I want to eat my steering wheel. Yours too. I’m on day one of a three day juice cleanse, and all I can think about is chewing and swallowing. Hey look! A spruce! I bet it would taste fantastic. A deflated beach ball! Choice! Would it be bad to eat all my patient education brochures instead of handing them out to doctors’ offices?
I don’t normally do this kind of thing, the clean-eating-pure-hippy-food-nonsense thing—I love candy and diet soda for Pete’s sake—but I need a clean slate. I’ve been working my body hard lately yet feeding it poorly. Which is unfair. I’ve ever said that the thing I get from my yoga practice is a respect for my body that I never had before. Well if I do respect the little form that’s been toiling on my behalf, I gotsta do a food about-face.
The hard work the body’s been up to? It’s all yoga. (Duh.) There was a day last week when I did two Bikram classes back to back and then followed up that sweatfest with a power yoga class. That's a good four and a half hours of not-easy yoga. And, like, on purpose. Of late I’m averaging 8-9 yoga classes of various styles each week. It’s like an asana binge. Which, weird.
My practice turned 10 back in July. In those ten years I’ve done around 2,500 hours of class, spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in yoga clothes and studio membership fees, attended festivals and conferences, read books, subscribed to magazines, and most recently enrolled in a yoga teacher training. The right teacher training. I started a different training six years ago. Mistake. I wasn’t ready. I needed a stronger practice of my own before I had the foundation to fiddle with other folks’.
We started the training last weekend. Therefore now I listen to Sanskrit in the car, dream about sequencing, and walk around mumbling stuff I’m working to memorize, which makes me look like a crazy person which goes right along with how I want to gnaw on whatever's in front of me.
Upon hearing that I’m doing this yoga teacher training thinger friends have asked, “Oh, so when you’re done will you quit your job?” Oh my, no. Next to Jim, spending money is my favorite thing. (An exaggeration, yes, but not a big one.) Yoga teaching: not lucrative. Therefore, not a career for me. Hobby, yes. Main source of income? Nope. But I will learn a lot, and I intend to acquire a new skill set, a thing of which you cannot have too many.
One of my Bikram teachers, Cameron, is also doing this training. That’s right yoga “purists,” a Bikram teacher adding vinyasa to his yoga repertoire. Worlds collide and it’s about time. I couldn’t be happier that we are plowing through this together. See, Jim and I love Cameron to bits. After a full day of training on Saturday we had him over for dinner, and I’ll be damned if Jim didn’t surprise us with a seriously extensive salad bar, a key lime tart (zing!), and a spread of fancy cheeses all labeled for our sampling pleasure, for cheese is what makes Cameron's heart sing.
Mmm. Food . . .
Jim is real, team. I’m not making him up. Yet for how dreamy he is and how unimaginably fantastic he treats me, the guy sounds straight out of a summer RomCom. We meet for lunch. We got to yoga. We hold hands in savasana. We text. He’s proud of me. We respect each other. We talk business. We walk the dogs. He builds me stuff. We watch Iron Chef. I want to be where he is. He surprises me every day. We are happy together. He’s happy. I’m happy. Friends and colleagues see it on our faces. And we are constantly stunned at how great we’ve got it. I mean, I could be so delighted with another human? He feels the same way. He says, “You're so good to me. I don’t deserve you!” I reply, “No, you deserve better!” We are pathetic. I’m digging it.
Also, I just swallowed my gum. Not on purpose but that’s very probably frowned upon when in the throws of a fatiguing, rage-inducing juice cleanse.
UPDATE—
I wrote all that yesterday during lunch but wasn’t near a hotspot so I didn’t post. During yoga last night Teacher Grace said that if we listen to our bodies they’ll tell us what they need. Mine said pizza. So I bailed on the cleanse, and Jim, Dustin, and I went to Blind Onion.
Showing posts with label EAT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EAT. Show all posts
Friday, September 26, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
LABOR-SAVING APPARATI
Caitlyn got my KitchenAid mixer—that I had for, like, three years and used maybe ten times—leaving me the opportunity to get a merrier hue than gunmetal. Cornflower blue won my heart. So now I have a cornflower blue KitchenAid mixer. I’ve decided to initiate it with snickerdoodles, crispy ones, sweet James’ cup of tea. Maybe tonight. Probably tomorrow, based on projected yoga-class conclusion times.
Now that I’m thinking of it, here’s how Caitlyn got my mixer: Whitney accosted me at a family event and told me that while I don’t need a stand mixer, Caitlyn does, so I should give mine to her. I said, “Uh, no,” giving Whit her cue to launch into a pressure-full, logic-laden pitch after which she closed me, saying, “Will you commit to giving Caitlyn your KitchenAid mixer?” Baffled about how Whit was able to best my years of corporate sales training worth thousands of someone else’s dollars, I sort of said yes and then a couple weeks later I was mixer-less, which didn’t matter at all until I realized that there were cornflower blue ones, and I was therefore in sore need of a new kitchen contraption.
There’s some other new cooking gadgetry ‘round here too these days. There is a kitchen torch because I should get to brûlée sugar atop lemon curd on my English muffin in the morning. There is an immersion blender that won’t be useful until soup season, and even then will get used maybe three times all winter but will be worth it since I won’t be pouring portions of hot soup into the blender and thus risking the kinds of burns real cooks suffer from and subsequently display as soup merit badges. I got a kitchen scale because using my postal scale for baking was weird. Oh, and a cast-iron skillet. I finally have one of those.
If Jim did so at all he did it covertly, but my husband probably shook his head as all these kitchen things arrived. It’s not like I cook or have turned over some new leaf in the home’s heart. All these instruments were just things I’ve been wanting for a while, and now seemed like a good time. So if I decide to crack open one of my many cookbooks and use it as more than reading over breakfast and actually make something other than a big salad, I have tools.
Reconsidering, maybe Jim didn’t shake his head, because the garage is stocked with tools that don’t get used regularly, but are great to have when he needs them. Eh, but he’s actually fluent with those tools—I think he really got a kick out of the look on my face when he showed me how to use the glass cutter; Whoa, I say—and I, on the other hand, am a self-admitted kitchen dunce.
That’s another something about Jim that’s great. He “lets,” so to speak, me do whatever I want. “I’ll support you” comes out of his mouth even before I finish saying what I’m thinking I want to do. I think he trusts that whatever it is that I'm planning is something I've considered with my bright little mind and so is at least not the worst idea.
It’s not lip service either. An example: I’ve been thinking I want to do a local yoga teacher training workshop, and yesterday I sent him the link asking what he thought. “I’ll support you” was what he thought. But he doesn’t just divorce himself from the conversation either. When I was deliberating on a new computer I was all over the place on which one I wanted. We talked it through, he made sense, I went with the one he thought would work best for me, and, as I type these very words on it, I’m happy with my choice.
Happy with my choice in regard to laptops. Happy with my choice in regard to a second husband.
It feels odd and sensational to be so dizzily enamored with my spouse. I didn’t feel that way before. When my first marriage happened at 20 I treated the marriage as a strategic achievement, which it was, and a failed one at that. This is different. I’m itchy to have Jim hold me. I always can’t wait to talk to him. I respect the hell out of his mind. He’s someone I feel that I need to live up to not make excuses for.
I keep wondering when I’ll get past the differences in my new life as compared to the old. Time will do it, I’m sure, but I’m not there yet. The contrasts are too stark, and they come out in such simple things. At five this morning Jim went mountain biking with some friends. After ten years married to the other “man” I’m still so blown away that Jim a) exercises, b) does so outdoors, c) does so before work, d) has a for-real job, and e) has friends. It’s such a simple thing to him, going mountain biking before work with friends, but to me it’s a pile of ways that he’s an improvement on what I dealt with before.
How in the hell did I get so lucky? I ask that a lot.
Also, Sophie has taken to having crabapples from the backyard as her second breakfast. I’m guessing that will lead to some puppy gastrointestinal upset that will bum me out. At least she was unsuccessful in opening the food coloring that she dragged out of the pantry yesterday. Mine is a very rotten little dog.
Now that I’m thinking of it, here’s how Caitlyn got my mixer: Whitney accosted me at a family event and told me that while I don’t need a stand mixer, Caitlyn does, so I should give mine to her. I said, “Uh, no,” giving Whit her cue to launch into a pressure-full, logic-laden pitch after which she closed me, saying, “Will you commit to giving Caitlyn your KitchenAid mixer?” Baffled about how Whit was able to best my years of corporate sales training worth thousands of someone else’s dollars, I sort of said yes and then a couple weeks later I was mixer-less, which didn’t matter at all until I realized that there were cornflower blue ones, and I was therefore in sore need of a new kitchen contraption.
There’s some other new cooking gadgetry ‘round here too these days. There is a kitchen torch because I should get to brûlée sugar atop lemon curd on my English muffin in the morning. There is an immersion blender that won’t be useful until soup season, and even then will get used maybe three times all winter but will be worth it since I won’t be pouring portions of hot soup into the blender and thus risking the kinds of burns real cooks suffer from and subsequently display as soup merit badges. I got a kitchen scale because using my postal scale for baking was weird. Oh, and a cast-iron skillet. I finally have one of those.
If Jim did so at all he did it covertly, but my husband probably shook his head as all these kitchen things arrived. It’s not like I cook or have turned over some new leaf in the home’s heart. All these instruments were just things I’ve been wanting for a while, and now seemed like a good time. So if I decide to crack open one of my many cookbooks and use it as more than reading over breakfast and actually make something other than a big salad, I have tools.
Reconsidering, maybe Jim didn’t shake his head, because the garage is stocked with tools that don’t get used regularly, but are great to have when he needs them. Eh, but he’s actually fluent with those tools—I think he really got a kick out of the look on my face when he showed me how to use the glass cutter; Whoa, I say—and I, on the other hand, am a self-admitted kitchen dunce.
That’s another something about Jim that’s great. He “lets,” so to speak, me do whatever I want. “I’ll support you” comes out of his mouth even before I finish saying what I’m thinking I want to do. I think he trusts that whatever it is that I'm planning is something I've considered with my bright little mind and so is at least not the worst idea.
