Slevin's journal

[guitarplayer]

everybody has to eat.

I am 70% sure a version of this with mortgage instead of food was in the ERE book, maybe we can send Huberman the book.

[Slevin]

My household has recently inherited 50lbs of cashew pieces, with many more 50lbs possible. If you have any good vegan cashew recipes / uses, please send them my way.

[theanimal]

One of our favorite snacks on the PCT was a concoction called "raw cookie dough" that we learned from Andrew Skurka.

Ingredients
1/2 lb cashews
2 oz of rolled oats
Cinnamon to taste
Salt to taste
1 tsp of vanilla
2.5 oz maple syrup
2.5 oz chocolate chips

Blend everything in a food processor or blender except liquids and chocolate chip until it's very finely chopped, not so much until you make cashew butter. Add in maple syrup and vanilla then blend/mix until it's a sticky consistency. Blend/stir in chocolate chips.

If I'm remembering correctly, we were able to do 5x the quantity of the recipe at a time (that was the max that could fit in our blender). We formed them into 3 oz rounds and considered that one serving. They last a very long time (months) and freeze well. We never got sick of them, eating it day after day. Very much recommended!

[Slevin]

@theanimal sound delicious. Also sounds like one of those very dangerous since I’m not hiking the PCT anytime soon . Definitely gonna be great for snacks on hiking days / backpacking days this upcoming season!

[thef0x]

I've continued to think on that thread re dopamine / environment hacking and structuring that. As a small aside, to try, I went to decaf coffee to see if micro implementations help.. basically anything to reduce noise on the nervous system. To be determined..

I think the changes like "alone in a cabin with books" or "at training camp for a 2 week intensive" or "10 day vipassana retreat" will have obvious impacts compared to micro changes but, as we both agree, that deep learning pursuit has to be sustainable with scheduled, periodized 'intensives'. Maybe the best time spent on strategy is on normal life routines and maximizing that b/c the intensives are so binary in comparison...

Appreciate the back and forth and again, thank you for sharing that paper.

.... that now we have 130lbs of vegetables in the freezer, and buying in bulk from the farmers market often cuts you a 30% - 50% off deal.

Would love to know more about your process here at all stages.

E.g. how do you pick the stand / farm to talk with? Where do you contact them? Do you spend time developing rapport or just go straight for it? Do you pick up at their farm, at the farmers market, early, etc? Have you convinced a farmer who has never done this to do this?

Re storage, that's a ton of produce. What are you storing specifically, how, what are you using it in to cook? How long does it take for your household to eat through those foods?

Wondering how this whole system works. I think you've moved since you wrote this post so wondering if you're still doing it these days as well.

Cheers

[Slevin]

I've continued to think on that thread re dopamine / environment hacking and structuring that. As a small aside, to try, I went to decaf coffee to see if micro implementations help.. basically anything to reduce noise on the nervous system. To be determined..

I think the changes like "alone in a cabin with books" or "at training camp for a 2 week intensive" or "10 day vipassana retreat" will have obvious impacts compared to micro changes but, as we both agree, that deep learning pursuit has to be sustainable with scheduled, periodized 'intensives'. Maybe the best time spent on strategy is on normal life routines and maximizing that b/c the intensives are so binary in comparison...

Appreciate the back and forth and again, thank you for sharing that paper.

I have a whole write-up that I need to do, but over the past year since the move I've moved to sitting on the ground while working (read, ~7 hours / day or so), and thus cycling through mobility poses throughout the day as I get twitchy / need to change positions. Despite this being nearly zero effort, I somehow have more gained hip / lower back mobility in this past year than I got through 3-5 years of active difficult training. I can't rule out path dependent accumulated effects, but its been maddening to watch me slouch into success (in the venkatesh rao sense, not literally... pls don't slouch at these timescales) where my active efforts were less successful. I'm leaning full Okinawa / Katy Bowman right now in the "use your body all the time and make it normal" sense.

Foodstuff also to be addressed a bit later when I have some free time to do a write up.

[Western Red Cedar]

If you have any good vegan cashew recipes / uses, please send them my way.

I don't have our recipe books on hand, but DW makes a killer granola with cashews, dried cranberries and coconut. Cashews also make for the best vegan cheese, so there are probably endless options to put that to use if you master a recipe.

We just tried a killer vegan Bahn Mi this week with Tofu (fried), cashews, pineapple, and fresh herbs. There are lots of good options for stir fries and other dishes in Thai food.

As a vegan, this probably isn't news to you, but large portions of cashews sounds like an ideal problem.

[Ego]

I get cashews every so often. Mrs. Ego loves this vegan alfredo. Fifty pounds is a lot of alfredo.
https://thevegan8.com/vegan-garlic-alfredo-sauce/

[Slevin]

I get cashews every so often. Mrs. Ego loves this vegan alfredo. Fifty pounds is a lot of alfredo.
https://thevegan8.com/vegan-garlic-alfredo-sauce/

Will try this specific version for sure. Cashew Alfredo is like the first thing I made with the cashews, it’s always such a delicious creamy sauce (usually I use sunflower or pumpkin seeds for it due to them being much cheaper).

[quote=Slevin post_id=287971 time=<a href="tel:1712627576">1712627576</a> user_id=4602]
If you have any good vegan cashew recipes / uses, please send them my way.

I don't have our recipe books on hand, but DW makes a killer granola with cashews, dried cranberries and coconut. Cashews also make for the best vegan cheese, so there are probably endless options to put that to use if you master a recipe.

We just tried a killer vegan Bahn Mi this week with Tofu (fried), cashews, pineapple, and fresh herbs. There are lots of good options for stir fries and other dishes in Thai food.

As a vegan, this probably isn't news to you, but large portions of cashews sounds like an ideal problem.
[/quote]

The reason we have so much is from the vegan cheese masters .

We are generally just okay at making vegan cheese since we optimize for simplicity. Whereas making good vegan cheese these days is literally hand making plant milks, curdling them to get plant-based curd analogues, then gathering and pressing a bunch of these (don’t know exact steps), inoculating them with molds, and storing them in a safe temp controlled cellar for weeks. It’s literally just cheese making at this point, and incurs all the same skill walls.

Also, love tofu Bahn Mis. We eat them a lot when we can… unfortunately, it seems like the places that make the best tofu Bahn Mis tend to not be the most popular, at least in places I’ve lived, and so my favorite shops have closed down. Probably not a problem in Asia / Thailand!

Also yes, totally suffering from success .

[Western Red Cedar]

Mastering vegan cheese sounds like a good goal for skillfest!

Have you tried making a vegan pesto with cashews? When we were growing a lot of basil we made it with almonds regularly, and tried it with walnuts as well. Not quite as good as pine nuts, but still did the trick at a much cheaper price.

[Slevin]

Great idea! We usually make pesto with sunflower seeds, as they can be had for <$2 / lb and make quite good pesto. Would recommend. Sunflower seeds are vastly underrated. Basically, pesto just needs fatty nuts / seeds, any type of greens, any type of citrus, basically any oil, garlic, and nooch. Cashews will work well, we just never do it because it's expensive when you don't have a glut. But yeah, obvs a good idea in the current situation! Around these parts, we usually use carrot tops / tree collards / kale / radish greens / literally any green we can get our hands on for the greens. A handful of arugula in there can also be a nice kick.