Being the sly and capricious individual I am, I thought I’d end 2010 with knocking off the easiest of my 32×32 list:
Yes, donuts! The fresh kind, which are always infinitely better than your standard garbage masquerading as donutkind at Dunkin or Krispy Kreme. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve eaten my fair share of sugar bombs at both of those places (and suffered the resulting sugar high-acid reflux combo punch) it’s just that if I’m going to eat donuts these days, I’d like them to be as delicious as possible.
Now I wouldn’t be my procrastinating self if I didn’t wait A MONTH to post about eating donuts, but eh, it is what it is and I yam what I yam.
Coming soon: knitting cables, riding into the sunset, and saving the council one Paragon option at a time.
After working furiously on #15 from the List last night (and completely forgetting that playing video games until the wee hours of the night is a bad idea when you get up for work in the wee hours of the morning) today was rough, as Mondays go. Coupled with the leftovers of the Pineapple Express deluge while walking home from the bank after work and it’s a mild understatement to say I’m happy to be wrapped in a blanket on the couch right now.
And in the category of things that are super cool about my new home, I woke up the other day to a bellydancing Groupon offer in my inbox. I thank my lucky stars that I moved back to a major metropolitan area that has the population and diversity to offer things like bellydancing classes at an actual establishment that exists only for dancing of the bellies. No more the rec room back alley Billy Elliot instructor types, no more waiting for kids karate to get out of the local high school gym for yoga, an actual place (places! I looked!) where there is instruction for dancing in many forms. If I sound a bit giddy, I’m not exactly sorry because heck, I am! Needless to say, I snatched up the offer and will be making time in my post-Christmas schedule to shake my hips like whoa.
Not that any of this in and of itself is necessarily important enough to warrant a lengthy blog post, but in the interests of working on #19 and making progress on the entire list I figure just putting it out there will help me make this a habit. There are an amazing number of things in my life that are changing in baby steps, and not to be all What About Bob up ins but chopping things up into manageable bits of progress has helped me immensely. So expect more little blurbs, I promise I’ll try to keep them brief!
Some people make life plans, some people make New Years resolutions, but if you’re like my friend Steve you make a 31×31 list. That’s a list of thirty-one things, ranging from taking a cooking class to skydiving to Vegas baby! by the time his 31st birthday rolls around next October. Genius! My natural dislike and complete incompetence with New Years resolutions has made this list format attractive, though I only have about eight months until my 32nd birthday August hence.
(Oof, thirty-two. Am I really going to be thirty-two? It feels like I just cracked a quarter century a couple of months ago.)
My intention is to update the blog, in it’s newly expanded not-just-for-food-anymore capability, to track my progress and hopefully share stories and photographs (see #21)
So here it is, thirty-two things I’m going to do by the time I’m 32:
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This was going to be a food post but I’m fluttering around at work worrying that I haven’t updated this blog in months. Again. (I’m sort of bad at this, eh?)
So in the interest of future writings and the fact that I just need to put thought to paper (internet?) on occasion, I think I”ll be writing a bit more about life in general than solely my need to shove beautiful and delicious food in my face. Not that I haven’t been eating well recently! Since moving to Seattle the quality of my face-stuffings has improved significantly and I’m absolutely in love with the idea of being able to walk to the market whenever I want, and to be able to visit local-supplied farmer’s markets weekly throughout the year. Love this place.
However, between the new job and moving house not once but twice, most of the cooking has been left to my otter half, who is quite the cook in his own right. Meanwhile I’ve been knitting up a storm recently, definitely satisfying my Make Stuff need. Multiple hats, a couple of scarves and neck cowls and a sweater that I swear I’m going to finish one of these days are all piled up or delivered to their intendeds to many smiles, which is awesome. And one of these days I’ll break in the new camera and get photos of all this stuff for posterity, I swear!
But in the meantime, I’m off to eat some lunch and get back to the business of keeping my eating and crafting habits afloat.
So I didn’t forget about this blog.
No really, I promise! But a whole helluva lot has happened in the four months (cringe!) since I Iast graced WordPress with my presence. I have managed to find new awesome employment and relocate my entire life from the right coast to the left coast, which is sort of mind blowing if I do say so.
Exciting? Oh yes.
Exhausting? Absolutely.
Worth it? On so many levels!
But in the ensuing panic of packing, I definitely wasn’t cooking much and my writing fell by the wayside. I did manage to keep myself entertained in other ways, some of which I hope to post about in the near future. I’m also experimenting with the WordPress iPhone app to extend my posting capabilities while I’m in the go. So far it’s terribly awkward, but until I pop for a purse-sized netbook it’ll have to do.