It’s not lip service either. An example: I’ve been thinking I want to do a local yoga teacher training workshop, and yesterday I sent him the link asking what he thought. “I’ll support you” was what he thought. But he doesn’t just divorce himself from the conversation either. When I was deliberating on a new computer I was all over the place on which one I wanted. We talked it through, he made sense, I went with the one he thought would work best for me, and, as I type these very words on it, I’m happy with my choice.
Happy with my choice in regard to laptops. Happy with my choice in regard to a second husband.
It feels odd and sensational to be so dizzily enamored with my spouse. I didn’t feel that way before. When my first marriage happened at 20 I treated the marriage as a strategic achievement, which it was, and a failed one at that. This is different. I’m itchy to have Jim hold me. I always can’t wait to talk to him. I respect the hell out of his mind. He’s someone I feel that I need to live up to not make excuses for.
I keep wondering when I’ll get past the differences in my new life as compared to the old. Time will do it, I’m sure, but I’m not there yet. The contrasts are too stark, and they come out in such simple things. At five this morning Jim went mountain biking with some friends. After ten years married to the other “man” I’m still so blown away that Jim a) exercises, b) does so outdoors, c) does so before work, d) has a for-real job, and e) has friends. It’s such a simple thing to him, going mountain biking before work with friends, but to me it’s a pile of ways that he’s an improvement on what I dealt with before.
How in the hell did I get so lucky? I ask that a lot.
Also, Sophie has taken to having crabapples from the backyard as her second breakfast. I’m guessing that will lead to some puppy gastrointestinal upset that will bum me out. At least she was unsuccessful in opening the food coloring that she dragged out of the pantry yesterday. Mine is a very rotten little dog.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
RAGBAG
• I woke up this morning at 4:30 with three thoughts jockeying for priority—I hope I’m not still fat today. Gimme Jim. I need to order some vegan marshmallows.
• The cut watermelon I bought at Whole Foods for lunch was perfectly crisp and so sweet that I worried for a moment that someone had buried it in sugar before packaging.
• A dashing benefactor bestowed on me a FitBit Flex. It’s surprising how much that bit of rubber around my wrist motivates me to want to get off my ass. I’m not saying I actually do it, but I sure do think about it more. Well, and I have been maximizing inefficiency to get more steps in during the day. I’m already a stair-taker, and I skip the moving walkways at airports, but now I also park a couple buildings away from where I’m supposed to be; I forget stuff on purpose so I have to go back out to my car; I walk the longest route possible to get to my doctors’ offices. The more inefficient I am, the more I congratulate myself.
• Yoga last night was incredibly difficult. Not because it was too hot. Not because I was dehydrated. Not because I ate to close to class. Not because the teacher was a punk. No, it was really damn hard because I had to look at myself in the mirror for 90 minutes. Sometimes that is the toughest part of a Bikram practice—you have to keep eyes on the product of your choices. It can be hell.
• One of the best moments in my life happened two years ago. I was up at Squaw Creek at Wanderlust. I was in a packed power yoga class. Yoga celeb Kathryn Budig was teaching. And her super snug red yoga pants revealed that she, Powerful Goddess of Upside Down, had cellulite on her thighs. It was a shining moment of equality that I’ll never forget.
• While going to and fro today I drove through a construction zone where I saw a worker taping a manhole covering into place. I’m pretty certain that’s what I saw. And I think that might be shoddy workmanship.
• Drug reps are people too. I know it might be hard to believe, but it’s true. We have eyes and ears and everything. Why then do so many people think it’s appropriate to talk about us while we are mere feet away from them? It happens all. the. time. Patients in waiting rooms will discuss my shoes. They will discuss my size. They will comment on my bag. And very rarely will they do it to me. They talk about me. Nurses and medical assistants do it as well. Sometimes I turn my back to walk away and they immediately start in commenting on something about me. I have ears! I can hear you! It’s usually fine and kind and whatever, and I try to ignore it, but a couple weeks ago I stopped at a nurses station, chatted with the three gals there and then turned to make for the fridge to see how many of my samples they needed. The second I turned, one medical assistant, in a low but not low enough voice, said to another, “She has a fabulous personality.” It was a comment I was delighted to overhear. And then when I was leaving the office she said it to my face. “You have fabulous personality.” I thrive on compliments. I took it to heart. I immediately texted my boyfriend to let him know that I have a fabulous personality.
• The cut watermelon I bought at Whole Foods for lunch was perfectly crisp and so sweet that I worried for a moment that someone had buried it in sugar before packaging.
• A dashing benefactor bestowed on me a FitBit Flex. It’s surprising how much that bit of rubber around my wrist motivates me to want to get off my ass. I’m not saying I actually do it, but I sure do think about it more. Well, and I have been maximizing inefficiency to get more steps in during the day. I’m already a stair-taker, and I skip the moving walkways at airports, but now I also park a couple buildings away from where I’m supposed to be; I forget stuff on purpose so I have to go back out to my car; I walk the longest route possible to get to my doctors’ offices. The more inefficient I am, the more I congratulate myself.
• Yoga last night was incredibly difficult. Not because it was too hot. Not because I was dehydrated. Not because I ate to close to class. Not because the teacher was a punk. No, it was really damn hard because I had to look at myself in the mirror for 90 minutes. Sometimes that is the toughest part of a Bikram practice—you have to keep eyes on the product of your choices. It can be hell.
• One of the best moments in my life happened two years ago. I was up at Squaw Creek at Wanderlust. I was in a packed power yoga class. Yoga celeb Kathryn Budig was teaching. And her super snug red yoga pants revealed that she, Powerful Goddess of Upside Down, had cellulite on her thighs. It was a shining moment of equality that I’ll never forget.
• While going to and fro today I drove through a construction zone where I saw a worker taping a manhole covering into place. I’m pretty certain that’s what I saw. And I think that might be shoddy workmanship.
• Drug reps are people too. I know it might be hard to believe, but it’s true. We have eyes and ears and everything. Why then do so many people think it’s appropriate to talk about us while we are mere feet away from them? It happens all. the. time. Patients in waiting rooms will discuss my shoes. They will discuss my size. They will comment on my bag. And very rarely will they do it to me. They talk about me. Nurses and medical assistants do it as well. Sometimes I turn my back to walk away and they immediately start in commenting on something about me. I have ears! I can hear you! It’s usually fine and kind and whatever, and I try to ignore it, but a couple weeks ago I stopped at a nurses station, chatted with the three gals there and then turned to make for the fridge to see how many of my samples they needed. The second I turned, one medical assistant, in a low but not low enough voice, said to another, “She has a fabulous personality.” It was a comment I was delighted to overhear. And then when I was leaving the office she said it to my face. “You have fabulous personality.” I thrive on compliments. I took it to heart. I immediately texted my boyfriend to let him know that I have a fabulous personality.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
RATIONS
• Someone please find me a chocolatier for a best friend.
• The other day Jim was playing with Sophie and said, “I can see why this dog makes you happy.” I was glad. I like that even though she’s a major pest, my puppy is obviously a cool cat.
• I made baked onion rings today. When I tasted them, I exclaimed, “Are you kidding me?” They were terrific. I mixed up some honey mustard to go with, and while eating every single ring, I got some ideas for how I’d alter the recipe next go ‘round.
• The medical office with which I’m doing lunch tomorrow requested I bring bagel dogs. Uh, okay.
• It’s warm enough for me to take the second comforter off my bed. But since I removed that blanket we’re gonna end up with a cold snap. Sorry Northern Nevada. I take full responsibility for the impending freezing weather.
• I always cut myself when I shave my legs. Sharp razor. Dull razor. No matter the razor, I always leave the shower with blood coursing down my paper-white legs.
• The following foods are really gross: mango, avocado, eggplant, coconut, mayonnaise, cream cheese, cream of shit soup (of any flavor), sour cream, kale, zucchini, passion fruit, papaya, booze, kalamata olives, prunes, sweet pickles, cooked cherries, green peppers, radicchio, kiwi, sushi, wasabi, crème brûlée, panna cotta, apricots, flan, panettone, cooked peas, buttermilk, sweet potatoes, Bavarian cream, raisins in baked goods, and Kombucha.
• I put myself down for a nap today, and before I did, I had to go downstairs to pour water over the rest of the brownies I baked. Else when I woke up I’d go downstairs and eat every last one. I always want to eat in bulk when I wake up.
• I try to wear red lipstick, I do. But I usually end up scrubbing it off as soon as I’ve put it on. Sometimes I have a really tough time taking my face seriously.
• For the world’s laziest Bikram yogi I sure do a lot of yoga laundry. 70% of my laundry each week is made up of tiny shorts, tinier tops, and the most disgusting towels in Sparks, Nevada.
• Seasonal allergies make me impressed by just how much snot my body can produce. With the volume of snot that’s in me, it’s a wonder that there’s any space for food. Then again, my body probably needs the calories so that it can put all its efforts into making astronomical amounts of snot.
• I like living alone. I'm not surprised by that. But I am glad. It would suck to live alone and be bummed out about it. It pleases me that I enjoy my own company.
• Per my Hannah’s recommendation, I bought Kerastase shampoo and conditioner. I have therefore spent the equivalent of next month’s mortgage payment on itty bitty bottles of French goop for my pixie-short hair.
• I’m doing great with not nibbling my nails. I haven’t bit into a fingernail in three months. But picking at my cuticles? Hmmm, can we talk about something else?
• Pink Lady are my favorite apples. Thanks for introducing me to them, Jessica.
• Someone just rang my doorbell. Don't do that. I'm a small, smart woman who lives alone; therefore, I will never answer my door when I'm home by myself. I'm not even going to get up and check to see who it is, lest I get caught. If you want to come over, text me first. If you don't have my cell number, we're not close enough for you to be coming to my house.
• The other day Jim was playing with Sophie and said, “I can see why this dog makes you happy.” I was glad. I like that even though she’s a major pest, my puppy is obviously a cool cat.
