Parsnip Pancakes

While I would rather have my fingernails ripped out, one by one, than become vegan, I do appreciate the cuisine when it's done well and the dedication that vegans have to their chosen lifestyle. And these days I find myself looking more toward vegan and vegetarian recipes to add a larger variety of vegetables and healthy protein substitutes to my continually evolving diet.

Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is on the top of my go-to list of cookbooks, especially when it comes to desserts that don't include dairy or eggs. But last night I wasn't looking for sweets. I wanted something crunchy and bad. What I really wanted was something that had been battered and deep-fried to within an inch of its life...but I settled instead on the Parsnip-Scallion Pancakes in Moskowitz's book. If you know how to fry something properly, and then drain it adequately, there is no need to feel dieter's guilt about eating it.

I don't believe these pancakes would work well if baked.

Moskowitz calls for 4 cups of shredded parsnips to be mixed with 1 cup of scallions, flour, canola oil, salt, pepper, and water. I cut out the oil, since I was going to be frying the pancakes. I just didn't want the extra oil in the batter. In this case, both the oil and water were there to act as a binding agent in place of eggs...and since I enjoy eating animal products, I had no problem substituting a couple of eggs. I could easily have added milk. And to my mixture, I added a couple of minced garlic cloves...because most things are better with garlic. It's a simple fact.

Shredding the parsnip was the biggest problem I faced. I bought a big one and my hand-held grater wasn't strong enough to handle it, which to me is more dense than a carrot. I had to bring out my stainless mandoline and hand guard or my fingers would have been shredded faster than the parsnip.

I also didn't make nice, neat little balls, as the recipe instructs you to do. I dropped the spiny looking mixture by the heaping tablespoon into the heated oil and I watched them bubble and fry until golden.

I served two pancakes up with a scoop of chicken salad I made out of a leftover roast from the day before. I mixed diced chicken with apples, celery, onion, curry powder, prepared mustard, and a dollop of mayo. I had a leafy, green salad on the side.

The sweet parsnip and the mild onion flavor of the scallions worked surprisingly well together.

Gym Drama

So, getting older means that things don't work as well as they once did. Anything I do to myself now will determine what, if anything, my doctor has to do to me in future decades. Goody for me.

I see my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances adopt new, different, and sometimes crazy habits in order to cheat time, age, gravity, whatever. (Vegan? Are you kidding me? I give you a month without bacon before you crack.) Some of these people are successful, and some just go to such extremes that all I can do is bite my tongue and wish them well on their journey, even if I believe that journey is doomed to failure. But hey, who am I to judge?

I just want to be healthy so that over the remaining four or five decades that I have left I stay as active as possible and my doctor has to do as few invasive and painful procedures as possible.

To this end, I have resolved to make it to the gym every single day and to avoid eating all things that a toddler would eat and enjoy. I can't remember the last time I tasted a slice of pizza. *sigh*

Have I been successful? Not completely, but you have to keep trying, right? Am I demoralized by my failures? Not at all. If I resolved to make it to the gym for a minimum of one hour per day, seven days per week and I only make it three or four days, I'm still doing better than I was a year ago when I was paying for the gym membership but not using it at all. I feel like less of a sucker when I get there...and once I'm there, I might as well stay an hour or longer.

I make a game of doing cardio, which is thankless, boring, and has seemingly little immediate reward. I know that it will save me when the zombie apocalypse comes, but being able to listen to loud, obnoxious music while watching the gym drama unfold in front of me is the best I can hope for at the moment.

I watch the muscle heads grunt, sweat, and worship themselves in the mirrors. I see the gym vixens who wear their underwear on the outside and I amuse myself by speculating whether their sports bras were more expensive than their matching sneakers. It's also a lot of fun to see them preen with the hope of catching a muscle head's attention, particularly when I already know the muscle head who's been targeted is more interested in his reps and audible grunting than in anyone else.

I like being the fly on the wall. I can assume that these two people are more interested in being admired for their respective physiques than in being able to engage in adult conversation. But I could be wrong. Perhaps they're both highly educated, as well as beautiful, and I'm just too old and bitter to accept that they have it all. Well, clearly not all, else they wouldn't be working out in a cut-rate gym in the middle of Bluecollarville, Bergen County, New Jersey.

But these are the thoughts that keep me amused while I spend 45 minutes on the stationary bike or the treadmill. If I wanted to watch television, I'd have stayed home on my couch. If I have to go to the gym (and, according to my doctor, I really have to), then I would much rather watch the human drama unfold in front of me with a soundtrack of old-school punk cranked up to 11 in my ears.