Observations of an Opera Child

Loss and Food

2011-02-20T13:42:00.001-05:00

So. I've been gone for over a month.

And a lot of things have happened.

One: the boyfriend and I moved to a gorgeous loft overlooking the Oconee River, and while my cat is licking himself bald in the attempt to deal with the stress of moving, we are delighted. We've been eyeing these for ages, and it's so wonderful to find one we could afford. We've even got a trail that winds its way along the river, and I've gone running for the past few days. It's too beautiful not to!

Two, and on a much more solemn and sad note, one of the nine members of our Graduate Acting Ensemble, Lynwoodt Benard Jenkins, had a heart attack in his office on January 24th and died. I think to say "it was horrible" is putting it lightly, but it hasn't been a good time for any of us. We were all in shows with him (he was my father in Eurydice, in the picture below), we had most of our classes together, and it's a huge loss.

Lynwoodt Benard Jenkins: The Father in Eurydice, directed by Heidi Cline
Photo by John Kundert-Gibbs, 2009

I want to talk a little about the effects loss can have on a dietary lifestyle. I'm still struggling with this a bit, but I needed to put it down in black and white (well, black and grey) so that I can take a good long look at what's going on, and hopefully get better about this. I won't go into much of the emotions surrounding this, not because they don't exist, but because I just cannot share them, and they still need to stay private for me.

After we found out that Lynwoodt was gone, and witness statements, etc. were filled out and the detectives no longer needed us, we were eventually released from our huddled state of shock and tears to go home. The boyfriend took me back immediately, and I spent the rest of the afternoon between sobbing fits on the couch, watching reruns of Frasier and eating two bags of my boyfriend's Doritos.

The morning after, when I realized what I had done to myself (and yes, eating that much garbage when you're not used to it feels absolutely awful later), I freaked. I utterly and totally freaked. I've never been obsessive about weight, but I keep myself strictly at a size 2-4. I was horrified of slipping into what I'd heard so much of: people experience grief/loss/depression, turn to food, and the next thing you know, they're on Heavy and weigh 400 pounds. For me, that is not okay. It partly has to do with my choice of career, but also with who I am. It is not okay for me to weigh over 135. It is just not okay.

So I made the conscious decision not to eat when I wasn't hungry. And for about eight to nine days after Lynwoodt died, I was not hungry. I lost a pound a day. (No, that is not cool; that is scary.)

I sort of ate; I didn't go completely cold turkey. Not really, though. I'd juice a grapefruit, have a branch of grapes, make myself some tea, have some Campbell's Healthy Harvest soup--the vegetable kind--and then eventually that dwindled down to me adding some extra water to the soup, throwing in some cumin, cayenne, and some herbs, and then eating the broth and leaving the vegetables.

I need to emphasize that this was not a losing-weight fad with a good excuse; this was an honest reaction to something horrific. I slept so much; our couch probably has a serious dent in it from all the hours I spent sleeping on it. And eventually I stepped on the scale, saw that I was at 121, and was distortedly proud of that weight loss.

Fresh from the scale, I headed to do something I hadn't done in years, and that was to go browse some livejournal anorexia communities, because clearly I hadn't done enough harm to myself. I joined two.

About a day later, when I started thinking that I couldn't have grapes because of the sugar content, I realized what I'd done, and what I was in serious danger of slipping into, and had the sudden urge to just slap myself as hard as I could. I nearly did.

I talked to some wonderful people, went to Trader Joe's that night, and came home with armfuls of fruit, vegetables, a few multigrain crackers, and a wedge of cheese. I was not hungry, and I was nearly sick several times, but I made myself eat things: small salads, a few crackers, a bunch of grapes, baked sweet potato chips, and a lot of guacamole. It helped.

A few days later, I was eating again, and I think I'm eating normally. I'm a bit below my normal weight, but not scarily so. And I picked up running a few days ago: just 15-20 minutes a day, but it's teaching me to be grateful for the wonderful things my body can do, rather than curse it for having a body fat percentage.

The thing is that sometimes you cannot listen to your body; you have got to listen to your mind. If I had gone on thinking that just because my body wasn't sending me hunger signals, I wasn't rapidly starving myself, I'd have found myself in a whole lot of trouble.

The other thing is that it's so easy to channel your emotions into either food or the lack thereof. It has got to be a separate thing, otherwise we're never going to work through our feelings; we're just going to bottle them into repressed unhappiness.

Emotional eating always means something else is going on, always. Stop for a moment. Figure out what's going on, or try to. Then take a deep breath and step away from the food you were about to mindlessly dig in to, because it will not help your problems go away, and try to work on your real problems, not suffocate them with food.

It's hard. Of course it is. We're so terribly used to using food as a comfort. But pressing the mute button won't stop your mind from feeling your struggles.

The Breakfast Thing

2011-01-10T09:09:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer: no, I'm not a doctor. So don't take my word as gospel and then sue me if it isn't to your liking. You'd get nothing out of it, even if you did sue me for everything I'm worth, except for a cat.

The breakfast thing.

We've all heard this twenty thousand times over, especially if we're women. Eat breakfast. Every day. Include lots of lean protein. Otherwise, you will be sluggish all day and you will get fat. Eating a healthy breakfast may contribute to losing weight. Thank you, every magazine for women ever created. Thank you, government-regulated health mandates. Thanks. Yeah.

This is a problem. Honestly. I have watched dozens of commercials for things like really sugary kids' cereal, saying that they're "part of a healthy breakfast" or "contain nutrients for a healthy breakfast" or heaven knows what. Or that commercial for Nutella that's on TV right now--that Nutella helps a busy mom make her kids eat in the morning.

Nutella on white bread toast. Yes. That is the perfect thing to feed your kids, because it's not as though they'll have a sugar crash later or anything, or be so ridiculously hyper that you'll find yourself in a situation where teachers and doctors will be recommending ADD drugs. Or sugary cereal! Make them eat something! Anything! Just throw factory-manipulated, hard-to-absorb vitamins and minerals over the sugar on that cereal and it's better than nothing! It is! It is! Just eat your breakfast!

Don't get me wrong; I adore Nutella, possibly more than any chocolate easily available in Georgia. I eat it with an espresso spoon sometimes. But you've got to admit that this "breakfast" rule that allows companies to push their sugary, processed product as mandatory for the health of children is pretty screwed up. Just look at those waffles! In what universe is that healthy, ever, never mind appropriate to set the nutritional tone for your entire day? Ew. Seriously. Ew.

(Not to mention all the overprocessed white flour, sugar, and antibiotic-laden dairy it includes, anyway.)

Me? I don't eat breakfast.

Sacrilege? Yes, probably. But, see, here's the catch. I don't want to. Moreover, I don't need to.

On vacation, or on weekends, I usually don't eat till between twelve and two in the afternoon. On average, when I don't have to get up early, I wake up around eight or so. So that's four to six hours of me not putting food in my body, and yet--and yet--I am not, nor have ever been, overweight. And except for one class for which I showed up one minute late one time too many, I've had straight As in graduate school.

Which means that, contrary to the usual "wisdom", I don't feel deprived when skipping breakfast. At all. I drink a lot of green tea in the winter to warm up, and cool down with straight water in the summer. Maybe, if the grapefruit on the counter are calling to me (as they are now), I'll juice one or two of them into a wine glass. Occasionally, about once a month or so, a cup of Greek coffee. It's all I need. If I had the money, I'd juice every morning. But I wouldn't eat.

And, no, I'm not anorexic, for potential skeptics out there. Not at all. Check out the blog's recipe history: what I post is mostly vegan and mostly low-fat, but there's a lot of it. Those recipes, especially the ones that say "serves 4-6", are ones I make in bulk and just for myself. Really.

You see, if I eat breakfast in the morning, it's like a trigger that turns on my appetite. I want to eat more during the day. If I have a bowl of blueberries and almond milk, I suddenly want lunch much earlier than usual. Then an afternoon snack. Then dinner. Then something else before bed. Suddenly, even if everything I eat is healthy, I've eaten way, way more than I feel comfortable with, and I go to bed feeling miserably overstuffed.

And, yes, I do realize that what I just outlined is what most American nutritionists would recommend as a healthy lifestyle. But they'd also recommend treadmills or weight training, which, frankly, are too boring for me to deal with. 30 daily minutes of yoga I can do. Jogging on a piece of plastic and metal and trying not to kill myself from boredom and the thought "IS IT OVER YET?!?!?", no. And I danced for six years; you can't tell me that I had no energy because I didn't eat breakfast. Especially one that has FRIES in it, for heaven's sake!