• I made baked onion rings today. When I tasted them, I exclaimed, “Are you kidding me?” They were terrific. I mixed up some honey mustard to go with, and while eating every single ring, I got some ideas for how I’d alter the recipe next go ‘round.
• The medical office with which I’m doing lunch tomorrow requested I bring bagel dogs. Uh, okay.
• It’s warm enough for me to take the second comforter off my bed. But since I removed that blanket we’re gonna end up with a cold snap. Sorry Northern Nevada. I take full responsibility for the impending freezing weather.
• I always cut myself when I shave my legs. Sharp razor. Dull razor. No matter the razor, I always leave the shower with blood coursing down my paper-white legs.
• The following foods are really gross: mango, avocado, eggplant, coconut, mayonnaise, cream cheese, cream of shit soup (of any flavor), sour cream, kale, zucchini, passion fruit, papaya, booze, kalamata olives, prunes, sweet pickles, cooked cherries, green peppers, radicchio, kiwi, sushi, wasabi, crème brûlée, panna cotta, apricots, flan, panettone, cooked peas, buttermilk, sweet potatoes, Bavarian cream, raisins in baked goods, and Kombucha.
• I put myself down for a nap today, and before I did, I had to go downstairs to pour water over the rest of the brownies I baked. Else when I woke up I’d go downstairs and eat every last one. I always want to eat in bulk when I wake up.
• I try to wear red lipstick, I do. But I usually end up scrubbing it off as soon as I’ve put it on. Sometimes I have a really tough time taking my face seriously.
• For the world’s laziest Bikram yogi I sure do a lot of yoga laundry. 70% of my laundry each week is made up of tiny shorts, tinier tops, and the most disgusting towels in Sparks, Nevada.
• Seasonal allergies make me impressed by just how much snot my body can produce. With the volume of snot that’s in me, it’s a wonder that there’s any space for food. Then again, my body probably needs the calories so that it can put all its efforts into making astronomical amounts of snot.
• I like living alone. I'm not surprised by that. But I am glad. It would suck to live alone and be bummed out about it. It pleases me that I enjoy my own company.
• Per my Hannah’s recommendation, I bought Kerastase shampoo and conditioner. I have therefore spent the equivalent of next month’s mortgage payment on itty bitty bottles of French goop for my pixie-short hair.
• I’m doing great with not nibbling my nails. I haven’t bit into a fingernail in three months. But picking at my cuticles? Hmmm, can we talk about something else?
• Pink Lady are my favorite apples. Thanks for introducing me to them, Jessica.
• Someone just rang my doorbell. Don't do that. I'm a small, smart woman who lives alone; therefore, I will never answer my door when I'm home by myself. I'm not even going to get up and check to see who it is, lest I get caught. If you want to come over, text me first. If you don't have my cell number, we're not close enough for you to be coming to my house.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
MORE ITEMS
• Last night's weird-ass dream had my sister, Haley, super high on some cocktail that included Xanax. Frowny face. In this same dream, my sister, Whitney, had me taking care of her daughter for a few days. For the record, Whit, that was a really bad idea; I forgot about Violet and left her in an abandoned castle. I'm really sorry. As it turns out though, she was just fine.
• My dog loves cucumbers.
• Can someone please make me some chocolate pasta? I saw it on Iron Chef America and I want to try some o' that for myself. Only please don't serve the pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage. I'd like mine dressed simply with salted butter and a complimentary cheese.
• I thinned my own hair this morning before work. I had my mini mop cut last week, but I was feeling a little fat on one side today. So I thinned it. I realize that DIY haircuttery is unadvisable, but everything came out okay. At least in the spots I can see.
• Fresca is the cat's pajamas. Chemicals over calories, baby.
• Worst texture for food: Mushy.
• I made a step in the right yoga direction. I actually showed up to class today. High five, me. Oh, and I lived. So I guess I can see about going back tomorrow. Because sweating my damn brains out sounds like a whole lot of fun, right? Duh.
• If you're not already of the Drugstore.com faithful, consider giving it a shot. If you use this t-riff resource you'll find you have more time to sit on your butt and watch Chopped. And who doesn't want to watch four chefs try to make an appetizer out of mushrooms, Sour Patch Kids, Tonka trucks, and somebody's kid sister?
• My dog loves cucumbers.
• Can someone please make me some chocolate pasta? I saw it on Iron Chef America and I want to try some o' that for myself. Only please don't serve the pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage. I'd like mine dressed simply with salted butter and a complimentary cheese.
• I thinned my own hair this morning before work. I had my mini mop cut last week, but I was feeling a little fat on one side today. So I thinned it. I realize that DIY haircuttery is unadvisable, but everything came out okay. At least in the spots I can see.
• Fresca is the cat's pajamas. Chemicals over calories, baby.
• Worst texture for food: Mushy.
• I made a step in the right yoga direction. I actually showed up to class today. High five, me. Oh, and I lived. So I guess I can see about going back tomorrow. Because sweating my damn brains out sounds like a whole lot of fun, right? Duh.
• If you're not already of the Drugstore.com faithful, consider giving it a shot. If you use this t-riff resource you'll find you have more time to sit on your butt and watch Chopped. And who doesn't want to watch four chefs try to make an appetizer out of mushrooms, Sour Patch Kids, Tonka trucks, and somebody's kid sister?
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
FOOD AS FUEL
I want it. I need it. I look forward to it. When I go out of town—for work or for pleasure—I go find a yoga studio. When I’m traveling for work, yoga’s my treat at the end of the day. I spend the entire meeting looking forward to getting cosy with my mat. I've been known to pay a $35 cab fee each way to get to a $20 drop-in class out of sheer yoga desperation.*
Immediately after confirming travel reservations I go surfing for a class. I find the best studio nearest my hotel. I look up directions, both walking and driving. I find a cab phone number. In the way that some people plan cool restaurants to visit, I plan my yoga classes.
Now I’ve been doing this yoga thing long enough to know what my body needs in order to have a decent class. (Decent means I’m not swaying with fatigue or dealing with a hunger headache.) And, yes, one of those things I know that I need is food. Duh, right?
Though it’s not usually a problem to feed myself when I’m at home, work meetings make the simple task of eating so complicated. It screws with my routine.
It begins with breakfast. Bacon breafast burritos. Cereal with 2% milk. Big sugary muffins. Sausage. And fruit. Thankfully there’s always fruit. So that’s what I eat. I look like a pig piling my plate—and I do mean piling—with the cut pineapple and melon, but since it’s all I get to eat, I’m not bashful.
Mid morning snacktime? If I’m lucky they have nuts. Nuts are helpful. But too often hotels serve parfait-type things, and I’m not eating one of those unless I made it myself. You’ll find this is a theme with me. I have to know what’s my food. I once thought that everyone was like this. But I really don’t put anything in my mouth that I don’t know exactly what’s in there. In restaurants I order things simple, bare. A potato that I dress myself. Green beans. A roll. Chips. Salsa. I eat simply because I trust exactly no one. Same goes for meeting food.
Lunch is always a party. Today’s menu: pasta with smoked tomato and cream sauce (uh-uh), chicken caesar salad (nope), barbecued chicken (yeah right), [way over-] roasted root vegetables (bingo?). Not quite bingo. I couldn’t tell what each vegetable was. I picked out the potatoes, but left the weird smooshy bits. Lunch: a couple pieces of potato, a slice of bread, and a square of brownie. I was getting desperate for calories.
The throbbing hunger headache set in around 3PM. And here I am at a clinical event designed to teach 110 drug reps more about health and diabetes. My blood sugars were definitely in the toilet. (I can’t be certain though, ‘cause when it came time to test them like diabetics do—an empathy exercise—I opted out. Voluntarily stick myself with a needle? Are you out of your Vulcan mind?)
So yoga? Could I treat myself to an evening class today? No. I absolutely could not. I came back to my hotel room, ordered room service—black bean burger and hummus plate, if you were dying to know—came thisclose to licking the bowl that held steamed broccoli, and now I’m waiting for the headache to depart. Please. Soon.
I so look forward to finding a class. To hitting my mat. Especially on this trip. In visiting Minneapolis I have the chance to visit a CorePower studio, and I've been wanting to do that for a long time. So when it can’t reasonably happen tonight? When I'm not sure about tomorrow either? When work or food or work and food get in the way? (Did I mention I also had a 6PM conference call this evening?) Well, it doesn’t piss me off so much as it makes me sad. Yeah, there are times that I feel guilty for not making it to the mat, but when I don’t go to class—by choice or circumstance—I miss it. I’m bummed.
And thanks to this day of hunger and time zone fatigue I’m damn near close to crying. Again.
*Why not just practice in my room, right? Well, sometimes I do. I'm the little thing in the airport with a mat slung across her back. But when my company makes me share a room, I don't dig into a personal practice. There's just something not quite right with flowing through sun salutations and some strange woman walks in. It gets in the way of yoga giving me what I need. So I leave the premises for a class.
Immediately after confirming travel reservations I go surfing for a class. I find the best studio nearest my hotel. I look up directions, both walking and driving. I find a cab phone number. In the way that some people plan cool restaurants to visit, I plan my yoga classes.
Now I’ve been doing this yoga thing long enough to know what my body needs in order to have a decent class. (Decent means I’m not swaying with fatigue or dealing with a hunger headache.) And, yes, one of those things I know that I need is food. Duh, right?
Though it’s not usually a problem to feed myself when I’m at home, work meetings make the simple task of eating so complicated. It screws with my routine.
It begins with breakfast. Bacon breafast burritos. Cereal with 2% milk. Big sugary muffins. Sausage. And fruit. Thankfully there’s always fruit. So that’s what I eat. I look like a pig piling my plate—and I do mean piling—with the cut pineapple and melon, but since it’s all I get to eat, I’m not bashful.
