some percentage neutral grain spirit (typically distilled beet sugar) and adding tequila flavoring.

Read around here and on specific spirit subreddits to get further recommendations. I also recommend picking up a beginners cocktail book to give you an idea of which elements of your bar to stock first and prioritize what to buy later. 12 Bottle Bar focuses on what bottles to buy to make an array of classics. Bar Book is more focused on helping shape your technique and palate.

I like this cookbook a lot - it's got a healthy/low-calorie focus and everything I've cooked out of it has been great (AND no/minimal "specialty" foods - some good quinoa recipes though)! Yes, it's vegan, but adding meat would be easy if you and your family prefer. I am personally not vegan, but I like vegan cookbooks a lot because they tend to showcase creativity with vegetables and whole grains.

Also, I'm going to stress this from forgot_my_password99 again:
>Cannot stress this enough, vegetables and more vegetables.

There are tons of ways to prepare vegetables other than just steaming them (though that's great too!), and maybe adding a bit of butter/pork/etc is a good way to 'baby step' into eating more vegetables!

Also: if your family is open to it, explore different ethnic cuisines! For example, Thai style curries or stir fries (easy with frozen stir fry vegetable mix, Thai curry paste, optional coconut milk, and tofu or chicken) are easy and vegetables are an integral part of the dish.

Interestingly enough, I just started picked up Radical Brewing, which was published in 2004. The first chapter on beer history points out loud and clear how American craft brewers unencumbered by centuries of tradition are experimenting and innovating into quite a vital and amazing beer culture. As I read that I was thinking that, since American craft brewing market is getting saturated in some (many?) areas of the country, maybe it'd be interesting to start a craft brewery some place in Europe. It's good to see someone--Stone--giving it a shot.

BTW, I haven't been to Europe since the late nineties. So, I don't have any first-hand experience with beer culture there. If the original premise is inaccurate, I'd be really interested to hear about it.

(Based on the little that I've read of the book so far, Randy Mosher--the author--is probably a Stone fan.)

for eggs, unless you just would miss the taste, depends what you use them for. baking is easy to replace with flax eggs or egg substitutes which i haven't really tried. for scrambles, that's easy - http://minimalistbaker.com/southwest-tofu-scramble/

lots of people like chao cheese, but it's got that processed taste in my opinion. miyoko's vegan cheese is great - http://shop.miyokoskitchen.com/

miyoko actually has a book with all sorts of stuff you can make yourself, along with cheese - https://www.amazon.com/Homemade-Vegan-Pantry-Making-Staples/dp/1607746778

there's a whole awesome vegan food world out there :)

My top suggestion would be "How to brew" By John Palmer or "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing" By Charlie Papazian and read before buying anything. You will get a strong understanding of the process and be able to make sure it's something you will want to do before dropping $100 dollars on getting started.

If you want to jump in with smaller batches (1 Gallons) I would suggest buying one of Brooklyn Brew Shops kits or another small batch kit. The process is pretty much the same just in smaller portions. If you decide from there you want to go bigger you always can and then you have a better grasp on the process and what will be needed to make better beer.

The PPK (Post-Punk Kitchen, http://www.theppk.com/ ) is an awesome resource for tasty recipes, and the forum there is very welcoming. It's run by Isa, who was one of the co-authors of The Veganomican.

Vegan for Life ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738214930/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0738214930&linkCode=as2&tag=wwwtheppkcom-20 ) is a wonderful resource for vegan nutrition and health in an easy to read package.

Aside from that you can go as cookbook crazy as you like. I strongly recommend all of Isa's cookbooks. They're entertaining to read (something I never thought I'd say about a cookbook) and full of tasty tasty food.

The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World is pretty good if you're interested in learning how to make your own yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and the like. Save you a couple bucks and impress your friends and the ladies/men with your earthly hobby.

I haven’t seen it yet but The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Fourth Edition: Fully Revised and Updated https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062215752/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XiQoDbVWK4YK0 is worth a read.

Also like everyone else was saying, just take it one step at a time. Just enjoy it. And start kegging ASAP because bottling sucks.

I’d say try not to make too many changes to your brewery all at once, so you can stay familiar with how long different things normally take, and it limits the hiccups you might have. Obviously there’s going to be pretty big steps, like going all grain.

The FDA states that inversion canning is not safe and should not be practiced. I get the appeal of not having to water bath process jars because it is a pain, but personally I would never do it, why risk it? If you don't want to fully process your jars you can do refrigerator recipes, most will last in the frig for several weeks. Please practice safe and approved canning methods!

