even if you prep the lettuce a little in advance (which I do too), storing the lettuce in a way that keeps the cells hydrated and turgid goes a long way to help. I fill a wide-mouth 1 cup mason jar with water to put the base of the lettuce in, then use a ziplock bag to pull over the lettuce; that way the lettuce has a source of water to pull and the respiration of the leaves won’t cause water loss, as the air remains humid in the bag.

I cut up my lettuce an hour or two before I made the crunchwraps, put them in a bowl, put a lid on the bowl, and put it back in the fridge until I needed them, but prepping closer to time will also help prevent limp lettuce. I used Romaine, so that might also help but I would imagine iceberg could also be kept hydrated.

Good luck - pass along any tips you learn!!

Yes, vegan cheese makes me pretty sad. Thanks for your encouragement and positivity! 🥰

Here is my recipe for the nacho cheez:

• 1 lb (around 3 - 4) potatoes, boiled
• 1 medium to large carrot, boiled
• 1/2 - 1 cup retained starchy water from cooking potatoes and carrots
• 1 cup cashews, soaked and drained
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp MSG
• 1/2 tsp salt
• a few pickled jalapenos (optional if it’s too spicy for you)
• 2 tsp white miso
• ~ 1 TB Miyokos farmhouse cheddar (can sub with lactic acid)
• 1/4 - 1 tsp mustard

I find the blender overheats with how thick the potatoes make it, so I like to let the carrots, potato, and the water all cool fully after boiling. I also like to blend the cashews and other ingredients together first, before adding the potato which will bring my blender nearly to overheating.

This recipe (like all recipes in my mind) is more a rough guideline. I rarely measure everything and I often change the ingredients up a little, but it gives you a sense of the dish. I often use fewer potatoes now, more like 1/2 lb, maybe 1 - 2 small to medium potatoes, usually gold potatoes. I also don’t like to remove the skin for the added fiber, which is extra filling (and more nutritious).

I will have to try dill and paprika for mac & cheese, I have never tried that before, thank for the ideas!

aw, thank you - that’s nice to hear 😊

The color comes from the carrot and nutritional yeast, I don’t really intend to mimic the look of real nacho cheese but it does sorta work out doesn’t it? I find having a high-powered blender to get the cashews blended fully is the key to the consistency, which is important to me.

The pickled onion isn’t that important and is actually getting away from copycating a taco bell crunchwrap supreme. I just like vegetables a lot and I’m always lacto-fermenting something, so this is a way to use it up. It does add a nice color and flavor, though! (Or at least I enjoy it.)

Regarding the lettuce, here is how I build it:

https://imgur.com/a/l8IYGod

0. base: tostada + melted cheese
1. layer of “sour cream”
2. lettuce
3. tomato

Then when I crisp the outside, I preheat my pan so it doesn’t spend much time on the griddle. The lettuce I keep crisp in my fridge by keeping the cut stem / root area in water and covering the lettuce in a plastic bag. Then I only take the leaves I need and I rinse them well before using them (for bacteria, pesticides, bugs, dirt, etc.). This makes the lettuce turgid and full of cold water, which also would make it harder to wilt. The tomatoes are also wet and keep the lettuce wet during the cooking. I probably don’t spend more than a minute searing each side of the tortilla, just enough that it starts to brown. I find this doesn’t really heat up the cold ingredients much at all, so there is no wilting.

Hope this helps. ❤️

If you decide to make them I’d love to see photos!!

aww, thanks!

If you end up making anything let me know - would love to see pics! 😁

yes, it does a better job of emulating meat in some ways, but it’s still mostly just TVP (and really overpriced TVP at that!).

The main advantage beyond beef has is through the use of methylcellulose, which is used to make the fat chunks. You could totally make this with your typical TVP taco meat, if you wanted more like beyond beef I would add more fats somehow, whether whole foods approach like avocado and cashews, or by making your own methylcellulose fat pucks in the freezer and shredding them into your TVP mix.

This is a recipe on how to make your own beyond beef: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUWR9VRckAk

might take a little tweaking in my experience it’s hard to perfectly replicate the beyond beef

it tastes as good as it looks, too - takes some finessing to get a suitable nacho cheese flavor and to get the beef tasting like taco bell meat, but usually when I make this it tastes better than I expect it to. There have been a couple times where it didn’t live up to expectations. Still trying to figure out exactly what contributes to the disappointment in those moments (but I suspect it’s not adding enough seasoning to the beyond beef or cooking the beef too wet and not getting enough browning).

Another thing I like to do is melt some shredded violife (3 cheese blend or the american / cheddar cheese) onto the tostada before adding the sour cream and other toppings. I deep fry the tortilla, then put it on a tray and add the cheese and pop it into my convection oven with the broil setting for a minute or so.

thank you!!

It seems like a lot of people are just not reading the article or the context of the quote:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/07/27/the-witcher-casting-director-says-yennefer-casting-was-to-challenge-beauty-standards-which-is-completely-insane/

Now, this is not Holland saying that Chalotra is ugly, or that they cast someone ugly to play the role of the most beautiful woman in the world. … Rather, Holland is saying that she is challenging the “standard of beauty” by casting a woman with slightly darker skin.

I do understand that traditional Western fantasy is predominantly white, but I disagree fundamentally with the notion that the “standard of beauty” for most people is being white. I don’t think anyone in the entire world outside of a tiny, tiny sliver of absolute racist scumbags would look at Anya Chalotra and think anything other than “This woman is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.” Casting Chalotra may challenge our perceptions of fantasy as white (a complicated discussion on its own) but it does nothing to challenge any standard of beauty.