Mid morning snacktime? If I’m lucky they have nuts. Nuts are helpful. But too often hotels serve parfait-type things, and I’m not eating one of those unless I made it myself. You’ll find this is a theme with me. I have to know what’s my food. I once thought that everyone was like this. But I really don’t put anything in my mouth that I don’t know exactly what’s in there. In restaurants I order things simple, bare. A potato that I dress myself. Green beans. A roll. Chips. Salsa. I eat simply because I trust exactly no one. Same goes for meeting food.
Lunch is always a party. Today’s menu: pasta with smoked tomato and cream sauce (uh-uh), chicken caesar salad (nope), barbecued chicken (yeah right), [way over-] roasted root vegetables (bingo?). Not quite bingo. I couldn’t tell what each vegetable was. I picked out the potatoes, but left the weird smooshy bits. Lunch: a couple pieces of potato, a slice of bread, and a square of brownie. I was getting desperate for calories.
The throbbing hunger headache set in around 3PM. And here I am at a clinical event designed to teach 110 drug reps more about health and diabetes. My blood sugars were definitely in the toilet. (I can’t be certain though, ‘cause when it came time to test them like diabetics do—an empathy exercise—I opted out. Voluntarily stick myself with a needle? Are you out of your Vulcan mind?)
So yoga? Could I treat myself to an evening class today? No. I absolutely could not. I came back to my hotel room, ordered room service—black bean burger and hummus plate, if you were dying to know—came thisclose to licking the bowl that held steamed broccoli, and now I’m waiting for the headache to depart. Please. Soon.
I so look forward to finding a class. To hitting my mat. Especially on this trip. In visiting Minneapolis I have the chance to visit a CorePower studio, and I've been wanting to do that for a long time. So when it can’t reasonably happen tonight? When I'm not sure about tomorrow either? When work or food or work and food get in the way? (Did I mention I also had a 6PM conference call this evening?) Well, it doesn’t piss me off so much as it makes me sad. Yeah, there are times that I feel guilty for not making it to the mat, but when I don’t go to class—by choice or circumstance—I miss it. I’m bummed.
And thanks to this day of hunger and time zone fatigue I’m damn near close to crying. Again.
*Why not just practice in my room, right? Well, sometimes I do. I'm the little thing in the airport with a mat slung across her back. But when my company makes me share a room, I don't dig into a personal practice. There's just something not quite right with flowing through sun salutations and some strange woman walks in. It gets in the way of yoga giving me what I need. So I leave the premises for a class.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
LITE BUDDHISM
Ever walk through a store and stop dead in your tracks when you see something truly incredible, something so seemingly once-in-a-lifetime? That happens to me sometimes. Mostly with shoes. I'll halt and emit a little gasp of awe. Seriously. I think there's something innate in the way some women feel about shoes. I see the great ones as wearable art.
This stop-and-awe happened a couple months ago when I was walking through a home decor store and laid eyes on a chartreuse ceramic Buddha figure (that Jessica picked up on in my Special Delivery post).
Oh my gosh. I have to have this. And for six bucks, I'd have been a fool not to buy it.
When my sister, Mal, was visiting a while back with the purpose of helping me do some house dejunking and reorganizing and restyling, I was taking her through the house telling her what I liked and didn't like. When we reached my office door I stopped before opening it and said, Ever purchase a piece so spectacular that you can hardly believe it's yours? She said she did. Well, when I open this door you're going to just die over how great something is.
I opened the door, she looked in, and she cried out, Oh please tell me you mean the Buddha!
Well, of course.
When the husband was doing my bidding last night with the hanging and such, we placed a shelf sconce thinger just inside the front entryway very near my Fam Proc poster. I'd designated something very special for that little shelf. Upon it I placed my perfect purchase.
•••
As a side note, in a few minutes our doorbell is going to ring. It will be my coworker and her two teenaged kids. I've invited them over for dinner. To you that might seem ordinary, but here, in this house, it's momentous.
When I tell you that I'm not at all social, I am not exaggerating. Illustration: we have lived in this house for a bit over three years now and these are the first non-visiting-from-out-of-town family (or Rabid) that we've invited to our home for a meal. A meal I made. Just before moving here we bought a terrific dining table--solid wood, round, seats eight--and I sat down at it for the first time ever today when I was putting out the plates and such.
I'm so defunct in the cooking for company department that I had to talk with Whitney about just what I was going to feed these friends of mine.
Here's what we'll be eating:
• pesto pasta with cherry tomatoes and olives• Whit's Summer Fruit Salad• Italian white bean salad that I found online• roasted garlic peasant bread with a lemon-sage butter I made (whoa)• and an Apple Betty (sort of like an apple crumble only way better) for dessert
I am excited to have them come over to hang out (and it was terrific incentive to finally get all that stuff up on the walls). We have a nice and good sized house that gets absolutely no play from anyone that isn't me and el husband.
However, I can't believe that I had the outlandish idea to actually cook. I was on my feet for four hours, chopping, mixing, peeling, blending, and on. I spent most of that time thinking that my cooking sister is a complete idiot to make this cooking nonsense her hobby--and I didn't even have her chaotic environment while I did my thing. The Rookie's insane.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
TEA MAGNATE
I bought these a couple years ago and not until just recently did I find what I think is a perfect use for them.
The bounty of my birthday this year included a box of terifically tasty loose leaf herb teas from Jessica. They're a real treat for the tongue, but also too pretty to hide. So instead of stuffing the little tins with spices I'm unlikely to use, buttons I won't sew back on, or beans that are better hydrated, I filled 'em with tea-to-be. The benefits of this little idea are three-fold:
Yes.
The bounty of my birthday this year included a box of terifically tasty loose leaf herb teas from Jessica. They're a real treat for the tongue, but also too pretty to hide. So instead of stuffing the little tins with spices I'm unlikely to use, buttons I won't sew back on, or beans that are better hydrated, I filled 'em with tea-to-be. The benefits of this little idea are three-fold:
1 • I get to finally make use of these little magnetic tins that I thought were nifty but have been empty for years.
2 • The comely teas Jessica selected for me get to make more of themselves than just satisfying sips.
3 • When my teas are easy to see, I actually use 'em!Sometimes the seemingly minute can be the most gratifying, yes?
Yes.
Monday, April 5, 2010
MEATY
After how long are you able to say that you're a "vegetarian?" Once you go meatless, how much time keeping your commitment needs to pass before you can adopt a new title?
It's been three or so years since I've partaken of meat of any kind. I suppose you could call me a vegetarian. I suppose. For I think that it's a title to be earned, so to speak, and I'm not quite sure that three years cuts it. One of my counterparts at work has been a vegetarian for 27 years. My whole life. Now that there is legitimacy. Maybe when my tongue has been meat-free for that long I'll feel less like a poser when I call myself a vegetarian.
I don't eat meat.
Well doesn't that mean you're a vegetarian?
Well, technically, yes, it does, but I don't so much feel that I've earned the title.
Huh?
It drives me out of my mind when someone says that they are a vegetarian and it turns out that they've only been without meat for a month or two. Idiot, you're not a vegetarian; you just haven't had flesh for a couple months. It's like someone picking some flowers from the backyard, shoving them in a vase and saying, I'm a florist! No you aren't.
But when are you?
Instead of saying that they are a vegetarian I think those people should say something like I'm giving vegetarianism a try or I'm trying to go without meat or I'm working on becoming a vegetarian or I'm meatless these days or I'm going veg. The words matter.
Good grief, I write all this and then I realize that I actually don't give a damn. Me and Apathy: very good friends these days. Me and the word "damn": also quite tight.
It's been three or so years since I've partaken of meat of any kind. I suppose you could call me a vegetarian. I suppose. For I think that it's a title to be earned, so to speak, and I'm not quite sure that three years cuts it. One of my counterparts at work has been a vegetarian for 27 years. My whole life. Now that there is legitimacy. Maybe when my tongue has been meat-free for that long I'll feel less like a poser when I call myself a vegetarian.
I don't eat meat.
Well doesn't that mean you're a vegetarian?
Well, technically, yes, it does, but I don't so much feel that I've earned the title.
Huh?
It drives me out of my mind when someone says that they are a vegetarian and it turns out that they've only been without meat for a month or two. Idiot, you're not a vegetarian; you just haven't had flesh for a couple months. It's like someone picking some flowers from the backyard, shoving them in a vase and saying, I'm a florist! No you aren't.
But when are you?
Instead of saying that they are a vegetarian I think those people should say something like I'm giving vegetarianism a try or I'm trying to go without meat or I'm working on becoming a vegetarian or I'm meatless these days or I'm going veg. The words matter.
Good grief, I write all this and then I realize that I actually don't give a damn. Me and Apathy: very good friends these days. Me and the word "damn": also quite tight.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
FOOD.
So my sister Whitney does the Rookie Cookie food blog. And her husband, Ethee, does the Rockwell Catering company.
R.C. R.C.
And they swear they didn't do that on purpose.
Right.
Want to know the real reason I don't go to Utah as often as I used to? It's them. It's them and their food. Whitney runs a popular food blog filled with tantalizing whatnot and tips on how to make healthy things easier, and Ethan has been catering his entire life. If I go to The Tah often I get fat, fat, fat because it's impossible to spend time with Ethan and Whitney and not leave with a belly that's twice the size it was when I arrived and infinitely more happy.
It's especially bad because they think of me when it comes to certain recipes. Oh! I made an asparagus pasta that is so up your alley! Oh! We catered this fruit bruschetta that would be perfect for you! Stuff like that. You'd think it's nice, but it's actually terribly rude when someone's watching their girlish--but not too girlish--figure.
Anyhow, why I write this (for we know it's not news): Rockwell Catering just refreshed their website and it appears (to me, but I could be wrong for I'm not so much one for the details and I haven't been to their site in months) that there are new food images. And, well, food images do it for me. Why lie?
So if you live in Utah (which many of you do; I know--I get reports on your activities here) and you have an event, large or small, consider Rockwell. The food is to die for (honest! It's really not in my best interest to say food is good when it isn't; that makes me look like an idiot), and Ethan might even be able to get you Rookie's autograph, if you ask very, very nicely.
A note on "large or small": many people think that in order to consider having something catered you need to have a huge function. Such is really not the case.