I think we eat too much. I honestly do. I think we are being bombarded from all sides with information telling us to eat too much. Three meals a day? Five small meals? Really?

I just don't see the need to keep something in my stomach at all times. You feel better, lighter (no matter what you weigh), when your give your poor body a break once in a while. And I honestly believe that, for some people, the addition of food in the morning makes you feel inclined to eat more during the day. Why would you want to take in more food if you haven't even eliminated most of what you ate the day before? Why load yourself down like that? You're not a Mack truck, for heaven's sake.

I know a lot of people who just don't eat breakfast, either because they don't want to, because it makes them feel queasy, or because they don't have time. And it's not the death threat that very aggressive marketing wants you to think it is. It's a wee bit liberating, actually.

I'm 5'5". Never in my life have I weighed over 135 lbs and my usual waist size is 25". You cannot tell me that not eating breakfast will make you gain weight. It's absolutely untrue. Eating too much of the wrong foods will make you gain weight; that's all. As a matter of fact, I weigh more and I'm more unfocused when I do eat breakfast, because I'm too busy thinking about what I'll eat next.

Isn't your body something more than a food processing machine? Let it be, occasionally, and give it a break. When your energy isn't devoted to breaking down food, maybe you'll be able to use more of that energy. Just maybe.

Think about it. And look at the picture of that pretty parfait: it looks lovely, small, and I'd have it around 1 PM. Without the sugary granola, and with Greek yogurt and a small drizzle of honey or agave. And every blackberry and raspberry would be a kiss of heaven.

Melodic, Snowy Procrastination

2011-01-09T22:59:00.001-05:00

The snow is coming down in a constant feathery drift outside, and I sit here in front of my blog, guiltily thinking "I have so many unposted but written blogs! What is wrong with me?!"

The answer, of course, is that I am dreading Photoshop, because of the millions of pictures I have to edit. Seriously. I did some awesome cooking over the holidays, you guys--a beautiful recipe for mussels in a tomato-cream sauce is just begging to be posted.

But, until I can use tomorrow's snow day to properly waste my time, recipes will be up...later.

Still, I wanted to share something not entirely unamusing.

I was recently browsing through a lovely, warmhearted detox community of which I'm a member, and one of the journal entries was a question--what's your theme song?

Well! I answered this question, after a lot of googling, and after deciding that I didn't have one. However, I did realize that there are a few songs that will never, never, never grow old for me and most of which are so embarrassing that I have got to share them, because it makes me a wee bit happy to portray myself as somebody at whom people can laugh. (With love! Seriously. With love.)

So. What, exactly, are the songs that make my heart sing?

1. "Venomous Poison" by Alice Cooper.

I offer no apologies. But you should probably know that I first came across this song in high school, while I was irrevocably addicted to reading and writing Harry Potter fanfiction, and that someone had set this song to a video montage of Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape giving each other seriously dramatic, mournful looks, combined with a lot of sweeping out of the room with a lot of billowing cloak action. So I cannot take this song seriously. But it makes me giggle.

Also, I should not ever, ever venture into clubs that play this song. I made the mistake of doing this in Britain, and the very tall, thin, and extremely spotty boy dancing with me did not deserve being faced with a dance partner who burst into laughter and nearly fell backwards into the cage dancers because this song came on.

2. "Too Sexy For My Shirt" by Right Said Fred.

This, I feel compelled to admit, is also from my Harry Potter fangirl days. I think it's from 2003. Someone called Sherbet Lemon made a fanvideo of Kenneth Branagh prancing around to this song and I love it. Yes, the clips repeat a lot, probably because of the repetitive lyrics, but the horrified expressions of disgust the boys wear in the middle of the video makes up for it.

I am never going to be too sexy for this song. Or too dignified. Not ever.

3. "Taylor, The Latte Boy" sung by Kristin Chenoweth.

Or me, either in the shower or while dancing around the living room holding a Starbucks coffee cup. Or not. Or all the time. All the time. Except, naturally, in public. I am so ashamed, you guys, but I sing this one more often than anything else. And I grew up in a household flanked by opera, symphonies, ballet, and two professional classical musicians as my parents, and a few more as grandparents.

Taylor, the latte boy. I love him, I love him, I love him.

4. "Sweet Georgia Smile" by Johnny Rodgers.

Honestly, I think this is the sweetest song ever written.

'Cause I'll keep you smiling as time takes its toll,
Kissing your lips when they're tender and old;
And when day becomes night and the night becomes cold,
You'll never notice, 'cause I'll still be holding you...

I melt. Every time.

5. "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood.

Yes, partly because I was dealing with aftermath of a cheating boyfriend when this one came out. Mostly, though, it reminds me of an awesome opera singer who was being fitted for one of her costumes up in Chautauqua, NY, when her phone went off with this as her ringtone, and it was magical; all the girls felt magically bonded and magically happier. Magically. Without even one Louisville slugger.

6. "Who Knew" by Pink.

Lost love and all that. I know that this isn't what she originally wrote the song about, but I don't really care. Music means so many different things to different people. Although a couple of men have made the "U + Ur Hand" chorus ring loud and clear in my head on several occasions. Loud and clear.

(Loudly and clearly, the grammatical bluestocking inside me insists.)

7. "Toxic" by Britney Spears.

See, this was hugely popular my senior year of high school, right when my class was taking our IB exams. We had to go off campus for these, because of an IB rule about everyone being required to sit two meters apart from everyone else, and no classrooms in our high school were big enough. So we'd wait in the Wesleyan College parking lot, in the warm April sun, blasting "Toxic" from a friend's Jeep and dancing like crazy people right before going in to get our butts kicked by IB English for three hours.

And you know what? It worked.

My pretty IB diploma is hanging over my fireplace in my room at home. I actually think it means more to me than my undergraduate diploma.

Which songs make your heart sing?

9/11 First Responders

2010-12-17T13:45:00.002-05:00

Last night, Jon Stewart, after weeks of talking about the inability of Congress to separate and pass the bill to help 9/11 first responders pay for healthcare, brought four of them onto his show to get their reactions to the holdup in the Senate.

Stage four inoperable throat cancer. Heart disease. Lung disease. Back problems. Brain problems. Other cancers. Over two hundred 9/11 first responders cannot walk anymore. Workman's comp is apparently fighting them every chance they get, because "how can you be sure that those illnesses were a result of 9/11?"

No. They worked in that toxic cloud of rubbish for months on end, were proud to do so, and now an inordinate number of those first responders are horribly ill, and some have died; the first was James Zadroga, who died of a respiratory illness "attributed" to the toxic environment he spent so long working in. The House of Representatives, years after 9/11, passed the bill for the first responder healthcare in September. Now it's being held up in the Senate, where the Republicans are refusing to pass anything until their tax deal goes through, no matter how much people are suffering, and no matter how often they used 9/11 to stir up emotions in voters when they wanted something. As Stewart said, “You know what, Republicans? You use 9/11 so much, if you don’t owe 9/11 first responders health care, at least you owe them royalties.” The entire clip is here.

Fox News is a media machine. Remember the outrage over the mosque built two whole blocks away from Ground Zero? Yes. Remember every other time they've invoked 9/11? Yes. Not one word has been uttered about the Republican filibuster of this bill, and only one person at Fox, Peter Johnson, even covered the Zadroga bill. CBS, NBC, and ABC have not covered the bill at all. At all. What is wrong with the media in this country?

This week, the Senate finally split off the 9/11 first responders bill from the tax cut package. It still hasn't been passed, which is an outrage in itself, but an even more staggering outrage is that Senate Minority Leader Jon Kyl insisted that working during the week between Christmas and New Year's would be "disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians."

To get some feedback from Christian ministers about that statement, check out Faith In Public Life.

But, honestly, I think the best response to that pile of steaming excuses is from the Jon Stewart show, on which New York fireman and 9/11 first responder Kenny Speck said: “It just goes to show the disconnect between those who we elect to represent us. Because you won’t find a New York City fireman who considers it a sign of disrespect to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.”

It's a bit much to insist that you'd rather celebrate your Savior's birthday with a family dinner rather than do as he did and help people who are suffering and desperately in need of help.

