It’s Friday, January 24, 2025. Ya’ll know what that means, right? It’s time to swap out my sweat pants. That’s not a metaphor. I have my sweatpants on two day duty cycles. OK, the truth is, I have no idea how to open this Blog entry, and that seemed as good as any other opening.

I change my underwear daily. Kinda have to. Dieting is not undercarriage friendly. Unless you’re into ketosis enhanced crotch funk. Not that I’m judging. You dig what you dig.

Maybe it’s the changing of the year, maybe it’s the Zeitgeist, but I’ve turned a corner. I know where this peculiar little hobby of mine is heading and that’s a good thing. Life after burnout, is less of a selling point and just more of a condition. Like diet related body funk.

The way I currently earn my living has settled into a routine, more or less. I’ve managed to go almost two years without letting it become who I am. Sure, it’s still terrifying, working remotely with people who grew up thinking you’re supposed to behave like you’re a contestant on a reality show. It’s unnerving because it’s treacherous on top of being sad.

There was a period in the 1980’s when the Japanese were fascinated with 1950’s American beach movies and emulated what they saw. I loved the clothes, but it’s like they were cosplaying 24/7. At first it was interesting and then it just became sad. Star Trek, ironically now that I think of it, warned us. They could only interact with the world from that perspective. It’s the same with the generation who grew up on cut-throat reality shows.

That’s not everyone at the home office, though. There is another group that also needs to be avoided.

The other group I deal with are the ones who have some kind of authority and feel the need to use it. Not because it’s necessary, but as a show of force. Now me, personally, I’ve never been partial to words like “obey”, “compulsory”, or “mandatory” and don’t respond well to them. This group of office workers must have missed the bit in management school discussing the different types of authority; political authority and earned authority. You can assert your political authority over me in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. If you’ve earned my respect, I will do whatever I can to help you out. That’s the authority that matters and you don’t see it much in business these days.

Anyway, I’m an outsider now and while not immune from either of those groups, I’m remote enough to fly under the radar. Mostly.

Getting here has sucked, I’m not going to lie. But it was well worth the trip. I am now able to deal with recruiters on my terms, refuse to get involved in things that don't belong to me, and just stand by and watch while others try to solve problems with arrogance instead of knowledge. I don’t even correct people anymore. I know how it sounds and it’s OK. I don’t mind people thinking I’m anti-social. They’re wrong, of course. I’m quite social, but not at the expense of my sense of well being.

I got a call yesterday from the company that used up what was left of my old life. They wanted me to come back and do some contract work for them. It was hard, it really was, and I made myself sick over it, but I declined, politely. I don’t know if it was the thought of going back that made me nauseous, I used to vomit on the way to work, about once a week, or that I declined it politely. And you know what? I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

That life is over and the corner is turned. This is my life now. Mine. My own. My precious. Remote CAD monkey by day, food blogger and freelance malcontent by night. It’s very Flashdance, if you think about it. “Now I hear the sizzle. Close my eyes, I smell garlic. What a feeling!”

I have two videos and associated recipes in the can for my Patreon account. Still trying to decide if I like their structure or not. I really like BuyMeaCoffee.com, but I can’t figure out how to host my videos on there. They seem a lot more democratic and don’t require users to be members. As such, they also don’t seem as stable.

The plan is, keep blogging over here, use FacetoGram, Twitter, and YouTube for promotions, and use Patreon as my pay wall. Sorry about the money component, but I’m not ad supported and riddled with affiliate links, so my “art” is only available on my terms. Whether anyone supports it or not is not my problem. Yes, it would be huge for me, but I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing regardless. As I explained to my shrink, Bob Ross was going to paint happy little trees, regardless of anyone watching or not.

Alrighty. Enough inside baseball…

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to film a low calorie pork stew featuring turnips and rutabagas. Sorry about the low calorie thing, but I want to keep doing what I’m doing and I have to restore my balance. Been a little heavy on the hedonism and way lax on the rational. So I have a 70 pound mess to clean up. But unlike last year’s “Another Damn Diet”, I’m focusing on what I like about the full calorie dishes and trying to emulate it in a low-calorie way. Pretty sure I broached the topic in the “Benny’s Not Here” post.