Many of us are Mormons and we have families the size of which fulfills the stereotype. And that means that we have family get-togethers. Which are stressful. Not only do we have to host our siblings and their rotten children, but we have to feed them as well. Sometimes, that's just more hassle than it's worth and we just give up on the thing altogether.
That's where knowing of an efficient caterer comes in handy.
Catering doesn't mean that you have to have an event of a hundred people. It could be much less. Much, much less. And it doesn't mean you have to do dinner. You could have them do breakfast or a dessert buffet or lunch or whatever. And it doesn't mean that you have to have a formal event planned for which your guests got engraved invitations. You could be doing a big birthday dinner or an anniversary dinner for your parents or a luncheon for friends or whatever. And it doesn't mean that you have to have minions in black and white shuffling around with silver trays of crudites. You could just order the food and have your caterer drop it off if you'd prefer. Then it's just you and your annoying relatives and no extra people making you feel awkward.
Why use a bona fide caterer instead of just having Jason's Deli delivered? Quite simply: your reputation. Sure, Jason's Deli is great. I've used them for work and for personal in-home functions of my own. But they're not unique. Use a unique caterer that serves fresh fruit bruschetta and you're something special. Hell, you could even lie and say you made it yourself if you want. I do that kind of thing. It makes me look awfully cool.
Why write this? Why promote like I'm some caterer's whore? Because I'm the girl who pays people to do stuff. I pay people to clean my house and to install dog doors and and to bring food to parties I host. I'm all about things being easier for me so that I can enjoy my life a little more. You certainly don't need to pay people to clean your house. And you can have the neighbor or your husband or your mom install your dog door. But if you're looking to enjoy a little event, I strongly suggest you consider having someone else do the cooking.
R.C. R.C.
And they swear they didn't do that on purpose.
Right.
Want to know the real reason I don't go to Utah as often as I used to? It's them. It's them and their food. Whitney runs a popular food blog filled with tantalizing whatnot and tips on how to make healthy things easier, and Ethan has been catering his entire life. If I go to The Tah often I get fat, fat, fat because it's impossible to spend time with Ethan and Whitney and not leave with a belly that's twice the size it was when I arrived and infinitely more happy.
It's especially bad because they think of me when it comes to certain recipes. Oh! I made an asparagus pasta that is so up your alley! Oh! We catered this fruit bruschetta that would be perfect for you! Stuff like that. You'd think it's nice, but it's actually terribly rude when someone's watching their girlish--but not too girlish--figure.
Anyhow, why I write this (for we know it's not news): Rockwell Catering just refreshed their website and it appears (to me, but I could be wrong for I'm not so much one for the details and I haven't been to their site in months) that there are new food images. And, well, food images do it for me. Why lie?
So if you live in Utah (which many of you do; I know--I get reports on your activities here) and you have an event, large or small, consider Rockwell. The food is to die for (honest! It's really not in my best interest to say food is good when it isn't; that makes me look like an idiot), and Ethan might even be able to get you Rookie's autograph, if you ask very, very nicely.
•••
A note on "large or small": many people think that in order to consider having something catered you need to have a huge function. Such is really not the case.
Many of us are Mormons and we have families the size of which fulfills the stereotype. And that means that we have family get-togethers. Which are stressful. Not only do we have to host our siblings and their rotten children, but we have to feed them as well. Sometimes, that's just more hassle than it's worth and we just give up on the thing altogether.
That's where knowing of an efficient caterer comes in handy.
Catering doesn't mean that you have to have an event of a hundred people. It could be much less. Much, much less. And it doesn't mean you have to do dinner. You could have them do breakfast or a dessert buffet or lunch or whatever. And it doesn't mean that you have to have a formal event planned for which your guests got engraved invitations. You could be doing a big birthday dinner or an anniversary dinner for your parents or a luncheon for friends or whatever. And it doesn't mean that you have to have minions in black and white shuffling around with silver trays of crudites. You could just order the food and have your caterer drop it off if you'd prefer. Then it's just you and your annoying relatives and no extra people making you feel awkward.
Why use a bona fide caterer instead of just having Jason's Deli delivered? Quite simply: your reputation. Sure, Jason's Deli is great. I've used them for work and for personal in-home functions of my own. But they're not unique. Use a unique caterer that serves fresh fruit bruschetta and you're something special. Hell, you could even lie and say you made it yourself if you want. I do that kind of thing. It makes me look awfully cool.
Why write this? Why promote like I'm some caterer's whore? Because I'm the girl who pays people to do stuff. I pay people to clean my house and to install dog doors and and to bring food to parties I host. I'm all about things being easier for me so that I can enjoy my life a little more. You certainly don't need to pay people to clean your house. And you can have the neighbor or your husband or your mom install your dog door. But if you're looking to enjoy a little event, I strongly suggest you consider having someone else do the cooking.
Monday, December 21, 2009
SÜP • THE TESTIMONIIAL OF A KITCHEN IDIOT
or YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM ROOKIE COOKIE
Okay, it’s not so much that I can’t cook. It’s that I really hate doing it. I’m using the word hate and all it’s force to describe how I feel about cooking at this point in my life. Nevertheless, people gotta eat, right? So from time to rare time I turn on some music in the kitchen and make a big mess in the name of crafting something that tastes good. Though, due to my disdain, my practice sessions are infrequent and it shows in my ability to do things like cut a tomato and, oh, boil water.
Whitney has been working on a soup-from-anything guide, and because I'm culinarily inept, I had the pleasure of taking it for a test drive this last Thursday.
Okay, not so much the pleasure as the opportunity to be the first one to give it a whirl.
So I did my sisterly duty--because, if nothing else, those who know me very well know that I am loyal and supportive.
Because it was just my spouse and me for Thursday dinner, and we generally ignore leftovers, I halved everything.
My selections from each category:
The point of my telling about this particular foray in the kitchen: after a little feedback from me, a kitchen novice (I have to ask questions like, What’s the difference between diced and chopped?), the soup guide is done and ready for download.
Folks, this thing is brilliant. If I can follow it to the point of a successful homemade soup without the need for bandaids or a takeout menu, anyone can.
For ease of access, Whitney had me make the guide into a downloadable PDF that you can print out and put on the fridge or tape to the inside of your cupboard.
Head HERE to download and profusely thank my sister for making your life so much easier. It's soup season, folks, and with Whit's help you can easily have different soup every night of the week. 20 minutes for prep and then you can blog, clean, read, do whatever while it simmers itself into a delicious medley of gut-warming goodness.
Tell your friends about it. Tell your family. Tell a coworker. Send 'em all to download The Guide. Its ease is revolutionary and we oughta spread the word.
When it comes to having confidence in the kitchen, I’m severely lacking; but with the simplicity of this guide, if I invited someone over for dinner at the last minute, I know I could take what’s on hand in my cupboards and fridge and make a soup worthy of compliments. Or at least the assurance that it won’t be sent back.
Okay, it’s not so much that I can’t cook. It’s that I really hate doing it. I’m using the word hate and all it’s force to describe how I feel about cooking at this point in my life. Nevertheless, people gotta eat, right? So from time to rare time I turn on some music in the kitchen and make a big mess in the name of crafting something that tastes good. Though, due to my disdain, my practice sessions are infrequent and it shows in my ability to do things like cut a tomato and, oh, boil water.
Whitney has been working on a soup-from-anything guide, and because I'm culinarily inept, I had the pleasure of taking it for a test drive this last Thursday.
Okay, not so much the pleasure as the opportunity to be the first one to give it a whirl.
So I did my sisterly duty--because, if nothing else, those who know me very well know that I am loyal and supportive.
Because it was just my spouse and me for Thursday dinner, and we generally ignore leftovers, I halved everything.
My selections from each category:
Aromatics • 1/4 yellow onion and 3 stalks celery sautéed in olive oilThe result: a simple soup tasty enough for The Husband to assure me that had it been served in a restaurant, he wouldn’t have sent it back. Well that’s something, at least.
Seasonings • the curry blend
Vegetables/beans • 1 cup garbanzo beans and 1 cup cannellini beans
Liquid • vegetable stock
Additions • 1 cup brown rice
The point of my telling about this particular foray in the kitchen: after a little feedback from me, a kitchen novice (I have to ask questions like, What’s the difference between diced and chopped?), the soup guide is done and ready for download.
Folks, this thing is brilliant. If I can follow it to the point of a successful homemade soup without the need for bandaids or a takeout menu, anyone can.
For ease of access, Whitney had me make the guide into a downloadable PDF that you can print out and put on the fridge or tape to the inside of your cupboard.
Head HERE to download and profusely thank my sister for making your life so much easier. It's soup season, folks, and with Whit's help you can easily have different soup every night of the week. 20 minutes for prep and then you can blog, clean, read, do whatever while it simmers itself into a delicious medley of gut-warming goodness.
Tell your friends about it. Tell your family. Tell a coworker. Send 'em all to download The Guide. Its ease is revolutionary and we oughta spread the word.
When it comes to having confidence in the kitchen, I’m severely lacking; but with the simplicity of this guide, if I invited someone over for dinner at the last minute, I know I could take what’s on hand in my cupboards and fridge and make a soup worthy of compliments. Or at least the assurance that it won’t be sent back.
Friday, November 20, 2009
CAREFUL COOKERY
My forays in the kitchen are rare. In fact, they're generally confined to when company stay over. Why cook when company is here? Truly, not to manufacture some vision of me as a regular cook; no, I cook when company is there so that a) they feel special, 'cause they know that I'm doing something I don't generally do, and b) so they have something to eat and aren't forced to eat like I do--weirdly.
When Rabid came to visit, I made a hummus-like bean dip. Soaked then boiled white beans, mint, and other whatnot. Initially, it sucked. Then I sprinkled some feta and it was tasty. Feta heals. We should sprinkle some on the Middle East and see what happens. Oh, wait--they have plenty of feta over there and there's still explosive unrest. Resilient people, eh?