Yes. That's exactly what Jesus would have done. Exactly.

I do hope, and I am restraining myself when I say this, that those opposed to doing any work around Christmas wash down their Christmas dinner with a pitcher of guilt. Because if they don't, then I shudder to think of how selfish and self-absorbed they really must be: enough to blot out any tinge of humanity from their souls.

To send a donation to the 9/11 first responders, to help them while the Senate tries to decide whether it's worth their time to work during the week after Christmas, check out the FealGood Foundation, whose primary goal is to get 9/11 first responders healthcare and whose secondary goal is to raise awareness about the problems they face. They take all major credit cards and Paypal. It's the least we can do.

Teriyaki and Dijon-Garlic Marinades

2010-12-17T10:47:00.004-05:00

You know you've been under the weather for too long when you realize you have to do laundry because you have no towels left, do three loads of laundry, and realize afterwards that you have not done one single load of either cool wash or delicates. Whoops. Glad that's almost over!

I felt very sluggish, and realized that I should probably stop curling up on the couch with a cold and a sweatshirt. After a good bout of staring in the mirror, I compromised by curling my hair and snuggling up with a book, figuring that it was okay to wear a perpetual sweatshirt the way movie characters wear pajamas: makeup and hair intact, and they still look cute.

However, the boyfriend and I reached an enormous turning point! We, er, left the house for the first time in a week, excepting my two trips to the grocery store on foot because he was terribly sick and needed crackers. I finally felt like a person again, and despite the snow flurries outside (which were heavier than the last time! Check it out; they're actually visible!), made an enormous bowl of salad and stared at it with the same spirit of a soul having just escaped being dragged down to Hades by its ankles.

This magical plate of elixir was my version of Natalia Rose's Turkish Three-Pepper Salad: three diced multicolored peppers, a pint of quartered cherry tomatoes, half a cup of chopped parsley, half a minced sweet onion, the juice of half a lemon, salt and pepper, some herbes de Provence, some garlic-infused olive oil, and two minced cloves of garlic. It was gorgeous, decidedly un-wintry, and after two days of that salad, I woke up without sniffles!

I also thought I'd share two recipes for something I tend to make fairly often, just not for myself: an Asian-style marinade and a marinade with garlic, white wine, and Dijon mustard. The boyfriend and I are polar opposites as far as food goes, so this makes my job just a little easier, because of course he doesn't eat all of this at once--it sits in the refrigerator and gets better as it marinades.

Teriyaki Pork (and/or) Dijon-Garlic Chicken

Serves 4 per marinade recipe

Ingredients

4-5 pieces pork or chicken, between 1.5 and 2 lbs total, per marinade recipe

Optional: use portobello mushrooms, which I did, and they're amazing.

Teriyaki Marinade

1 tbsp sesame oil

1/2 cup sake (or dry white wine)

2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

2 tbsp soy sauce, preferably nama shoyu

1 tsp minced ginger

1 tbsp honey or light agave nectar

1 tsp red curry (or chili/garlic paste, or crushed red peppers if you have nothing else)

Dijon-Garlic Marinade

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp herbes de Provence

1 tsp country-style Dijon mustard

Additional Materials

1-quart ziplock bags and a permanent marker

Directions

Label the ziplock bag with the kind of marinade, the type of meat, and the date. If you choose to freeze this, or make a different batch of marinated meat, this will be an immeasurable help--plus you'll know when to mistrust the meat if you accidentally leave it in the back of the refrigerator for too long.

Into the bag, add all of the marinade ingredients for your choice of marinade, ziplock it tightly, and shake it up, making sure to mix all of the ingredients up well. For the teriyaki marinade, you will have to massage the honey or agave into the rest of the ingredients; it tends to like to just stick to itself. It's super easy this way and you don't have to clean an extra bowl or two.

Take your pork or chicken pieces, poke them several times with a fork (or, clearly, sometimes a knife), and place them inside the bag. Zip the bag almost closed, then try to push all of the air out of the bag and close it up completely. The less air in the bag, the better your meat can marinate and the easier it is to handle and the less room it takes up. Massage the marinade thoroughly into the meat, then place in the refrigerator and let sit for 30 minutes to several days.

RealSimple says that you can freeze raw chicken pieces for up to 9 months and raw pork chops for up to 4-6 months. That seems a bit excessive to me, but it's good to know that the freezer is your friend.

When dinner time rolls around, you have several options: you can grill the meat as is, you can cut the teriyaki pork/chicken into pieces and make a stir-fry, you can sauté in the pan, and you can coat it in Italian-flavored or panko bread crumbs and bake or sauté.

Both marinades work exceptionally well with the breadcrumb coating, especially the Dijon-garlic one, according to the boyfriend. Just a drizzle of olive oil and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side, depending on thickness. Voilà!

To all you meat lovers out there, I hope you enjoy.

Oh, Christmastime Is Coming

2010-12-15T14:50:00.003-05:00

Oh, I'm positive that Christmastime is in the air! Want to know why?

We had flurries of snow! In Georgia! In mid-December!

Yes, you have to look very closely to see them, but they are totally there. It's the one picture on which a few specks of snow dust showed up; it stopped about two seconds after I got out on the balcony to take these. Exciting!

And it inspired me to get my butt moving on Christmas decorations! The boyfriend and I have both been so miserably sick that we haven't done anything Christmasy at all except for finishing our last 15-page papers as part of the end-of-semester finals thing. But first let me explain about Christmas and me.

All right. I'm an absolute atheist in the sense that I tried very, very hard when I was younger to believe in something, anything--my sister believed in the Greek gods at one point--and it did not work. Nothing worked. We had a serious forage into Judaism, because of ancestors who came here in, I think, 1907 from Austria, and I was the kid who sat in services with a little notebook and tried to learn Hebrew from the prayer book--but at some point I had to realize that I was kidding myself. I like this world, and I do not consider it unfair that I only have a short stint on it.

Clearly, this should mean that Christmas is a bit of an idiotic thing to celebrate, being the Christian way of trying to get rid of pagan festivities. But, you see, I also come from Germany, and they do Christmas very, very well. So for me, this time of year is much more about tradition than anything else. Seriously, we had some old-school Christmases when I was younger. My grandparents had actual white candles on their tree, and my grandfather had a gorgeously intricate Nativity scene he made himself.

You celebrate on the evening of the 24th, and during the entire month of December, Christmas markets spring up in just about every town. Artisans show up to sell gorgeous wood carvings, leatherwork, amazing candles (my father has a stunning handmade candle that looks like a surprisingly lifelike cobra), and, of course, Bratwurst inside a Kaiser roll (or occasionally on a small cardboard plate with curry sauce) and Glühwein, which is mulled wine with spices. My father always put up our tree while my mother and her friends played in an orchestra in one of the multiple beautiful old churches around Mainz or Wiesbaden, and we would watch.

Traditional German sweets around this time are Lebkuchen, which are plain, glazed, or chocolate-covered gingerbread rounds about 1/2" high and the size of your palm, and Stollen, which is a (surprisingly vegan!) marzipan fruitcake covered in powdered sugar. Surprisingly, I found them this winter at Trader Joe's, and my mother and I have pretty much cleaned them out.

But another thing that you do is celebrate the four weeks of Advent with an Advent wreath along with the calendar. The wreath has four candles, and every Sunday you light another one until all four are lit. In Germany, you can buy these with the candles, which sit on candleholders with spikes in them to hold the candles, but here I made do with a bronze plate and a wreath I decorated with glitzy stuff, pinecones, and holly. It makes me happy, and it smells like vanilla. =)

Another thing my mother, sister, and I used to do was to make our own tree decorations, Thankfully, I have grown out of the age during which I made strands out of threaded popcorn and made colored paper chains, but the love of the pretty tradition of making gilded walnut ornaments is, I have discovered, still beating strongly in my heart.

Materials

As many whole walnuts as you like

Short knife you do not particularly care about

Gold and silver spraypaint

Hot glue

A few yards of thread; try finding gold or silver

Wire coat hanger

Directions

Put a Christmas movie in the DVD player and curl up with a short knife, whole walnuts, and a plastic grocery bag. The base of the walnut will usually have a small hole you can wiggle the knife in and out of until the two halves pop apart. This step may take some practice.

With the knife, scoop out the insides and let fall into the plastic bag. Set aside, but make sure you keep the walnut halves together; finding the two that fit together perfectly is not very easy if you have dumped them all into a heap.