If you need help with proper canning and approved recipes, this book is fantastic!

https://www.amazon.com/Ball-Complete-Book-Home-Preserving/dp/0778801314/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1537971010&sr=8-6&keywords=ball+canning

My boss bought me Cook's Illustrated Science of Good Cooking book. I actually liked it so much that I ended up buying the kindle version to read on my commute (now, with the kindle app, it's become my go-to cookbook simply because if i'm at the store i can pull it up on my phone, but that's slightly more incidental)

I liked it because it was very "cooking-focused"--my problem with Harold McGee's book was that I read it and though "ok...and how does that help me for dinner tonight?". The Science of Good Cooking book, on the other hand, made it feel like "ok this is cool, and this is how I can use that knowledge."

I skimmed a lot of the chapters on baking, but now that I'm getting into it I'm going to re-read them.

Keto diet, switch your fuel source to fat. It will take time but you will also need less insulin. Less carbs, less insulin.

Read Dr. Bernstein's book, I highly recommend it. He is T1, in his mid 80's and very fit. This guy is in great shape, lifts weights etc.

Info http://www.diabetes-book.com/

For sale on Amazon, buy it used to save a few dollars. https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-Achieving/dp/0316182699

Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJ11OJynsvHMsN48LG18Ag/videos

My favourite book is:
https://www.amazon.com/Ball-Complete-Book-Home-Preserving/dp/0778801314
I initially just borrowed it from our local library then went out and bought it for myself since I used so many of the recipes! :)

When I first started I spent a lot of time on YouTube watching other people canning. Some good stations to check out would be:
Linda's Pantry,
our half acre homestead,
living traditions homestead,
homesteading family....and lots of others really.

I would usually decide what I wanted to try canning and search for that...I'd watch a few different videos to give me the confidence to try it.

A website I like is: https://www.healthycanning.com/
I find the material is written in a really approachable format. I really appreciate their explanations in what is safe and what isn't...and some of the reasons behind it.

Sometimes it's hard to trust website recipes, so I tried to stick with safer, known sources rather than some blogger with a great looking product but no info into the safety.

Anyhow, welcome to club!! It can be a lot of work but I find it oh so rewarding!!

Check out some recipe books and see if you can make any meals you like and then ease yourself into it. That's how I started. I started with this one and it has a lot of good recipes.

Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316221902/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8VnRAbS5569YV

Or this one is aimed at doing meals so that you won't miss meat

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck https://www.amazon.com/dp/1623363586/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_FXnRAbJJ6N7BP

Check them out at your library and just pick a few to test. I've also found a few fake meat products that I never thought I would have liked. Quorn makes some good meatless alternatives like chikn nuggets. There's also Beyond Burger which is shockingly meaty.

I am going to suggest this book (AKA the book that for me started it all). It's an older book, but still pretty good.

Also you can go poking around and find cookbooks (there is a good sized vegetarian cookbook section at my local used bookstore... so many cookbooks) including some more basic ones. Though I have to suggest this one it was a Christmas gift from my sister, and it goes through not just recipes but techniques and the like.

Nobody measures the actual amounts of any brewing ion in solution in your water.

You either:

• send a sample of your tap water to a lab and have them measure the amounts of several brewing ions in your water
  
• are lucky (like me) and your water supplier periodically measures and reports those things and makes that available to the public
  
• start from distilled water (which is pure water, with no (actually very little) ions in it)
  
  Using one of the above you determine the base amounts of brewing ions in your water. Then you use something like bru'n water, brewersfriend, any of the other tools out there to determine a water profile and which salts to add to achieve that profile.
  
  After adding the salts, you just assume the desired amounts will be achieved, no need (or possibility, really) to actually measure those as a homebrewer.
  
  The tools I mentioned above also calculate mash pH and other important brewing water measures.
  
  Water is a very interesting topic to dive into, and if you really want to research this thoroughly I highly recommend Palmers "Water" book. Only part of that book is applicable to homebrewers, but it very clearly explains what water chemistry entails and what is important. It was only after reading this book that I fully understood how "residual alkalinity" works in brewing water, for example.
  