While I was trying to combine ingredients properly, The Husband and the Rabid were sitting at the bar across from me. Oh, they offered to help of course, but I simply wouldn't allow it. While I deciphered and followed, The Husband played with my phone and captured this image. (And he didn't even need Rabid's cell phone action to make it crappy; he can do it without!)
Voila: Me. Cooking.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
THE PRODUCTIVE BURRITO
Are ya ever so grateful for something that you just have to tell people how wonderful it is? Sure you are. We humans are prone to effusive truth-telling, right?
Anyhow, today, for me it's Qdoba.
(If you're unfamiliar, Qdoba is a fresh mex place. My preferred one because they're kind to vegetarians and their tortilla soup is a bowl to remember.)
Why so grateful for Qdoba today? Because not only can they take a lunch catering order the day of, but they can deliver it too. You have no idea how uncommon that is. If I am doing lunch in a doctor's office and neglected to place the order the day (or even two days) before, most places are unable to accomodate me. Not Qdoba. No sir. Call them at 9AM on the same day you need a taco bar for 20 delivered at 11:45AM and they're happy to help.
So I'm committed to "The Doh" (as Mark and his coworkers call it--to my annoyance).
'Cause of their continual efficiency, as a favor to me, if you have a Qdoba nearby, enjoy lunch there soon. The food is fresh and flavorful, and you won't regret it. Swear.
Friday, October 2, 2009
FLESHITARIANS
I went to the gynecologist on Monday.
They call him Fastest Pap in the West.
Glancing at my chart, he asked if I am still a vegetarian.
I told him I was.
He asked if I am still getting my protein from beans, eggs, milk, grains, and soy. I said that I sort of was. For I'm torn when it comes to the eggs and milk. I go back and forth. I like omelets. I love cheese. Ice cream is what Zeus ate for breakfast, and all should try to be more godlike.
But I have animal issues and somehow don't feel right about eating The Little Red Hen's unfertilized spawn and the juice of Bessie's bosoms.
But again: there's the issue of omelets, cheese, and ice cream.
So you're not really a vegetarian, he told me.
I was confused. I don't eat meat. At all. I'm a vegetarian.
He then told me that his daughter is a true vegetarian: she doesn't eat eggs or milk. But she will eat fish and shrimpy things.
Aha, another misguided medical professional. They're sort of what I do for a living.
So I educated him. As I shall now educate you.
'Cause I have a hard time eschewing the eggs and milk products and honestly never see it happening (remember the omelets, cheese, and ice cream), I'm technically a Lacto-Ovo. I feel that if I had any self control at all and were really a good person I'd be vegan. (You can be a red-meat-eating good person; I however, cannot. Don't ask questions; I don't have reasonable answers aside from the fact that all animals have mysteriously developed the face of my dog, and I can't eat my dog.)
And yes, I'm of the vegetarian variety that thinks pescetarians (or written out pescatarian, interchangeably) are posers. They are eating flesh.
The definitions of fishmeat as meat or notmeat are varied and the discussion around those definitions is heated. The differentiations are not so much scientific as religious, for both the Jewish and Catholic religions have clarified fish as notmeat. I don't subscribe to either religion, so I don't think I'm in any moral danger if I say that's bunk, and that if it was once living and you've decided to eat its carcass that that there is meat your gnawing.
And that's fine with me. Eat meat. Eat a lot of it. Your business, not mine. Just don't eat flesh and call yourself a vegetarian. You could instead be a flexitarian, and should at least come to terms with it.
Easy-to-understand definitions courtesy of The Passionate Vegetarian. (A hideous webpage that I feel guilty sending you to.)
They call him Fastest Pap in the West.
Glancing at my chart, he asked if I am still a vegetarian.
I told him I was.
He asked if I am still getting my protein from beans, eggs, milk, grains, and soy. I said that I sort of was. For I'm torn when it comes to the eggs and milk. I go back and forth. I like omelets. I love cheese. Ice cream is what Zeus ate for breakfast, and all should try to be more godlike.
But I have animal issues and somehow don't feel right about eating The Little Red Hen's unfertilized spawn and the juice of Bessie's bosoms.
But again: there's the issue of omelets, cheese, and ice cream.
So you're not really a vegetarian, he told me.
I was confused. I don't eat meat. At all. I'm a vegetarian.
He then told me that his daughter is a true vegetarian: she doesn't eat eggs or milk. But she will eat fish and shrimpy things.
Aha, another misguided medical professional. They're sort of what I do for a living.
So I educated him. As I shall now educate you.
'Cause I have a hard time eschewing the eggs and milk products and honestly never see it happening (remember the omelets, cheese, and ice cream), I'm technically a Lacto-Ovo. I feel that if I had any self control at all and were really a good person I'd be vegan. (You can be a red-meat-eating good person; I however, cannot. Don't ask questions; I don't have reasonable answers aside from the fact that all animals have mysteriously developed the face of my dog, and I can't eat my dog.)
And yes, I'm of the vegetarian variety that thinks pescetarians (or written out pescatarian, interchangeably) are posers. They are eating flesh.
The definitions of fishmeat as meat or notmeat are varied and the discussion around those definitions is heated. The differentiations are not so much scientific as religious, for both the Jewish and Catholic religions have clarified fish as notmeat. I don't subscribe to either religion, so I don't think I'm in any moral danger if I say that's bunk, and that if it was once living and you've decided to eat its carcass that that there is meat your gnawing.
And that's fine with me. Eat meat. Eat a lot of it. Your business, not mine. Just don't eat flesh and call yourself a vegetarian. You could instead be a flexitarian, and should at least come to terms with it.
Easy-to-understand definitions courtesy of The Passionate Vegetarian. (A hideous webpage that I feel guilty sending you to.)
Friday, September 18, 2009
MAKING WHOLE
Sometimes, the finest section of my day is the part when I get to hide in my car for a bit, eat my lunch, and continue listening to whatever book's been fueling me throughout the day.If circumstances permit, at the lunch hour I drive to our Whole Foods, park my car in a remote spot, and head in to purchase my staple lunch with its slight variations. Some days I'll toss in a couple pieces of pita. If I'm feeling that I've gone too long without self-flagellation, I'll include some feta cheese. Other days it's black olives--never kalamata; I can't stand 'em. Sometimes whole garbanzos join the melange. And if I'm feeling naughty, I'll land at the express checkout with a vegan peanut butter smore from the chilled bakery section. The little alterations add a sprinkle of excitement, serving as a barrier between my everyday lunch and monotony.
If I stand in one place in Whole Foods long enough (like I sometimes must do when waiting for a catering order) I'm sure to spy someone I know. Not generally a friend or an acquaintance I can comfortably chat with, just someone I recognize or know the name of, maybe a person from church or work or yoga. I may greet them, or I might just take note and continue scanning and watching. Anonymity and solitude in the midst of a crowd often prompt introspection in a way that isolation cannot.
After I have my lunch in hand, rather than settling at one of the tables inside or out, I clack back to my car, get in, shut the door, turn on the AC, press play on my iPod, scoot my seat back as far as it can go, slip off my shoes, prop my left foot on the seat (if not in a restrictive skirt), and dig in.
It could just be fifteen minutes of the day that I spend in such a state, but they're my fifteen minutes. I don't answer the phone, check emails, or respond to outside stimuli. Alone in my box, I pick through my lunch making bites. A tomato and tabbouleh dipped in hummus. Half a falafel, some hummus, and a couple feta crumbles fused on my fork. I listen to my book, sometimes using it as ambient noise, as I loose the power to focus when wandering through my thoughts.
When lunch is done and my water bottle is about half-way to recyclable, I set the trash aside, sit up straight, put my shoes back on, scoot my chair forward, check my teeth for interlopers, swish some water if there are barnacles, toss in some gum to eradicate the malodorous breath hummus leaves behind, put on lipstuff, and check my phone for any calls or emails I might have missed.
Then I pull out of the parking lot in whatever direction the next stop dictates I ought.
Refreshed? Perhaps. Revived? Maybe. Renewed? Sometimes. Fed? Yes. And at least that gives me the energy required to keep on.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
CAFFEINATED CONSEQUENCES
It's 3:55AM.
I used to be one of those people with more diet soda in their veins than blood. "Used to be" indicates that such was and is no longer the case. And it isn't. About a year ago I stopped buying diet soda at the grocery store, quit asking waitresses for "whatever diet you've got" when asked what I'd selected to slurp, and no longer made gas stations a regular pit stop for anything but auto fuel. My skin got better. I had to pee less frequently. Water became more potent.
What I mean by water increasing its potency: When tired, when really dragging, rather than sucking diet soda, I now turn to actual hydration to get me through. You'd be surprised how effective it is.
I travel a lot (too much), and because I live in the Reno area I am always slapped with an early, early initial flight taking me to whatever airport actually flies direct to my destination--even if my destination is no further than San Diego or Irvine.
When I have to arise at 3AM to be on time for my departure when I whacked the feathers only three hours before (I am an imbecile when it comes to meetings; I procrastinate the prework I have to execute and then find myself up cramming almost all of the night before), the fatigue is incredible. Caffeine seems like a reasonable boost for such situations, but--believe it or not--for my body, it's not necessary. A Clif bar and proper hydration when I get past security and can snag a liter of water does the trick. I learned that caffeine isn't the silver bullet I thought it was and was an unnecessary commodity in my day to day.
However, I like diet soda. I'm aware that, for a of myriad reasons, it's absolutely no good for the body I try to keep healthy, but I figure an inappropriate consumption of whatever suits me here and there isn't going to kill me quite yet. So over the last month I've had a couple diet sodas. Not in restaurants. Not purchased for the house. Not in a way that's going to reenter my existence as a vice. Just a couple here and theres.
Last night was one of the here and theres. Yesterday morning, The Husband went far beyond the call of marriage and labored in my storage unit. (No, not our storage unit. Mine. For work. It houses all my samples, clinical study reprints, patient education, drug trays, etc.--it's a climate controlled place to house my work paraphernalia. Most drug reps have one.) Up until yesterday morning my storage unit was a pit. It still contained a mountain of trash from the job I left six months ago, segregated from tidy stacks of my new job's samples plus box upon box of clinical reprints that I swear weigh 50 lbs. each.