Heat the hot glue gun and cut the thread into lengths about 6"-8" long. Fold the thread lengths in half and set aside. Run a thin line of glue along the edge of one walnut half, press a length of thread into the pointy top of the walnut half, and press the other half on top. Set aside to dry. Repeat until all the walnuts are glued.

Take the wire hanger and unhook so you can slide the walnut strings onto the hanger. I used fifty walnuts, and slid twenty onto the hanger at a time. Hook the two ends of the hanger back together. This is an absolutely bootleg way to save time. Take the hanger outside, and, making sure the nuts are not touching, spray paint either gold or silver. Hang up somewhere outside (I used a planter) and let dry for 20-30 minutes, or until completely dry. Repeat with the second color.

Results: gold and silver walnut ornaments! I left a few plain, because I think they're pretty, too, but do as you think best! When I go home to see my mother, these will go on the tree there. =)

Merry Christmas!

What are your favorite holiday crafts? Or just holiday traditions in general?

Garlic-Infused Olive Oil

2010-12-12T12:32:00.002-05:00

My week of being sick has involved a very determined cat on a serious mission to paw at the television screen whenever he is not distracted by yummy unfortunate moths. This is what we have had to do to him, in defense of the television.

On a more culinary note, I keep meaning to post this recipe, but unfortunately I had to get rid of all my infused olive oil first before I could make any more! I have been putting a leetle too much into pasta water lately, just to make that level sink a little more. All in the name of blogging. ;)

What do you do when you experiment with a new brand of extra-virgin olive oil (or any other kind of oil) and find that it just isn't good enough to sprinkle over salads, and that you wished you'd spent a little more money on some extra-expensive olive oil you'd actually use? Well! That's when you can infuse your own oil with very tasty results!

Infused Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Materials
1 bottle for the olive oil with a drizzling stopper top
1 funnel

Ingredients
Extra virgin olive oil, enough to fill the bottle.
2 cloves garlic
3 small Thai chili peppers (or 1/2 tsp chopped hot peppers of your choosing)
5-6 peppercorns. I used sweet red ones, but feel free to go with white or black.
1 tsp herbes de Provence
Optional: stalks of rosemary, lavender, thyme, basil, dill, a few cubes of ginger, Thai basil, etc...

Directions
Clean the bottle and its stopper well; dry upside down for awhile. No one wants watery oil.

Lay your knife over the clove of garlic, flat side up, and bring your fist down on the blade to crack the garlic out of its shell. Remove the shell; you should be left with a moderately smashed clove of garlic. This is good; it will let the flavors infuse more quickly. Pop the garlic cloves into the bottle. If they do not fit easily, break or cut them. DO NOT force them inside; this will make too-big cloves impossible to get out later.

Toss in the chili peppers and the peppercorns. Place the funnel over the opening and add in the herbes de Provence; it's much less messy this way.

Then, take the extra virgin olive oil and pour into the bottle through the funnel, leaving enough room for you to put the stopper in. The olive oil will shake up the herbs, infusing everything with an amazing aroma and an even more luxurious taste. Voila!

Use to drizzle over bread or to dip bread in as an appetizer, for salad dressings, for pasta water, for savory soups--for anything! Except sweet things; don't use it with those. It's too savory for that.

The brilliant thing about this recipe is that you can literally put in just about anything. Last summer, I picked stalks of rosemary from my porch and put it, along with its pretty blue flowers, into the olive oil. You can put in anything from thyme to basil to dill to oregano to lavender. You could even put in ginger, Thai basil, and Thai chilies and give yourself an option for a Thai-themed salad or stir-fry. You could cheat with the chilies and throw in crushed red pepper flakes or just ground paprika or cayenne. I'm sure you could toss in a bay leaf, a piece of star anise, or even a cinnamon stick. You could add some toasted or raw walnuts for a flavor reminiscent of walnut oil!

You don't even have to buy gourmet olive oil for this to taste great; that's the beauty of it. I usually buy about 54 oz. of the most inexpensive extra virgin olive oil I can find (in this case, $5,49 from Trader Joe's) and leave whatever I don't use at the back of my cabinet. Do leave it in a cool, dark place, so it doesn't go rancid.

The best part is that it takes so little time: all you need is olive oil, a funnel, and the insides of your pantry. And it adds nothing in terms of fat/calories; you're still only enjoying the flavor of everything you put in, while the actual ingredients (except for ground herbs) stay safe and sound inside the jar, to be cleaned out when the oil is gone. So easy.

When I don't add avocado to my salads, I love drizzling this over the top of mixed greens, bell peppers, raw fennel or corn, and fresh tomatoes, topped with some cracked peppercorns. and lemon juice.

Then, when you have gourmet olive oil infusing away on your countertop, take a moment, if you have an overenergetic kitty, and introduce him to the marvels of a slippery ice cube. He will chase it like a chipper little chipmunk, and send you into some serious giggles.

ETA: A lovely lady just suggested that these would make great Christmas gifts--infused olive oil in bottles! I heartily agree, and they'd be even prettier with real stalks of the herbs inside the bottles instead of just crumbled herbs. Food for thought!

Filibustering His Way Into Twitter Heroism

2010-12-12T09:52:00.000-05:00

Over the past two days, I developed a staggering respect for Bernie Sanders.

To explain this properly, let me explain filibustering. (Or just watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)

The point is to stop a vote from passing, in this case, in the Senate. Historically, even as far back as Cato in the Roman Senate, who had a few issues with ceding more power to Julius Caesar, what you do is this: you gain the floor and then you talk as long as you are physically able, thus preventing anyone else from doing so. This procedure didn't change much until the 1970s, when, after a few modifications earlier on by Woodrow Wilson, suddenly all that really needed to happen was that one senator had to stand up and say "I AM GOING TO FILIBUSTER". At this point, all that really needs to happen to stop a bill from passing is that 41 senators put up their backs against it, which represents as little as 12.3% of the United States population. Cool, right?

Yes, if you're on the side of the 12.3%. The other 87.7% of the country can spontaneously combust for all it matters to this method of filibuster legislation.

Well, Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, took the floor at 10:25 AM Friday the 10th, 2010, and spoke nearly nonstop for eight and a half hours. (The record is 24 hours, although that senator apparently sang a bit so as to pad his time.) Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) spoke for 45 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively, to support him and give him a bit of a break, but Bernie Sanders had to remain standing, could not leave the floor, and could not take a bathroom break or eat anything. Apparently, he sipped a bit of water.

Y'all. That is hardcore.

What was he championing, you ask? That is an excellent question.

Senator Bernie Sanders was protesting Obama's recent decision to extend the tax cuts for all earning classes temporarily, as a result of well-known Republican...how shall we put it? Ostriches. That's a temperate word. Republican ostriches with their heads firmly in the sand, insisting that it's much better down there for everyone else, too. Senator Sanders insisted, for eight and a half hours, that this scheme would essentially damn the poor and the working class, whose taxes would apparently actually rise slightly under the tax extension proposals. He brought in letters from constituents, reading them aloud and giving pride of place to those letters from people who could not pay their heating bills in the Vermont winter. He pointed out that these new tax cuts will cost us $900 billion that we do not have, that we will have to borrow from China, and that this whole mess will, while enriching billionaires and impoverishing the poor and the working class, drastically increase our national debt and put us under the thumb of another country.

The only advantage here is that a lot of very rich people will be able to stay extremely rich, instead of being a little bit less than extremely rich. Trickle-down economics? Right.

If I made an incredibly large amount of money and did not feel like giving to charities, I'd salt my money away and the money that I did spend would go towards things like an expensive library, a nice house, and gorgeous clothing. Maybe some gourmet food, too. None of it would go to the most massive employers in the nation, because I happen to despise WalMart and most of the restaurant chains that employ so many. (For example, Chili's corn chowder tastes more like corn syrup than soup.) Not a cent of my money would go to buying anything from the meatpacking industry or the commercial food industry; I'd stick with local and organic. And the rest would go into my bank account, real estate, and into the stock market. The people who stay rich for generations are not those who spend all of their money. You give the very wealthy more money, and that much more will go into either savings or services that low-income or middle-class people do not provide. At some point, this money will get stuck, somewhere between the wealthy and the upper middle class.