  Also, in my experience, getting the mash and boil pH right is way more important to the final product than the amounts of ions in your wort (as long as they are not exceedingly low, or high). When I brew with tap water without adjustments, my mash pH will be too high (especially for pale beers) which in turn means my boil pH will be to high. Invariably, those beers will take way longer to become clear, and the bitterness will be "weird". When I adjust my water to a (calculated) mash pH of ~5.4, the beer is already clear when I move it from the fermenter into bottles, and the bitterness is way more pleasant.

I'd recommend she get Isa Moskowitz's vegan cook book "Isa Does It." She teaches people everything they need to know in that book, and she makes it SO easy. Like how to make things seem creamy, or cheesy using cashews... Plus, she emphasizes meals being easy and affordable. I've never had any meal from that book that wasn't delicious!

She has other cookbooks that require more time, but Isa Does It is a full on education for vegan dummies.

Oh, and her desserts are great too! Best homemade chocolate pudding pie, scones, etc. and all vegan.

https://www.amazon.com/Isa-Does-Amazingly-Delicious-Recipes/dp/0316221902

I sent you a message separately since I don't want to be spammy and link to my own site here. But I'd like to address your general concerns of where and how to begin.

If you want to make some honey BBQ or apricot chicken, that's great. However, starting at that level may actually be a disservice to you, especially as most recipes are structured to assume some base level of knowledge that you don't have. The result can be frustrating as you try to piece together bits of knowledge from wherever you can scrounge them.

The worst part is not understanding why certain things are happening. The Alton Brown recipe that /u/MercuryCrest shared will be unusually good because he's teaching you why you're doing certain things. That will make recipes repeatable and your skills generalizable.

If you can get access to all of Good Eats, that's typically what people recommend. But I'd also like to recommend just a good book, like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything The Basics which will walk you through a bunch of beginner recipes.

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance advocates for zone training in order to help your body prefer fat burning. I've been doing zone training and have had about a 15% gain in running efficiency. I feel less winded and rarely feel sore.

I also really, really like chi running because of its focus on efficiency by using gravity to propel yourself forward. In a long event like yours, efficiency is the key to winning.

The basic premise of ketogenic diets. You said your body breaks down fats for energy and you are correct. On a low-carb diet your body is not using carbs to generate energy, it is using fats. Typically I am eating around 30 carbs per day. I maintain a rough ratio of 65% of my calories from fats, 35% from protein and 5% from carbs. On a typical game day, I will eat about 100-120g of fat. If I've been good about my food intake, I can play and feel boundless energy and rarely feel fatigued after.

Here is a great book about it.

EDIT: Some of the basic sciency stuff, and I'm quoting from memory, so I could be off, but your body can only hold about 2,000 Kcals of energy derived from glycogen (carb-based) in reserves. However, your body can store 40,000 kcals from fats. You won't use fat for energy unless you bottom out the carbs since glycogen is easier for the body to burn. It can usually take 1-2 weeks for your body to transition over to ketosis (not to be confused with ketoacidosis). Ketogenic diets are great for endurance (such as marathon running, cycling, etc). Some people say they don't lift well on it, but it never bothered me.

I'll second this and additionally suggest learning how to ferment foods yourself, cause it's stupidly easy and super cheap. The Art Of Fermentation is a great book to help you get started if you want to understand how it works, but it's not necessary.

Usually I just make my own probiotic drinks by fermenting random fruits/herbs + ginger using probiotic pills (like S. Boulardii) as starter cultures, and 'feeding' it some soluble fibers. Not quite as simple as just taking a pill, but more likely to work effectively given there'll be a higher bacterial count in a glass of liquid than in a pill, and liquid helps the bacteria survive your stomach acid a bit more easily as well.

I personally have not used this cookbook, but I had a friend once that loved it. May be worth a look for your husband - the description (as well as several reviews) state that it does a great job at explaining things in detail

There is also this book by the same author that is apparently more basic and focused on learning proper cooking techniques.

There are amazing directions on how to assemble the perfect "bowl" combos (1 grain, 1 bean, 1 veg + sauce) and lots of recipes and examples in this book, which I can only recommend. (The "Reduction" in the title is not just about losing weight; this doesn't have to be read as a dieting book, although it's possible to use it that way.) I love Isa's books because they don't use expensive, hard to find ingredients and the recipes always come out perfect.

I'm not sure there's going to be a concrete answer for this.