The Husband ferried gorilla racks to my unit, donned his work gloves, assembled the racks, and hauled all the trash to his car for dumpster-deposit while I slogged through my monthly sample inventory and separated out all the clinicals by product on my new racks. Because spending time in my storage unit invariably leaves me looking like I army crawled through a dusty attic and I was clad in the day's worth clothes, I brought an apron to keep my dress tidy and had to opt out of the box-hugging task of relocating the mountain of junk to The Husband's car.
That means Mr. Megan had to do it all. And though I can often do a bang-up job with description, I can't be any sort of accurate in trying to explain just how much heavy refuse was stacked in my storage unit, so saying that it took the man (who is significantly stronger than he looks) 35 minutes of constant carrying and box breakdown is going to have to do.
When my racks were assembled, samples were inventoried, the day's materials gathered, and my hands filthy, it was time to head out into the wild and make productive contact with my docs. By that time, The Husband had completed the clean up and had earned himself a sweat. For me.
He sweat and slaved for me. It's not like that's unusual--I told you just this last Tuesday that he lives and loves to serve me, but it made me awfully grateful nonetheless. He did for me what I really didn't want to do, did it on his day off, and offered to help without my asking. So, although my day was long, my feet hurt, and I just wanted to crash when I got home from work last evening, when I arrived at our 'lil residence after the workday was through and located my spouse, I told the man that to thank him for his incredible help I wanted to take him to dinner wherever he'd like to go. (The significance of "wherever he'd like to go" is that I am an incredibly finicky eater and as he is as accommodating as I am finicky we rarely end up at his first-choice restaurants.)
If you live in the nether regions of Sparks as we do, you're 20 minutes from the freeway and getting to whatever out-to-dinner place you've selected is a noteworthy time commitment. Thus we spent the next 10 minutes brainstorming ideas of where he wanted to go. That one's too far. What's even around here? That food isn't even good. How far do you actually want to go? I'm sick of that. That one's way far too. We should stay around here. It isn't worth the drive. I went there earlier this week.
In the end, The Husband, even more tired than I and not keen on making our way across town for an evening out, said that rather than dinner he just wanted a giant diet soda and an ice cream cone. His choice, so I went along. I had one of the few diet sodas I've had in the recent past. A hefty one. So, wide-eyed, wired, and too mentally fatigued to be productive, I'm here to say that when you don't drink the stuff any kind of regularly and the tolerance you'd developed when it was a daily staple has dissolved, caffeine really punches you with the energizing ka-pow! it's rumored to possess.
Therefore sleep is not an option. Late last evening I [unwisely] had a big, fat diet soda and now, at nearly 4AM, a snooze is nothing more than a fairytale.
UPDATE: It's now 8:20AM and I've still not discovered slumber. Good thing I've no obligations to keep me from falling asleep sometime today. I hope.
I used to be one of those people with more diet soda in their veins than blood. "Used to be" indicates that such was and is no longer the case. And it isn't. About a year ago I stopped buying diet soda at the grocery store, quit asking waitresses for "whatever diet you've got" when asked what I'd selected to slurp, and no longer made gas stations a regular pit stop for anything but auto fuel. My skin got better. I had to pee less frequently. Water became more potent.
What I mean by water increasing its potency: When tired, when really dragging, rather than sucking diet soda, I now turn to actual hydration to get me through. You'd be surprised how effective it is.
I travel a lot (too much), and because I live in the Reno area I am always slapped with an early, early initial flight taking me to whatever airport actually flies direct to my destination--even if my destination is no further than San Diego or Irvine.
When I have to arise at 3AM to be on time for my departure when I whacked the feathers only three hours before (I am an imbecile when it comes to meetings; I procrastinate the prework I have to execute and then find myself up cramming almost all of the night before), the fatigue is incredible. Caffeine seems like a reasonable boost for such situations, but--believe it or not--for my body, it's not necessary. A Clif bar and proper hydration when I get past security and can snag a liter of water does the trick. I learned that caffeine isn't the silver bullet I thought it was and was an unnecessary commodity in my day to day.
However, I like diet soda. I'm aware that, for a of myriad reasons, it's absolutely no good for the body I try to keep healthy, but I figure an inappropriate consumption of whatever suits me here and there isn't going to kill me quite yet. So over the last month I've had a couple diet sodas. Not in restaurants. Not purchased for the house. Not in a way that's going to reenter my existence as a vice. Just a couple here and theres.
Last night was one of the here and theres. Yesterday morning, The Husband went far beyond the call of marriage and labored in my storage unit. (No, not our storage unit. Mine. For work. It houses all my samples, clinical study reprints, patient education, drug trays, etc.--it's a climate controlled place to house my work paraphernalia. Most drug reps have one.) Up until yesterday morning my storage unit was a pit. It still contained a mountain of trash from the job I left six months ago, segregated from tidy stacks of my new job's samples plus box upon box of clinical reprints that I swear weigh 50 lbs. each.
The Husband ferried gorilla racks to my unit, donned his work gloves, assembled the racks, and hauled all the trash to his car for dumpster-deposit while I slogged through my monthly sample inventory and separated out all the clinicals by product on my new racks. Because spending time in my storage unit invariably leaves me looking like I army crawled through a dusty attic and I was clad in the day's worth clothes, I brought an apron to keep my dress tidy and had to opt out of the box-hugging task of relocating the mountain of junk to The Husband's car.
That means Mr. Megan had to do it all. And though I can often do a bang-up job with description, I can't be any sort of accurate in trying to explain just how much heavy refuse was stacked in my storage unit, so saying that it took the man (who is significantly stronger than he looks) 35 minutes of constant carrying and box breakdown is going to have to do.
When my racks were assembled, samples were inventoried, the day's materials gathered, and my hands filthy, it was time to head out into the wild and make productive contact with my docs. By that time, The Husband had completed the clean up and had earned himself a sweat. For me.
He sweat and slaved for me. It's not like that's unusual--I told you just this last Tuesday that he lives and loves to serve me, but it made me awfully grateful nonetheless. He did for me what I really didn't want to do, did it on his day off, and offered to help without my asking. So, although my day was long, my feet hurt, and I just wanted to crash when I got home from work last evening, when I arrived at our 'lil residence after the workday was through and located my spouse, I told the man that to thank him for his incredible help I wanted to take him to dinner wherever he'd like to go. (The significance of "wherever he'd like to go" is that I am an incredibly finicky eater and as he is as accommodating as I am finicky we rarely end up at his first-choice restaurants.)
If you live in the nether regions of Sparks as we do, you're 20 minutes from the freeway and getting to whatever out-to-dinner place you've selected is a noteworthy time commitment. Thus we spent the next 10 minutes brainstorming ideas of where he wanted to go. That one's too far. What's even around here? That food isn't even good. How far do you actually want to go? I'm sick of that. That one's way far too. We should stay around here. It isn't worth the drive. I went there earlier this week.
In the end, The Husband, even more tired than I and not keen on making our way across town for an evening out, said that rather than dinner he just wanted a giant diet soda and an ice cream cone. His choice, so I went along. I had one of the few diet sodas I've had in the recent past. A hefty one. So, wide-eyed, wired, and too mentally fatigued to be productive, I'm here to say that when you don't drink the stuff any kind of regularly and the tolerance you'd developed when it was a daily staple has dissolved, caffeine really punches you with the energizing ka-pow! it's rumored to possess.
Therefore sleep is not an option. Late last evening I [unwisely] had a big, fat diet soda and now, at nearly 4AM, a snooze is nothing more than a fairytale.
UPDATE: It's now 8:20AM and I've still not discovered slumber. Good thing I've no obligations to keep me from falling asleep sometime today. I hope.
Friday, July 3, 2009
PLAN OF REACTION
I have an upcoming POA meeting for work. POA: Plan of Action. Plan of Attack.
We don't have these meetings too often, perhaps just three or four times a year. But when we do, the days we spend have a familiar ring to them: we gather, sit in dark rooms, gazing at videos and power point presentations on our respective disease states (those we have responsibility to sell for, not necessarily those that we have ourselves), we eat a lot, and then we role play until our mouths are dry and we can no longer stand (which comes quickly when you're teetering in a pair of four-inchers).
Overall, the meetings aren't too big of a deal. I've been to enough of them to know what to expect. However, two or three weeks before a meeting I start fretting. Yes, fretting about what I'm going to wear. Yes, fretting that my roots might be a little longer than is acceptable. Yes, fretting about missing my yoga classes. But mostly fretting about food. What the heck are these people going to try to feed me this time?
When it's near meeting time, prospective attendees receive an email "inviting" (in quotation marks because let's be honest here, you're not "invited" like you have a choice; you're goin', sister) them to register. So you register.
Do I write "Vegan" so as to avoid the cheese conundrum? No, because that's a lie. I'm not a vegan, for sometimes I eat cheese or fall to the temptation of ice cream. When I do, I find myself stumbling under the pressure of guilt for partaking in something made with milk taken from cows I've never met and don't know how they were treated. (Let's you and I talk about this whole issue/position later; not now, okay? I am completely aware that I verge on peculiar here. I have no idea what's happened to me as of late; I didn't used to feel like this.)
But again, if I just write "Vegetarian," the truthful statement, I will find myself subjected to cheese. Lots of it. I will refuse to eat it. I will then find myself starving. And then I will give in to the stupidest thing lying around (most often candy, chips and other demonic treasures). And then I'll come home feeling like garbage and will have to take a vacation day to recover from the crud I feel weighted with.
So what do I do? I lie. I write "Vegan." It's better to try to explain away the occasional dairy disaster or the lie itself than leave a full plate of Something sitting at the dinner table and later realize that I've stuffed my body with jelly beans.
That and I bring enough nuts, Clif Bars and Lara Bars to feed the entire meeting. So I guess we should be just fine. Fretting unnecessary.
