Soy Bomb

I'm about to offend my more carnivorous friends. The Deej, and maybe Marana Lawdog, you may want to skip this post if you're reading. The menu description of my lunch yesterday is as follows:

A grilled soy burger topped with crispy soy bacon strips and melted vegan cheddar vegan with soy mayo on an organic whole wheat bun

Try not to throw up, D-Rock. As disgusting as it sounds, it was actually rather delicious. I got it from Lovin' Spoonfuls, a recently opened vegetarian restaurant here in Tucson.

If you would have approached me two years ago (from the future) and said I'd be grooving to soy foods one day, I probably would have stabbed you in the duodenum. Why? Because you're probably here to commit crimes, and I need to regulate until Van Damme gets here. I also don't want no goobacks takin' are jabs (sp). But mostly I'd stab you because I'm a red-blooded American and Americans eat meat. If you don't eat meat, yer a terrorist. If you don't like it, you can git out!

But over the past year, I've gained the mentality of a scientist in the 50s imagining the future. I now see that soy is the food of the future. This is partially due to Legal counsel's open-minded, semi-vegetarian habits. It's also partially due to my realization that soy is the future, and you can't fight the future (no matter what the X-files tells you). And maybe it's because I fell asleep in a soy field last year. Oh god, i shouldn't have said that. The brain pods are going to be upset...

If you have yet to embrace soy as both your food and master, allow the mighty Wikipedia to convince you. And I quote:

The small, inconspicuous, self-fertile flowers are borne in the axil of the leaf and are either white or purple; The fruit is a hairy pod that grow in clusters of 3-5, with each pod 3-8 cm (1-3 inches) long and usually containing 2-4 (rarely more) seeds 5-11 mm in diameter....The hull of the mature bean is hard, water resistant, and protects the cotyledon and hypocotyl (or "germ") from damage. The scar, visible on the seed coat, is called the hilum (colors include black, brown, buff, gray and yellow) and at one end of the hilum is the micropyle, or small opening in the seed coat which can allow the absorption of water.

Set your mouth to salivate.

My history with soy is a long and boring. Well, short and boring. When I first went to sushi with Legal Counsel, the waitress brought out a tasty little treat called "edamame" (pronounced ed-uh-maym). They were delicious. But when i found out they were soy, I nearly burned the place down. Legal Counsel had to bare-knuckle box me into submission. Queensbury Rules. She's stronger than me. Anyway, I accepted defeat and the fact that straight up soybeans are delicious. They also serve miso soup, which I didn't realize was soy until about 5 minutes ago. Wikipedia says:

Miso is a thick paste, similar to the Korean doenjang, made by fermenting soybeans with sea salt and kōji, itself the product of fermenting rice, barley or soybeans with a mold culture, kōji-kin (Aspergillus oryzae).

I know - delicious sounding again, right? Those soy people have the best marketing...

So initially I accepted soy on its own as pure flavor crystals. But since then, I've done something I never imagined. I've embraced soy as a substitute for perfectly good regular food. I've been getting soy milk instead of regular milk at Starbucks. But I always remember what Lewis Black says: "There's no such thing as soy milk. It's soy juice." Nobody would drink soy juice, even though it's soy delicious. Now I've replaced beef with soy patties. I'm pretty much consuming a whole soy cow. I'd actually like to see that. With that soy bacon, I'm eating soy pig. Soon, I'll be consuming a whole soy barnyard. I want to visit the soy petting zoo!!

It's just so versatile. You can make: milk, flour, oil, TVP fake meat, tofu, infant formula, soy sauce (which I honestly didn't think of as soy until just now), cheese, yogurt, cosmetics, plastics, inks, crayons, biodiesel and even vodka. horribly disgusting soy vodka. It's illegal in Russia...

But it might not be perfect. I know, I know - I'm shocked, too. There's a whole group of terrorists out there who hate the stuff. Some studies say that soy reduces cholesterol, reduces cancer risks, battles menopause and is all around healthy. but these communists say otherwise. They claim protease inhibitors in soy can harm your pancake-reas (pancreas in layman's terms). Phytoestrogens can mess up your endocrine system. Phytates can cause scoleosis. But I think they're just jealous. Nobody is cultivating and processing them for consumption...except for soylent green. Don't hate the legume player, hate the legume game.

I for one embrace our soy overlords. And you should, too. It's quite delicious. When we're living miles above Earth's surface in those Jetson houses, it'll be our only food source. Well, that and talking space dogs.


That was a rather long soy rant...