Mostly it's just because of a change in drinking tastes in the last five years or so. A lot of cities are seeing a reemergence of the classic American cocktail. As the Millennial generation continues to age (graduate school, settle into work, explore social bar scenes), many are less interested in two ingredient collins drinks and more interested in craft cocktails. Because of this desire for more "artisan" drinks, there has been a growth in craft beers and liquors. We're seeing more and more small batch gins, whiskeys, tequila, vodkas, etc. With this growth comes clubs, and conventions where craftsmen, brewers, distillers, and hobbyists can get together to share knowledge and have a good time.

If you're interested in cocktails there are resources like The Savoy Cocktail Book, [The Bar Book] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/145211384X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), and The Drunken Botanist.

Most of my knowledge comes from an interest in cocktails after years of working as a server and more recently as a bartender.

You'll want to mix tofu with vital wheat gluten for the best results, IME.

There's a good recipe in Miyoko Schinner's The Homemade Vegan Pantry. This book is well worth the cost of purchase. The recipes for all of the fake meats, cheeses, etc. are outstanding.

Alternatively, as others mentioned, buffalo cauliflower is a good bet. My favorite recipe for it is from serious eats

• The big name in the genre is Peter Singer's [Animal Liberation] (http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Liberation-Peter-Singer/dp/0060011572). Singer has had a number of titles to follow this original, and they are all worth reading in their own right.
  
  
• Another would be Michael Polan's [Omnivore's Dilema] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History/dp/0143038583/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51QJJGnAsaL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR103%2C160_&refRID=0JY11DAZ0RT4P0PPBND5). Though not specifically about veganism, it endorses the lifestyle enough to warrant a read.
  
  
• I personally liked [Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of our Fellow Creatures] (http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Wise-Thoughts-Emotions-Creatures-ebook/dp/B00985DZQ4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450016974&sr=1-1&keywords=animal+wise) by Virginia Morell.
  
  
  
• I haven't read it, but I've been suggested [Eating Animals] (http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp/0316069884/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51flAsKFoAL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=0JY11DAZ0RT4P0PPBND5) by Jonathan Safran Foer.
  
  There are a number of books on the topic of Evolution or Evolutionary Psychology that will provide a greater understanding of how connected and similar we really are.
  
  
  Hopefully this is something to start this thread off in a positive direction.

As a lot of people have said, I think flights are a great idea. I would add that going somewhere that has a good selection of traditional styles would be a good place to start, and if you like American lager-style beer, try some craft versions of that so you can have something to compare to what you're used to (might I suggest Oskar Blues Mama's Yella Pils or Victory Prima Pils).

I'm in academia, so I found that some light reading on the subject helped a lot - ingredients and their respective characteristics, the brewing process, history and characteristics of all the different styles, etc. Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher is a great place to start.

Miyoko has published 2 books with cheese recipes in them. I bought both books and got them signed AND tried many of the cheeses at her book signing party in NYC a couple months ago.

Artisan Vegan Cheese

The Homemade Vegan Pantry

Many/most of the cheese recipes are made from cashews and other nuts, and require some ingredients most of us have never heard of. I went through and found the recipes I want to try (all of them!) and rounded up all the ingredients (amazon for the obscure stuff).

In the cheese book there are 2 different Mozz recipes, one is meant to be for a fresh mozz type cheese (tried this one at the party, was just like the original and so delicious), and the other is more for melting like on pizza.

So far from the pantry book I have made Squeeze Bottle Yellow Mustard (perfect, but strong!) and the Oil Free Eggless Vegan Mayo. 2/2 both are great.

I had to change my plan about trying one of the mozz recipes today; still have some store bought cheezes I'm trying to use up, also have too much other stuff to do.

You may want to check out The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. http://amzn.com/0983490716

The general premise is, after several weeks on a very low carbohydrate diet, you body adapts to use fat as the primary fuel. Fat utilization increases. That is, you can burn fat a much higher rates than you can on a typical diet. Glycogen is preserved and you don't bonk. As intensity increases, you start burning more glycogen for energy, but you're still burning fat at rates that just can't be achieved on a standard diet.

> I'm not trying to go fast. I just want endurance, power and overall performance. You know, besides dropping some body fat.

It's well suited for this.
V02max will decrease slightly. That's your maximal effort. How much you can do in an all-out sprint. However, because fat mass decreases, your VO2max/kg and watts/kg actually increase. Since bike racing often involves a sprint to the finish, racers are after VO2max, so this hasn't caught on.
In events without a sprint to the finish; triathlon, ultra-endurance races, longer time trials, it's gaining in popularity.
I find it ideal for a recreational rider.