We don't have these meetings too often, perhaps just three or four times a year. But when we do, the days we spend have a familiar ring to them: we gather, sit in dark rooms, gazing at videos and power point presentations on our respective disease states (those we have responsibility to sell for, not necessarily those that we have ourselves), we eat a lot, and then we role play until our mouths are dry and we can no longer stand (which comes quickly when you're teetering in a pair of four-inchers).
Overall, the meetings aren't too big of a deal. I've been to enough of them to know what to expect. However, two or three weeks before a meeting I start fretting. Yes, fretting about what I'm going to wear. Yes, fretting that my roots might be a little longer than is acceptable. Yes, fretting about missing my yoga classes. But mostly fretting about food. What the heck are these people going to try to feed me this time?
When it's near meeting time, prospective attendees receive an email "inviting" (in quotation marks because let's be honest here, you're not "invited" like you have a choice; you're goin', sister) them to register. So you register.
Name • Megan RomoDo I write "Vegetarian?" No, I can't do that, because then what they'll give me will be drowning in butter and cheese and will be unrecognizable as actual food, and I will refuse to eat it. (I love how people think that vegetarians require cheese for a dish to taste good. Folks, try those vegetables, noodles, rice and beans all by themselves; you'll be surprised to find that they not only have flavor, but a dandy flavor at that.)
Address • Somewhere in Sparks
Emergency contact • The Husband
Relationship to emergency contact • Eternal companion bound in love, affection, adoration, and many other words that mean just about the same thing
Job title • Specialty Sales Professional
Territory • Reno, Nevada
Special dietary considerations • Uh . . .
Do I write "Vegan" so as to avoid the cheese conundrum? No, because that's a lie. I'm not a vegan, for sometimes I eat cheese or fall to the temptation of ice cream. When I do, I find myself stumbling under the pressure of guilt for partaking in something made with milk taken from cows I've never met and don't know how they were treated. (Let's you and I talk about this whole issue/position later; not now, okay? I am completely aware that I verge on peculiar here. I have no idea what's happened to me as of late; I didn't used to feel like this.)
But again, if I just write "Vegetarian," the truthful statement, I will find myself subjected to cheese. Lots of it. I will refuse to eat it. I will then find myself starving. And then I will give in to the stupidest thing lying around (most often candy, chips and other demonic treasures). And then I'll come home feeling like garbage and will have to take a vacation day to recover from the crud I feel weighted with.
So what do I do? I lie. I write "Vegan." It's better to try to explain away the occasional dairy disaster or the lie itself than leave a full plate of Something sitting at the dinner table and later realize that I've stuffed my body with jelly beans.
That and I bring enough nuts, Clif Bars and Lara Bars to feed the entire meeting. So I guess we should be just fine. Fretting unnecessary.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
THE SCOURGE OF CHEESE POTATOES
Comfort food? You've got to be joking. And if you are, you're not very good at it.
Sure I have my comfort foods (these days I'm wild about warm applesauce with an obscene amount of cinnamon served in a paper cup--the environment-killing cup being an essential element of the comfort part). We all do. But there's absolutely nothing comforting about cream of crud soup and pretend cheese with a host of other unmentionable ingredients slaughtering innocent potatoes and casting evil spells on your insides.
If you find comfort in that kind of internal abuse and even take pride in it, and (gasp) consume that kind of garbage more than, say, once a year, you need counseling. For clearly, you loathe yourself a whole lot and need someone with whom you can to sort that out.
All recipes for "cheesy potatoes"/"funeral potatoes"/whatever-else-your-family-calls-them potatoes should be banned and burned. They are a pathetic perversion of Food. (I'm quite sure Michael Pollan would agree.) And I think I could press charges for the intense gag reflex I experience when merely glancing at the recipe in a book or on a blog. (And it seems that everyone lays claim to one of these illegitimate potato gratin dishes, posting their family's treasured (and trust me, not unique) recipe for all to read, copy, comment on, and, in my case (and that of any sensible person, if you ask me--though you don't have to ask; reminder: it's my blog--gag over.)
It's my opinion that parents who raised their children on such poison deserve a good talking to. There is absolutely nothing redeemable in such a dish. Yeah, yeah, I recognize that dishes with no redeemable bits are okay now and again, but when it comes to those terrible potato melanges families serve with pride at holidays and other celebrations, the fact that a single bite of the casserole has the clout to induce an MI makes it unacceptable for consumption.
Fundamentally: disgusting.
Sure I have my comfort foods (these days I'm wild about warm applesauce with an obscene amount of cinnamon served in a paper cup--the environment-killing cup being an essential element of the comfort part). We all do. But there's absolutely nothing comforting about cream of crud soup and pretend cheese with a host of other unmentionable ingredients slaughtering innocent potatoes and casting evil spells on your insides.
If you find comfort in that kind of internal abuse and even take pride in it, and (gasp) consume that kind of garbage more than, say, once a year, you need counseling. For clearly, you loathe yourself a whole lot and need someone with whom you can to sort that out.
All recipes for "cheesy potatoes"/"funeral potatoes"/whatever-else-your-family-calls-them potatoes should be banned and burned. They are a pathetic perversion of Food. (I'm quite sure Michael Pollan would agree.) And I think I could press charges for the intense gag reflex I experience when merely glancing at the recipe in a book or on a blog. (And it seems that everyone lays claim to one of these illegitimate potato gratin dishes, posting their family's treasured (and trust me, not unique) recipe for all to read, copy, comment on, and, in my case (and that of any sensible person, if you ask me--though you don't have to ask; reminder: it's my blog--gag over.)
It's my opinion that parents who raised their children on such poison deserve a good talking to. There is absolutely nothing redeemable in such a dish. Yeah, yeah, I recognize that dishes with no redeemable bits are okay now and again, but when it comes to those terrible potato melanges families serve with pride at holidays and other celebrations, the fact that a single bite of the casserole has the clout to induce an MI makes it unacceptable for consumption.
Fundamentally: disgusting.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
COOKIE MAKES A COMEBACK '09 • MAPLE PISTACHIO CRÈMES
The post should have been titled "I'm a Freaking Awesome Sister," 'cause I really didn't want to make any cookies for this cookie shebang Whit's running. At this particular verse of "My Life," it appears that I just don't belong in the kitchen. But if nothing else I'm supportive (What, making the button wasn't enough?), so this Sunday-last I found myself in the kitchen putting together some Maple Pistachio Crèmes from Hannah Kaminsky's My Sweet Vegan.
Were I to make these again, being the maple-taste-fan that I am (Didn't know that? Well now you know; give me a maple bar and you'll have yourself a sticky slave.), I think I'd boost the maple syrup in the cookies and perhaps in the creme as well.
Anyhow, I think the point of this nonsense is to post the recipe, so here goes. Once again, I snatched it from My Sweet Vegan. You should know that Miss Kaminsky was 18 when she published this little marvel. Awe-inspiring.
So this little experience taught me that you food bloggers are off your rockers. Typing up that whole recipe wasn't any fun at all. What's wrong with you?
Were I to make these again, being the maple-taste-fan that I am (Didn't know that? Well now you know; give me a maple bar and you'll have yourself a sticky slave.), I think I'd boost the maple syrup in the cookies and perhaps in the creme as well.
Anyhow, I think the point of this nonsense is to post the recipe, so here goes. Once again, I snatched it from My Sweet Vegan. You should know that Miss Kaminsky was 18 when she published this little marvel. Awe-inspiring.
Ingredients for the Cookies:
1/2 cup • Margarine [which sounds evil I know, but use Earth Balance Buttery Sticks and you've got it made]
2/3 cup • Maple Syrup
2 3/4 cups • All-purpose Flour
1 teaspoon • Baking Powder
1 teaspoon • Vanilla Extract
1/4 teaspoon • Salt
Ingredients for the Pistachio Crème:
1 cup • Shelled Raw Pistachios or 2/3 cup Pistachio Butter
1/4 cup • Plain Soy Creamer
3 tablespoons • Maple Syrup
1/2 teaspoon • Vanilla
Directions:
• "Preheat your oven to 350ºF and line two baking sheets with silpats or parchment paper.
• In a large microwave-safe bowl, melt the margarine and then stir in the maple syrup. Add in 2 cups of the flour, along with the baking power, vanilla, and salt. Stir the batter until all of the ingredients are fully combined. Add in the remainder of the flour and combine. The batter should be rather thick, so resist the temptation to add more and combine. Scoop out walnut-sized balls and roll them in your hands to make them nicely rounded. Place the balls onto your prepared baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, but don't' want for them to brown. Once the cookies firm up a bit, and no longer appear moist on top, they are done! Let the cookies cool on the sheets.
• To make the pistachio crème, toss the pistachios into your food processor and pulverize them for up to 10 minutes, so that they become relatively smooth and paste-like. With the motor-running, drizzle in the soy creamer, followed by the maple syrup and vanilla. Process until completely combined and smooth. Once the cookies are fully cooled, drop a dollop of the crème (about 1 to 2 teaspoons) onto the flat side of one cookie, and top with a second cookie. Repeat with the remaining cookies.
• Makes 12 to 18 sandwich cookies." (Which I clearly didn't make, as I wasn't feeling sandwichy . . . )
So this little experience taught me that you food bloggers are off your rockers. Typing up that whole recipe wasn't any fun at all. What's wrong with you?
Sure do love you, Whit. And I'm awfully glad that your Cookie Comeback comes only once a year. It'll be one of the few times a year I don't make cookies from a Cherrybrook Kitchen mix.
Monday, May 11, 2009
AS A BIRD
I'm planted at my computer. I have my tea to my left and my ice water to my right. And in between, on the desk I have a pile of pumpkin seeds.
Seeds. In the shell. (21g of fiber that way, as opposed to 2g without the shell.)
And I think that's weird. As I often do, I'm eating seeds. Seeds.
And I'm liking them.
Seeds. In the shell. (21g of fiber that way, as opposed to 2g without the shell.)
And I think that's weird. As I often do, I'm eating seeds. Seeds.
And I'm liking them.
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