Trickle down, my foot. If you want to make sure that money goes to the people who need help, then give it to the people who need help, not people who are not guaranteed to give them help.

Does this sound like a fair compromise to you? Never mind fair, actually; does this sound ethical to you? Does this sound like a process that will enrich the entire country and knock our 10% unemployment rate down to nothing?

If it does, please explain this to me, because even after listening to hundreds of arguments from many, many Republicans, I cannot understand how they pass this kind of legislation and live their lives without even the slightest twinge of guilt, nay, with the conviction that they are doing the best for their country.

All of this, of course, is coupled with the firm belief that they should not be responsible for others, and that coldly calculating millions of people out of their homes is what's best for the country's free market.

Senator Bernie Sanders?

Thank you for being the only senator who will speak up so passionately against something that is a disgrace to us as a nation and as a people.

As one of the lower-income citizens you were fighting for, I was cheering for you. As someone who hopes to make a very comfortable amount of money someday, I was still cheering for you.

And you're the most awesome Twitter sensation I've ever seen.

Sickly Shenanigans

2010-12-09T19:12:00.003-05:00

The thing about messing around in the kitchen when you are sick is that your brain starts whirling around inside your head without paying any attention to logic, reason, or, heaven forbid, basic culinary or human decency.

I soaked a whole small bag of chickpeas a few days ago, and, as is the way of chickpeas when they engorge themselves, now have enough to feed a battalion. I thought "Aha! I can post a hummus recipe! It will keep until I am well, so I do not even need to eat it today, and all can be well." It really is an exceptionally good hummus recipe when done properly, so I cannot explain what came over me this morning.

First of all, I feel that I should mention that sesame oil, while it theoretically has the same origin as tahini, which is sesame paste, does not taste the same. Even if your brain is crazy enough to think that this is, in theory, quite possible, all such delusions dissolve when you taste your hummus made with four cups of chickpeas and find that your hummus tastes strangely Asian in this disturbing way in which it is also Mediterranean and wrong. And nothing can save it.

It is sitting in my fridge now, in shame. There is so much of it that throwing it away would be like starving an entire third-world country. Please note that nothing can take the place of real tahini. Especially sesame oil.

Another idea that is not of the best is to make bread with leftovers in your pantry and to believe that a loaf made of 3 cups of flour and 1 1/2 cups of ground flaxseed will hold together once baked. I have crumbles on my cutting board.

However, however, the absolute worst idea when you already have tangible proof that your brain is going off the goofy end and that it would probably be a better idea to boil electricity in your mouth, you should NOT start emailing your professors about why it is a bad idea for you to come in. I give you these two emails, because I still cannot believe I clicked the "send" button.

I feel that this may be a result of running through the cold, with a cold, on Tuesday morning to catch the bus so as to get to school twice, but said cold has bloomed into a pile of something pretty sickly and disgusting that should not be exposed to other people lest they run screaming from the feverish snot-monster. I think I am going to stay home, with your permission, and groggily contemplate the prospect of yet another pot of tea in hopes that this one, THIS ONE, will magically clear everything up.

If this persists and keeps me away from school for a really unreasonable amount of time, I want to wish you and all the shop girls a very merry Christmas/cheerful winter vacation/happy nondenominational holiday.

Fine, as far as it goes. A little crazed, but not actually, you know, certifiably insane. I could come back in to work and pretend, with a winning smile, that this was me trying to be funny. However, my dearly beloved boss responded very kindly and said something about the feverish snot-monster. Against all good sense, I thought that it would be polite to reply.

I feel more that the feverish snot-monster is taking over me rather than the opposite: I am writing goofy things I do not think I would ever write in a normal state of mind, like "feverish snot-monster" instead of "I am ill yet inexplicably dignified and by no means completely ludicrous as well as disgusting".

And then, then I actually wrote something that I just reread and realized could sound like an actual threat if taken the wrong way. Like, the threat that I would show my disgusting and ludicrous face.

<3 Miss you.

I am considering holding seminars on what not to do when you are sick. It will involve a lot of amusingly edited clips from a camera that will just follow me around for about three days straight.

Now, I think a soothing thing to do might be to combine wine and codeine.

What horrifically ridiculous things have you done when you are sick?

NaNoWriMo Winning Exultation!

2010-12-07T08:12:00.001-05:00

Heaven help me, I won my self-imposed National Novel Writing Month challenge! 100,031 words in 30 days. The last day was the worst--dress rehearsals and performances of Endgame did me in, as did hanging out with family for Thanksgiving, so I wrote nearly 6,000 words on Monday and 9,000 on Tuesday! I wanted to slit my throat a little, but pushed through it at the last minute because I could not have borne missing my self-imposed goal by only about 100 words or whatever it was at 10 minutes till midnight.

So it's done! I have this huge manuscript safely locked away on several backup discs, and now I'm off to read as much Arabian and Islamic history as I can. It'll be a fun Christmas! I will freely admit that while writing my research was by necessity confined to hallowed halls of learning like Wikipedia and www.sudairy.com, from which I grabbed names, a few phrases, and recipes.

But, while researching Arabian horses of the 9th century, I found out something completely fascinating that I am GLAD many people do not know about, because, uh, this information would probably have been used in Twilight and then it would be more ridiculous than it already is. Want to guess what this is?

No. You couldn't. How could you? I could not believe it and had to go over the cited pages a few times to make sure I was not hallucinating. But.

The now-extinct Turkoman horse, slender like a greyhound and with hooves small enough to traverse rocky mountainous paths, was covered in a coat of hair that glittered.

I saw that sentence and burst out laughing so hard that only by the grace of an instinctual hand clap did I escape spitting tea all over the computer screen.

Suddenly I feel that I may have done the Twilight vampires a bit of wrong by mocking their glittery skin so much. Clearly, uh, it is possible? Glittery hair, at least. Glittery like the tinsel wigs you find at party stores.

I am still torn between snorting with laughter and wanting a Turkoman horse of my own. But come on, world. This is a clear gift to Mary-Sue authors and nobody, nobody needs to give them more ammunition. Nobody. Not even you, history.

But after finishing at midnight on Tuesday, I could not go to sleep--guess I was too used to staying up ridiculously late to finish my daily quota! So this was that morning's sunrise. Beautiful, isn't it?

Oh, so sick...

2010-12-06T23:19:00.001-05:00

Oh, the onset of winter and the looming doom of final exams! I'm curled up on the couch right now, hating life, hating my scratchy throat, and especially hating the knowledge that I have a three-page paper to write by tomorrow at five, that I have to present a Shakespeare history scene at 9 AM, and that I have another 15-page paper due in a week.

But three things I don't hate, not at all, are the adorable kitty curled up on my lap and making it impossible for me to move, the existence of College Inn culinary broth, and the boyfriend who is lovingly beetling back and forth from me to the stove to refill my cup of soup.

My mother discovered this broth last year, when I was miserably ensconced at her house for 11 days of a bout of swine flu that lasted all Thanksgiving week and royally ticked me off. I was not okay with eating anything, and tea was getting boring after about day 4, so she scoured Publix for something more interesting that did not involve actual pieces of food that I would have to eat. (No, this is not nutritionally sound. At all. But when you're down with swine flu, all you care about is unstopping your nose with steam and not giving yourself more food that will just nauseate you.)

She came home with two magical cartons of broth. I had always thought that cooking broth came in four different varieties: chicken, beef, fish, and vegetable. (Apparently also turkey, though.) However, College Inn has taken this to a whole new level and has created 32-oz cartons of savory goodness called, respectively in order of awesomeness, Thai Coconut Curry and White Wine & Herb.

Yes, these involve a lot of sodium, and their base is chicken stock, so they're not vegan or even vegetarian. But for anyone even the smallest bit flexible, they're amazing when you're flat on your back with a cat on your head and wishing you could fast-forward to a week later, like DirectTV. But I water them down by half, heat on the stove, and clutch cup after cup of this like they're liquid gold, because I'd be just as upset if I accidentally spilled either.

The Thai Coconut Curry includes coconut, curry, garlic, soy sauce, and coriander. Other ingredients are listed on the website. It's got a fun kick at the back of your mouth that's a little spicy, even when it's watered down, but it doesn't hurt a sore throat unless you are drinking gallons of it.