There are posts in the works (including a guest writer who makes amazing food!) so you’ll be gearing from this place soon, I promise. In the meantime it’s back to the grindstone for me!
I had, for all intents and purposes, meant this to be posted during April’s Grilled Cheese Month (why April? who decides these things anyways?) but as mentioned in my previous and apologetically brief post, I’ve been a bit distracted from the food blogging world in the past few weeks. But now, I’m back and slavering for more!
I think pretty much everyone has memories of childhood grilled cheese sandwiches – mine was white bread spread with margarine (no butter in our house!), two or sometimes three slices of processed yellow American cheese and of course Campbell’s tomato soup for dipping. It was a feast of grand proportions challenged only by the triple-decker-PBJ and chicken soup combo, and best served with cheeks pink from crisp early spring or late fall weather.
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Forgive me O Constant reader! Work and life slammed me unexpectedly, and woops cooking and photoing and writing suddenly fell off the radar, unfortunately. I’ll be back in the game hopefully tomorrow with a little cheesy deliciousness!
The average American diet has been in the news a lot lately, from the recent research talking about possible correlation between HFCS laden food and obesity to the food fad nutjobbery that espouses weight loss with This One Secret They Don’t Want You To Know About! (yes thank you obnoxiously gyrating Flash ad) and all the craziness in between. It can be so difficult to find reliable information as so many major news outlets, medical journals and celebrities seem to be putting out different, if not completely contradictory, information that can be so easy to take for truth.
One of the few things that I think everyone can agree on is that as with computer programming, Garbage In – Garbage Out. If you’re stuffing yourself full of fast food and super sugary drinks at every meal, is it really a surprise that you end up feeling terrible and sleeping badly? Now I’m not saying that we should all be vegans or raw food enthusiasts – trust me, I like a good blue steak as much as the next carnivorous dame – but I’ve come to the realization in the past year or so that there are some foods in particular that I just can’t eat without feeling like I got run over by an aircraft carrier.
Coincidentally its not only the rich, over-processed and sickeningly sweet foods that make my GERD rear its ugly head; ripe bananas, though delicious and full of wonderful nutrients and vitamins, make my stomach hurt like nobody’s business. Thankfully, I’ve adjusted my fruit eating habits and know to avoid the squishy delicious bananas and make up for their loss with other, equally tasty fruits and vegetables.
And it turns out that my Mom isn’t the only one who’ll be proud of me for eating my fruits and veggies, there is some evidence that diets high in fresh foods can lower risks for certain cancers, though as one of my favorite science bloggers points out it may not be as wildly effective as some studies have advertised. So as the scientific community continues to research the effects of our diet on our bodies and our futures, one thing is for sure – we all need to spend more time in the produce section.
My childhood memories of the dinner table are mostly pleasant. There was that one incident with experimental macaroni casserole that even the dog wouldn’t eat, but Mom did a great job feeding us on what must have been at times a very tight budget. My parents made a point to turn off the television, ignore the phone and concentrate on sharing a meal and having conversation with my brother and I. In hindsight, that attention to mealtime is something of a lost art with most of us scrambling to shovel food into our gaping maws while watching the latest episode of American Idol or surfing the internet. Multitasking is going to be the death of the dining table, I’m sure.
I remember a lot of steamed broccoli and frozen peas, the occasional side salad, some soggy asparagus, but not too much else in the way of green veggies. I don’t know if that was because they were quick (with two children and a husband clamoring for food I’m sure faster was better) or because they were familiar to us all and branching out would have been met with looks of consternation and surprise fork hockey. What I do know is that both of my parents grew up on canned veggies as was very typical of their generation, and that whenever Grandma made canned gray green beans Dad and I made identical bleaugh faces and ran for the hills.
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Lady Marmalade I am not but I do enjoy a good citrusy hit on my toast early in the morning! So while wandering through my favorite food sites, I came upon David Lebovitz’s Bergamot Marmalade and drooled appropriately. Of course, living in rural-ish New England doesn’t make easy access to exotic citrus, so I had turned my frown into the decision to find some sour oranges and give it a shot with those. Shortly after I read David’s recipe, while dreams of bergamots still tauntingly danced in my head, I decided to hop a plane and shoot on out to Seattle to see he who shall remain nameless for the time being. Cross-coast love, ain’t it grand? Read more…