Emphasis is mine.

ah, that makes sense - thank you for your help ❤️

it was so, so delicious - some of the red cabbage I used had been fermented a little bit (like a young saurkraut); I did chop up fresh dill to serve, and I served with a little dollop of vegenaise (sounds gross, but it adds richness and I didn’t have time / energy to make a cashew cream).

To adapt the recipe to be vegan, I made a few modifications, like instead of using a rich beef bone broth, I tried adding richness and making a vegan broth using no-beef bouillon, white miso, and some v. butter (any neutral fat might work here, like refined coconut oil). This mimics the umami, saltiness, and richness of a bone broth somewhat. You can also use mushroom seasoning granules, which are found in Asian food stores, or MSG to increase umami further.

I highly recommend this dish, I had never made borscht before and I kept craving it even though I made a huge amount.

💀💀💀

(danke, ich verstehe jetzt, leider)

Ja, aber was bedeutet Zangendeutsch und Zuhausis?

(Ehrlich kenne ich sie nicht.)

EDIT:

https://www.bedeutungonline.de/was-ist-zangendeutsch-woerterbuch-erklaerung-bedeutung/

So es bedeutet ein wörtliche Verdeutschung z.B. Großfuß für “Bigfoot”, aber warum “Zange”?

Tut mir Leid, mein Deutsch ist schrecklich (vielleich A-2 oder B-1).

You didn’t fact-check how many trans people there are in the U.S.¹

It looks to be between 0.5% and 1.6% of the total U.S. population (2 - 6 in 400).

References:

• https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf
• https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/

Semi-related, the number of intersex people (in the literature they talk about people with “disorders of sexual development”) have also been estimated to be around 1% of the population (4 in 400), source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a

¹ yes, the U.S. isn’t mentioned in the OP, but your sources are looking at U.S. demographics and so I will continue with the U.S.-centrism already present.

Some Thoughts (oh boy):

There is a weird logic to pointing out how few trans people there are actually are in the OP. Even if there were many more trans people, (like if there really were 1 in 5 trans people as is commonly mis-perceived), would that make the GOP’s campaign of fear-mongering and animus any more justified? I don’t think this is what Shon (@gayblackvet) was going for, but it almost seems like a consequence of how the message was written.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but does it seem like way it is written implies that the problem is not that the trans panic is unjustified in its fear of trans people, but that it is merely blown out of proportion? Maybe the angle was that even if we assume trans people are a problem, it’s still so few people it’s not worth all this panic and legislation (there are >500 anti-trans bills in the U.S. right now, over 40 of them have already passed).

Rhetorically this perspective-taking might be effective in appealing to mildly transphobic centrists or moderate conservatives who are not entirely comfortable with trans people but who might not want to be perceived as transphobic and don’t want to be associated with the rabid and vocal transphobia of the GOP.

That wedge between a more moderate closeted transphobe and a more openly transphobic right-wing one is politically useful, so I am not necessarily complaining, but there is a concern here about whether tackling transphobia is really the goal here, and if so how we should best go about that.

Agreeing with everyone else, Potentilla indica seems likely. The fruits taste watery, not desirable but not toxic.

haha, fat definitely increases calories, though I find it’s less directly fattening because it doesn’t seem to increase insulin resistance the way simple carbs and sugars do (and insulin seems key to controlling your weight). Though targeting insulin resistance is like aiming to get diabetes, so I don’t suggest it, lol. Still, it gives you a way to really gain weight.

I’m not the most fond of sugar though I think I crave it more since starting HRT. I do typically crave simple carbs like bread, potato chips, etc. - eating more simple carbs can definitely be another way to fatten up (they’re often not as filling either!). I have noticed stress tends to push me towards eating high calorie foods like simple carbs, sugars, and fats, and Robert Sapolsky talks about the mechanism for this in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

aww, that’s wonderful to hear! You’re lucky to have a supportive mom - so glad she’s there to help you!!

If you want to gain weight it helps to incorporate high-calorie foods that don’t stimulate the over-full feeling, so something high in sugar like soda or ice cream. Obviously eating enough of that can cause metabolic disorders, but over time eating these kinds of foods will be fattening, though it can take a bit of time as your basal metabolism will increase and burn up the extra calories at first. Just be moderate I guess, obviously these are unhealthy tips, lol.

I have the opposite problem though, I struggle with losing weight and not over-eating (even when I’m eating really healthy foods). Fasting has helped me lose weight, personally.

It’s probably not a healthy tip, but I think there were some studies that showed being overweight led to more breast growth. It sorta makes sense, the breasts are a place where excess fat is stored. That said, being overweight creates lots of other health risks, so it’s probably not good to target that as much as fat cycling where you shed and put on weight might be part of a strategy of transitioning.

Have you talked to your doctor about it?

Just reading briefly, it’s normal to have low prolactin levels (less than 25 ng/mL) for women who aren’t pregnant. If you were trying to prepare to breastfeed and your levels remained low that might be something to talk to your doctor about. However, I wouldn’t worry about it for normal breast growth.

The things you should focus on to promote good breath growth are things that keep you in good health generally, like

• eating a healthy and diverse diet (e.g. incorporate more salads with vegetables and nuts, choose less refined sources of carbs like whole wheat instead of white bread, etc.),
• staying hydrated (keep water by you all day and drink it regularly),
• avoiding drug use (especially tobacco and alcohol),
• keeping good sleep hygiene (helpful PDF),
• regularly exercising (both aerobic and strength training, aim for 1 - 2 hours of intense aerobic activity per week),
• reducing stress (including worrying about your prolactin levels, lol; meditation can help with stress reduction & helping to identify and redirect unhelpful thoughts; recommended reading: Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety, and for a meditation manual, The Mind Illuminated by John Yates).

Congrats!! Wishing you an uneventful recovery! ❤️