The White Wine & Herb has Chablis wine, oregano, thyme, rosemary, apple cider vinegar, onion extract, and a decent amount of salt. Yes, there is an unhealthy amount of sodium in both. But I tell myself that if I'm watering it down with a lot of filtered water and a whole lot of tea, things will be fine. You know, you hear that you should not drink too much or you will flush necessary salt reserves right out of your system? Same idea. Sort of.

These two, combined with quite a lot of Temple of Heaven Gunpowder Green Tea, make being sick quite bearable. However, the presence of a warm cat on your feet does quite a lot to lift your spirits, too.

Endgame Closing and Fall Photography

2010-11-24T12:44:00.000-05:00

Greetings from a long-absent blogger!

Want to know why I was gone? Oh, simply lots of things! For starters, check out the NaNoWriMo light blue box in the top right corner of the blog...

76,277 words, and I've got through November 30th to hit 100,000! I'm pretty much on track, and the characters and plot are running leaps and bounds away from me, saying things like "WE WANT AN EXCITING LIFE; HERE, HAVE SEVENTY SUBPLOT BUNNIES"and occasionally making me want to tear my hair out because it is totally bloody implausible to be married to someone for a thousand and one nights and bear him three children without him noticing anything! This is what I get for trying to bring morbid realism into fairy tales.

And, you guys, Endgame and Act Without Words II went so well! We had to turn people away the first night and only had about three seats or so open the second night, which is amazing, and most of us agreed that it was and was probably going to be our favorite thing that we would ever do at UGA. It's just...you can't compete with a great play, and that's what Beckett writes.

On a really entertaining side, would you guys like to see how creepy I looked? My ash-can husband and I are pretty good at stage makeup. Check out the About Me page to see what I look like normally...it's a pretty drastic difference! And yes, I am the one on the right with the terrifically ratty black wig.

It was a pretty wonderful experience, especially since I very probably won't be cast so wildly out of type for years and years if I get lucky, never if I don't. It's also probably one of the few plays in which I could fall asleep during the performance and it was totally okay. Except for about 10-12 minutes, I was either on my knees inside the ash-can, and my cue to poke my head up was a really loud banging on the lid just over my head, and for the rest of the time I lay behind the cans reading The Other Boleyn Girl or Seabiscuit (best-written nonfiction book I have ever read, bar none) and the cue to get me out of the cans was darkening lights and applause. Baby powder was everywhere, though.

I have discovered one great thing about makeup removal lately. Usually, we use Vaseline, face scrubs, soap, and a lot of washing to get that heavy, cream-based Ben Nye makeup off. However, a few months ago I started getting interested in coconut oil, and found Nutiva's Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil. The theory is that if it's safe to eat, it's safe to put on my skin to be soaked up through pores and all that good stuff.

So aside from using it as a cooking oil that oxidizes only at very high heats (and tastes great with Thai food...), it's serving as an all-around magic potion: it goes in the cat's food mixture of ground chicken, fish oil, grated celery, pumpkin purée, and water, I use it as lotion all over my body and moisturizer for my face when I go to bed (the coconut smell fades after awhile, luckily for me, my love of great perfume, and the boyfriend who does not really want to kiss a coconut), it can be used to protectively oil my bamboo cutting board, and if you smear it onto whatever waterproof or crazy heavy makeup you are wearing, the makeup and the coconut oil wipe right off.

Yes, it may take a few applications (never more than three for me with the heaviest cream-based makeup), but it's so, so, so much gentler on your skin than just washing and scrubbing, and it's never made me break out. In fact, if I put it on my face just like moisturizer before going to sleep, I wake up with dramatically better skin. It's pretty awesome stuff, and it's a huge savings in gazillions of horrendously expensive products that I'm slowly weeding out of my bathroom--there is suddenly so much more space! It's a pretty great thing. It's also the only thing I've found that is organic, edible, and took off my heavily applied waterproof eyeliner from The Arabian Nights.

Finally, I thought I'd provide something pretty to look at. =)

You know, I am perfectly aware that it is the end of November, but Georgia does not seem to agree with me. About a week ago, I went out and finally took some of the most beautiful fall photographs I've ever taken, and that evening, a rainstorm decided that Georgia was finished being pretty and that people should just wander through ankle-high drifts of crackling yellow leaves instead.

I took all of these on the five-minute walk to the Publix around the corner. They're pretty magical. Don't you just love the gorgeous contrasts between the red, orange, green, and yellow? I actually saw a few purple leaves the other day, so they're spanning all the colors in the spectrum except for blue...

Look at these two trees against the sky: it's like the least dangerous leaping orange flames that are utterly consuming every single branch...

This one I find utterly fascinating, because when I look closely at it with the help of a pair of squinted eyes, it reminds me of a slinking red dragon coiling its way up a tree. Look at that gorgeous, undulating red and gold against the still bright and dark green background! And to think, that lovely beauty bloomed on the corner of an incredibly busy street. No matter how hard we try, it's pretty hard to force nature into submission...

This one makes me hungry. I am embarrassed to admit it, but it is so. I look at it and think "This is so red and luscious and gorgeous that it must have something to do with food!" Clearly, I need to retrain my appreciation for eating to approach the world in general.

Look at this one: a yellow-gold canopy that I can imagine hanging over a bed...specifically, the gold and apple-green canopy that hangs over Marie Antoinette's bed in Versailles, surrounded by its golden railing to keep the crowds a few feet away during royal births and just normal things like...getting dressed.

A fountain of green dotted with fall! I love this tree; its underside was surprisingly so much more dramatic than its top, which usually doesn't happen--the leaves closest to the sun turn red and drop off first. This one is a pretty little anomaly!

Look at the poor nude branches after the rainfall--reaching out to each other as if to say "We had a good thing going there; stay in touch, friend!"

I won't be seeing them next year, though, unless I make a special trip with the camera, because...and this is one of the most exciting things of the past few weeks...the boyfriend and I signed a lease for a historic loft by the river!

More on that later. It's a dangerous thing! I'm scouring Anthropologie for chandeliers, trivets, wallpaper, and herb bowls that would work so well in that gorgeous old space...

Endgame

2010-11-14T00:05:00.002-05:00

My Photoshop / poster design skills are getting better! Check it out: the poster for Endgame and Act Without Words II, running November 17-18 (Wednesday and Thursday) in the UGA Fine Arts Building at 8 PM. It's going to be an amazing show; great scripts, great directors, great casts, and all the proceeds go to the Graduate Acting Ensemble's third-year showcase in Atlanta and NYC. (And elsewhere, if we can get enough money together!) So put it on your calendars if you're in town, and come out for an incredible show.

Another Graduate Acting Ensemble show coming up soon is our Voice class's rendition of Twelfth Night. Running in the UGA Fine Arts Arena Theatre at 8 PM Saturday, December 4 and Sunday, December 5, it is not only going to make you fall off your seat laughing but, since it's a class project, it's free! We are gratefully taking donations, though, because we do want to have an awesome showcase and do that thing where we succeed as working actors.

So that's the rest of the fall Graduate Acting Ensemble season! Come out and enjoy yourself; you'll have two fantastic evenings to remember.

Turkish Tomato-Stuffed Eggplant

2010-11-13T18:36:00.000-05:00

Man, you guys, I'm cold. Like, permanently cold. It is November in Georgia, the night temperatures have only started to dip down into the forties, and my fingers are so cold they make the boyfriend yelp and shout "Gah! Cold! Get them off of me!" So, of course, I do it to torment him. This is how our relationship works: we pretend to be snarky and terrible to each other, burst out laughing, and end up cuddling on the couch with the cat. It's disgustingly cute.

I have some awesome mementos of these snarky moments, like when I was in Arabian Nights and wore a belly dancing outfit--he took me out to eat at Cali-n-Tito's, a fantastic local Cuban restaurant, and I ate so much that he tore off a corner of my napkin and drew a picture of a monstrously obese me in a sparkly bra, skirt, and belt, wearing a huge smile and waving a ham in one hand. It was titled "Sche-HAM-ezade. I tried to be offended but ended up laughing myself sick.

Despite the laughter, though, my toes are trying to freeze. I see two solutions to this: one is to warm myself up, the other is to cut them off. I like my toes, and feel like option A is the way to go.

So! Do you remember this stack of eggplanty tomatoey vegetables I posted the other day with the Baba Ghanoush recipe? I still had one eggplant, the zucchini, and a load of tomatoes left over. The zucchini went towards a simple but amazing raw spaghetti, but the eggplant needed something special. Something very special. Something that used the oven for an extended period of time so that the apartment would warm up. And voila! It combines neutrally, unless you sprinkle pine nuts or almonds on top.