I’m a lot of things, but first and foremost, I am a sensualist. I gotta have pleasure. You see those people protesting with signs saying “No {social issue here}, no peace”. Good for them. My sign would read “No pleasure, no point.”

When I did the prototype for this, it was damned cold here in my City on the Bayou, with a freak snowstorm on the way, and all I wanted was to not be cold. My house is not well insulated and drafty as hell. Short of bonding with my sweatpants and living under a pile of blankets, my best bet to stay warm is beer and stew. Beer is obviously out right now, but stew is totally doable.

What I like about stew is that it’s heavy by Nature. Ya’ll know what I’m talking about. “Stick to your ribs” food to get you through the cold. Anthropologically, it makes total sense.

Back in the day, winter stews were made with preserved meats and seasonal (usually root) vegetables which took a long time to cook and since the fires were burning anyway, you might as well make the best use of the energy. Speaking of energy, the human body burns more calories when it’s cold to regulate internal temperature, so heavy stews were just perfect. Utilitarian and tasty are a hard combination to beat.

But my stew of the moment needed to be low calorie and still feel like a stew. And there I was, in the produce aisle, picking up some red peppers to roast when I noticed them. Turnips and beets and rutabagas and parsnips. Glorious, seasonal underfruits!

Some quick googling of calorie counts and some really nice turnips and rutabagas were selected. I have bulk for the stew without using potatoes. Rutabagas and turnips aren’t starchy like potatoes, but the mouthfeel of a rutabaga is close enough. The flavor isn’t but it’s not unpleasant.

Turnips, which I actually like, are different. In a stew, they tend to be a little watery and frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, they still taste like turnips, but in a stew, they look like potatoes and I get frustrated biting into one because, despite looking like one, it has the unmitigated impudence to not be an actual potato.

My stew is starting to take shape. What kind of meat? Chicken? Blech. I just smoked a buttload of utility chicken and I’m a little tired of it. Beef, then? No. Too expensive right now and the beef I have is fated for something else. Pork butt. Yes, yes, yes! Except no. Too fatty. But pork. Intriguing. What do I have on hand?

I have some vacuum sealed lean pork loin on hand that desperately needs to be consumed. Turns out I put it up last January. While not my first choice for stew, not enough connective tissue, and it tends to get dry and stringy long before it gets tender, it’s what I had and what I went with. It turned out well enough, honestly, or I’d be writing about something completely different.

The last aspect of my sensual exploration of low calorie stew is the cooking liquid itself. I still have really decent turkey stock in the freezer from Thanksgiving. And while the gelatin content is high, it’s not high enough to replace starch as a thickener. No potatoes to leach out starch. Or pasta. Or barley. Or flour. Or cornstarch. Or cream reductions.

I thought about whizzing up some red lentils as a thickener. I could also whiz up everything but the pork and serve it like that, I might be able to forgive the turnips for not being potatoes that way, but I want chunks damn near suspended in sauce. So I thought I’d try something new. Enter Xanthan Gum.

Xanthan gum is an indigestible polysaccharide used in industrial food service as a thickening agent and emulsion stabilizer. And I just happened to be playing with it. It’s one of things in the baking section of the grocery store most people never notice until some asshole on the internet encourages them to make a low-calorie stew.

A little goes a long way and it worked like a champ. It’s a little weird to deal with, but with a stick blender in hand, you can treat it like a cornstarch slurry. And while it may encourage flatulence, there are already turnips and rutabagas in this dish, so that ship has sailed.

So that’s what’s coming next. The concept sounds very Northern European to me, so I’m calling it “Winterlicher Schweineeintopf”, despite my inability to pronounce it, which is German for “winter pork stew”.

I like the term “schweineeintopf” because it looks like it has a weenie in it. I’m like that.

I’ll post links to the video and recipe when they are done. Until then, remember, your life is about your pleasure, as long as detracts from no one else’s, government is force, and taxation is theft.

Now go cook something.