Philly Cheese Steak

When I lived in Philadelphia for a few months on a work assignment seemingly a lifetime ago (12 years), I had a few Philly cheesesteaks, as unhealthy as I was, because I could absorb it as a guy in his mid-20s: I remember it being greasy, cheesy, and meaty: 3 of the best qualities in food I looked for back then, 3 qualities I've definitely shifted down towards the lower end of my priorities at this stage, showing how much my priorities have shifted since then. I didn't get the cheesesteak from Pat's King of Steaks, or Geno's....I think I just got it from a local shop next to work, which was probably a mistake: I didn't got the best in breed, like Al's Italian Beef in Chicago or Lou Malnati's Deep Dish Pizza, or Langer's Pastrami in L.A., or Ben's Chili Dogs in D.C. Now I'll probably never get one of those cheesteaks anymore, and ever since leaving Philly the only cheesteaks I've gotten are the thawed-out mass-produced Subway cheesteaks. Not great. But what MJ and I have found is the next best thing: vegan Philly cheesesteaks sandwhiches, with tofu substituted for the beef and vegan cheese for the cheese. Delicious. I keep preaching this to my vegan "normie" friends who eat everything: you can eat vegan too, it's not just for vegans. Vegan food has its own art of replacing that flavor of its predecessor without losing the quality and with less of those negative qualities of greasy, cheesy, and meaty. I've constantly suprised at how good vegan restaurants can make their food and how innovative they replace differnet meats, with carrots replacing salmon, mushrooms for chicken replacements, seitan for almost anything. Ah, the power of seitan, a Japanese word that they didn't teach me in Japanese class, from "manufactured from egg" directly translated but actually meaning just made from protein of wheat. Tempeh's the one derived from Indonesian word meaning "fermented bean cake" that is so close to bacon.....all the crispiness, the smokey sensation...I am thoroughly impressed by cooks in the vegan discipline. So much more inventive than when Pat Olivieri originated the Philly cheesesteak in the 1930s by putting steak and cheese together into a bun and serving it to people....who knew cheese and meat went well together? I always give negative impressed points for food that is obviously going to be good, no creativity, you're just relying on the original taste of the food....like who knew chocolate and peanut butter combined into one cookie would be good? Of course! Salty potatoes and sweet ketchup, hey what do you know, people like salty and sugary foods, you don't say. It's making healthy traditionally non-tasty foods taste like traditionally grossly unhealthy dishes like Philly cheesesteaks that's the real skill. The study of postage stamps is called philately, and I get it: it's like collecting art. Like a little kid, I took a roll of forever stamps from my parents' cabinet a few weeks ago to mail tax returns, etc..... and I still get a thrill selecting a stamp and posting it on an envelope. Whoever created the postage stamp system is a genius (Google tells me it was Sir Rowland Hill in 1837 with the first stamp being the penny black) because it allows the user to show proof of payment to get the mail to a whole different part of the world (getting mail from Maine to Los Angeles in just a few days is still a miracle in this day and age in my book) but also in the process creating a little individualized picture for each piece of mail, whether it's an American flag, a winter edition with animals in the snow, Alex Trebek commmemortaive Jeopardy stamp, Betty White stamps, stamps of blueberries, pretty much any kinds of stamps you can think of, are available. It's just another thing I'm sad see go, as much as I love email, it's just a part of the fabric of living life, like talking and recipes, that we sacrifice for convenience and conformity to what everyone else is doing. I still like physically cracking a book and looking at the cover, feeling the pages, just like I like peeling off a stamp like peeling off a sticker and pressing it against an envelope, like I was sending a letter for the very first time in suburban Chicago probably when I was 6 or 7 or something, probably to like a pen pal or something as part of a school assignment. Stamps are cool: if tattoos are art and an expression of oneself, and graffiti is art, and vanity plates are art, then stamps are definitely art. I get why there are stamp collectors all over the world and 5 million philatelists just in the US (that's like 1.5% of the population!) That's not insignificant. Probably almost all old people, but still! One day I'll be old and laughed at for collecting these things called "books" in my home. May stamps live forever!