Turkish Tomato-Stuffed Eggplant

Serves 2-4 (makes two large, stuffed eggplant halves)

Ingredients

1 eggplant

2 tomatoes, chopped

1/2 large sweet onion, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

3" piece lemongrass (optional)

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/4 cup sliced green onions

1/4 cup chopped parsley or sweet basil

A few almond slices or pine nuts to garnish (optional)

1 tsp fenugreek

1 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cayenne

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Take the eggplant and slice off the spiky green stem. Slice in half lengthways, then take your knife and score it in a criss-cross pattern like in the picture. BE VERY VERY SURE not to cut more than 1/4 close to the edge of the eggplant and DO NOT pierce the skin with your knife. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet, drizzle lightly with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven; it should look like the picture on the left.

With a spoon and a sharp knife, scoop out the insides of the eggplant to leave two eggplant bowls; do not remove so much of the flesh that you can see the purple skin. It will tear and leave you with a mess. Chop the insides of the eggplant into bite-sized pieces and reserve. Turn the oven heat off and slide the eggplant bowls inside to keep warm.

Drizzle a pan with a little olive oil and heat to medium high. When the oil is hot, toss in the chopped onions, garlic, the stalk of lemongrass, sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss, and let saute for 2-3 minutes until the onions are translucent.

Add the two chopped tomatoes, all the spices, and the lemon juice. Bring to a boil and then add in the eggplant.* Simmer for 5-7 minutes, then fold in the chopped basil or parsley and green onions.

Take out the lemongrass stalk. Remove the eggplant bowls from the oven and spoon the tomato-eggplant mixture into each bowl. Transfer to plates. Garnish with a few more green onions and some herbs, or with pine nuts (as is tradition) or almonds (as I did).

Serve as is or with a side of couscous; enjoy!

*If you like, you can add anything to the dish at this point; you could toss in some shrimp, maybe some bell peppers, maybe scallops, maybe sauteed pieces of lamb...it's pretty versatile!

Woot T-Shirt Contest: Steamhands

2010-11-12T19:14:00.001-05:00

Steamhands

My boyfriend is so freaking talented that I can't help gushing about him. Look at this: his latest collaborative entry for the weekly shirt.woot T-shirt contest. The theme is robots, and this is the coolest entry out of all of them, bar none.

It's called "Steamhands", and the robot hands are repairing each other; it's beautiful, clever, and I made him center the hands so that they would be slightly above the bustline, for girls. (Men do not ever think of these things, which surprises me, because many of them seem to like breasts a little.)

The Woot voting system is that you can vote for as many shirts as you want to, but just once, and you can only vote if you have bought something from Woot before. It's how they stop people from spamming the votes. The shirts are only $10, which is a great deal for a gorgeous T-shirt (hey, my university shirts have run up to $25), and you'd be helping support a really talented young man who needs to be inspired to make more of these.

In case you're curious, Release! is his last design, which I've also written about here, and...yeah, wow. I want to wear all of his shirts. It will get printed if it's in the top three!

So what are you waiting for? Go and vote! Vote like the wind!

Mediterranean Baba Ghanoush

2010-11-12T13:40:00.001-05:00

I found myself with this amazing grocery bag of eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes this week, and I wanted to do something awesome with them. Now, some of the best eggplant recipes I know are Greek and Middle Eastern (and believe you me, after researching Arabian culture from the Islamic Golden Age, I have a heck of a stash of recipes).

I adore non-traditional American food, and I especially admire the way Britain has embraced it so eagerly that curry sells better there than fish and chips. Germany is embracing kebabs like nobody's business; I had the best kebab of my life when I visited my sister in Wiesbaden this summer and we celebrated my birthday with a heck of a lot of German beer and the now-traditional stumble to the all-night kebab place.

Another pretty awesome thing about this kind of food is that, while it usually does include a great deal of meat, yogurt, ghee, nuts, etc., you don't have to use those things to make food taste non-Western; that's what the spices are there for. It's like Thailand and fish sauce, lime juice, cilantro, lemongrass, and chilies; it's Japan with quality soy sauce, ginger, rice wine vinegar, pickles, and really good rice.

So here's a lovely Greek and/or Middle Eastern recipe (depends who you're talking to!) that you can eat hot, cold, or at room temperature, and it's great with celery sticks for dipping at a party (or on an evening where four of you are eagerly playing Settlers of the Catan for four hours...). Combines as a nut-based meal/snack with the Natalia Rose program, but only if you use the tahini.

Baba Ghanoush
Makes about 1 1/2-2 cups.

Ingredients
1 eggplant
1 tbsp tahini (optional; I've made it without and it's still good)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 tsp dried fenugreek
1/4 cup fresh parsley or sweet basil, chopped
2-3 shakes cumin
Extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground salt and pepper

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the end with the spiked stem off of the eggplant, then slice the eggplant lengthwise down the middle. Slash cuts horizontally and vertically through the eggplant flesh like an avocado, being careful not to cut too deeply and pierce the skin.* Place on a lightly greased baking sheet, cut sides up, and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper over each eggplant half, then bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.

Remove eggplant from oven and let cool to room temperature. Chop roughly and add to food processor, along with tahini, garlic, lemon juice, fenugreek, cumin, and most of the parsley, except for a pinch or a small sprig. Pulse until combined, then add olive oil gradually until the baba ghanoush is as creamy as you like it. Add salt and pepper to taste; pulse one final time.

Spoon baba ghanoush into a serving bowl along with crudités of all kinds, garnish with a leftover pinch of parsley or sprig of basil,** and enjoy!

*This allows the olive oil and salt and pepper to ooze down and flavor the whole eggplant, not just the surface of the eggplant or the aluminum foil covering your sheet.
**You can garnish with just about anything: chopped kalamata olives, pine nuts, chopped sundried tomatoes, a lemon wedge, some freshly pressed garlic...

A sizzlingly savory Turkish tomato/eggplant dish, garnished with pine nuts, is up next!

Savory-Sweet Butternut Squash Soup

2010-11-10T10:55:00.003-05:00

Crisp fall weather, bright orange leaves decking the trees, root vegetables galore in the produce aisle--what does that call for?

To me, it's butternut squash soup time. This is one of the creamiest, most delectable, most comforting vegan soups I have ever made or tasted, and it's so darn magical that, except for about a tablespoon or so of olive oil (or butter), it's almost completely fat free. But it's thick, warm, starchy, and really, really good! Combines, obviously, like a starch with the Natalia Rose program.

Butternut Squash Soup
Serves 6-8

Ingredients
1 large to medium butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 1/2 large sweet onion, minced
1 32-oz carton low-sodium vegetable broth
1/2 cup original flavor almond milk (really optional)
1/2 juicy lemon, juiced
3-4 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp coriander
Large pinch of herbes de Provence
1 tbsp butter or extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
Chop up the butternut squash and scoop out the pulp. Squeeze all the seeds out of the pulp and reserve them in a small bowl. Cut up the pulp and add to the pot when you add the butternut squash cubes.

In a large pot, turn the heat to medium-high and add the olive oil or butter. When hot, toss in the onions, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, stir, and wait, stirring as needed, until they turn translucent.

Add in the spices: the garlic, cumin, red pepper flakes, paprika, cinnamon, coriander, and herbes de Provence. Toss and cook for about 1 minute, letting the spices roast a little. Be careful not to let the spices or the garlic burn; add more oil or butter as needed.

Add in the cubed butternut squash. Toss with the onions and spices and saute, occasionally stirring, for about 3 minutes.

Pour in the vegetable broth, about a teaspoon of salt, and at least half a teaspoon of ground pepper. Bring the soup up to a boil, turn the heat down to simmer, cover the pot, and let cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Even a cheap blender will do this well, because the squash has been cooked through. Either use an immersion blender to blend up the soup, if you are lucky enough to own one, or pour the soup into a regular blender and process in batches. If you do the latter, have an extra bowl nearby so you have something to pour the blended batches into while there is still unblended soup in your pot. Be careful; it's very hot. Pour all the soup back into the soup pot. Isn't that the most gorgeous orange color?

Add the lemon juice and, if you like, the almond milk; stir. It will be hot, so keep that in mind as you season to taste. If anything, it will most likely need more salt. Mmmmm!

Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Take the reserved butternut squash seeds and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cinnamon. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil, spread the seeds out on the foil, and bake for 10 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes, then sprinkle over the bowls of soup. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Tips

If you can possibly buy pre-cubed butternut squash, this recipe will be a total breeze. On the other hand, I used to think that chopping it up was a total nightmare, but I made it last night and it is not.
I also used to think that I needed almond milk to make it creamy, but you really don't. I added it because I always have, and later thought "Huh. I wonder why I used to need this."

NaNoWriMo Writing Frenzy!

2010-11-10T09:40:00.005-05:00

NaNoWriMo is kicking my butt!

For those of you who don't know what that is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's a yearly period from November 1st to November 30th in which each participant tries to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. My goal, because I'm a chronic overachiever, is 100,000 words and at least some good bits in there to balance out the rest. I'm right on target, but, man! It's getting harder and harder to keep at it. Ghirardelli hot chocolate mix stirred into warm almond milk is keeping me going. It's just something about that chocolatey sweetness...mmm! It makes me feel like I'm sitting in front of a fire on Christmas morning and am slipping into a lovely little state of relaxation, which, naturally, is totally nuked by the stress of writing 3,334 words in a day on top of schoolwork, but at least it neutralizes my playing field.

Additionally, it was the only hot chocolate mix I could find one chilly morning at Publix that didn't include corn syrup solids and nonfat dry milk whey garbage. So three cheers for Ghirardelli and their straight-sugar approach (stevia, when will you enter the mainstream?) and I intend to try their mocha and hazelnut flavors next!

Shoot. I just inhaled a huge clump of chocolate powder and strained a few muscles trying not to cough wet chocolate all over the screen. That, my friends, is the real downside to this new addiction!

If you check out the top right corner of this blog, you can see a cute little blue box labeled "2010 NaNoWriMo Progress", and along with a miniature changeable picture, it has a bar of my progress and then the actual word count. Now that I'm at 31,705 and well over halfway for the 50K goal, I'm starting to love that little orange progress bar. It's got all the satisfaction of running a marathon, but, uh. It works the mind instead of the body? Yes. That's it. And it takes a month.

So why, exactly, am I running this mental marathon only to get carpal tunnel syndrome as my reward? Because there is no actual reward. I get a nice "winner" logo to post places, discounts on Scrivener, Storyist, and Scribendi software, and a free proof copy of my novel in paperback book from from createspace. I also get the satisfaction of a job well done and I get a steaming pile of literary crap to be proud of and brag about on all occasions. (Although I probably won't.) So why all the fuss?

Well, I used to write a whole lot. When I was 14, I got into Harry Potter fanfiction, and let me tell you, I wrote a monster of a story about Harry's mother that was well over 400,000 words by the time I'd finally realized that nothing could save it from being totally terrible and that I never wanted to look at it ever again. So then writing fizzled out, and I missed it. A lot.

A few years later, I still wasn't back to writing fiction, because I was now convinced that anything I wrote would be miserable rubbish since I was out of practice. So whenever I would write anything, I never got past about five or six pages. (Which is about 6,000 words, you know. I write in 8 point Verdana, because I clearly want my eyes to die before I'm thirty.)

I am depending on NaNoWriMo to break me out of this. Among other amazing tools in its arsenal, the website provides you with pep talks written by some really awesome authors: Neil Gaiman (!), Meg Cabot (who wrote The Princess Diaries), Gail Carson Levine (who wrote that lovely story, Ella Enchanted, which Disney subsequently butchered), and Katherine Paterson (remember Bridge to Terebithia?). I have to admit, I've kept Neil Gaiman's pep talk in a star-struck open window all week.

It is a marathon of writing anything that comes to mind and not editing, not editing at all because editing is the DEVIL and will make your hate yourself. Editing can come later. Right now, writing is important. And it's amazing, because although I'm still secretly second-guessing myself at every turn at least I'm spitting out ideas and characters that were never in my first outline or anywhere in my head on November 1st, and I'm realizing that I'm better at pacing and writing dialogue than I thought I was, and overall this story is getting way, way, way more exciting than I ever imagined!

I love my characters. And, after several heavy editing sessions that will take much longer than NaNoWriMo did, I intend to bite the bullet and write up a few letters to send out to agents and/or publishing companies, because, damn it, I have always wanted to be a writer in addition to everything else. Why else would I start a blog? I had to have some outlet for the never-resting drive to bang out words.

Of course, the only drawback is that now I have abandoned my darling blog for more than a week and I have all these gorgeous pictures of detox-friendly recipes pleading to be posted! My poor laptop had to be wiped a few weeks ago, just before the Thai Red Curry post, so unfortunately Photoshop still has to be installed. All my pictures will have to undergo a slight delay so that they can be posted from my computer at school, but it's worth it, right? What's a recipe without pictures?

See that monkey in the NaNoWriMo web badge to the left? That is what is going on with my life. It's bananas.

The Five Stages of NaNoWriMo

Anthropologie Winter Discoveries

2010-10-30T21:57:00.001-04:00

Anthropologie, you slay me. I cannot function with your website trying to love me like this. We just had a very expensive affair and you are not good for me. You make me feel stunning and glorious but you also make me feel so poverty-stricken that I should go huddle in a shed among power tools and dead squirrels and go chew on half a rock because I cannot even afford a fifty-cent bag of Apple-Os.

Anthropologie, do you not understand this problem? You are gnawing at my life support, and you are so irresistible that I actually want you to do it. For the love of mercy, you cretin, stop making such cute clothing!

For example, stop making me want to move to a much more expensive loft with factory windows so I could showcase ridiculously expensive curtains like the Kediri Curtain so that they would glow in fresh morning sunlight. Apparently, you can also hang these curtain panels upside down. Isn't that brilliant?

But, for the love of God, please just trash this gorgeous olive Everything-In-Place Cape, which is clearly just rubbish and nothing that I would ever want to wear day in and day out. It's even got a cute plaid lining. How could you imagine that anyone would be attracted to this? I sense insanity in the marketing department.

Besides, this Cassandra Cape is just ridiculous. Who would want to go out to dinner feeling like a French style icon? Who, I ask you? That's right. Nobody. Nobody wants to don this over a pair of sexy bluejeans, some brightly sparkling earrings and some heeled boots and walk down a snowy street like they own the world. Pssht.

The same goes for this Le Soir Magnifique Coat. Why would anyone want to wear a stylish, swinging black coat showcasing slim legs, making a graceful walk effortless, and conveying undeniably alluring hints of 1940s glamour? Especially since it looks so comfortable you could live in it? Why? Sometimes I think these designers take us for numbskulls.

And this. This! This Crowley Coat is ridiculous! It's only the classiest throwback to the 1960s I've ever seen, coupled with the intense fear that, should you wear it, you would spill tomato sauce on only the white parts. Ridiculous. Bring us something more worthy of our admiration! Anthropologie, I challenge you to do better!

...Like, aha, yes, maybe the Andrick Coat, a chic asymmetrical piece of red and black wool winter perfection that carries a flavor of imperial Russian fashion. I don't know what to do. What have I gotten myself into? Why am I looking at these? What is going ON with my subconscious? Thank goodness I made the cat sit on my wallet for safekeeping.

Well. It's not important. Let's steer away from coats, because clearly they are dangerous substances, like crystal meth, and I don't want my basement or my checking account to explode. Let's take a look at the Caidal Top instead, because clearly nothing for merely $68 could possibly look cute enough to tempt me after that slew of coats...not that it doesn't look gloriously cute, swingy, comfortable, and not that it comes in a wine-red color that would go brilliantly with my skin tone...practically everyone's skin tone...

No! No! Maybe dresses? Let's look at dresses! I barely ever buy dresses! Yes! Let's check out this Spinning Lace Dress and mock its gorgeous vintage lace overlay and its sweet combination of black trim with ivory, and imagine the skirt as it romantically swings out were I to spin sweetly on my tiptoes--

Oh, Lord, I don't know where I'm going. I'm wandering in a dazed pattern now and practically falling over, were it not for this one helpful doorframe that seems to be my upright support and also the entryway to a mystical place marked shoes...and the Caladoc Heels, which rise 4.75" high with a stacked heel. Grape suede and a dark straw platform. Lace-up oxfords taken to the next level, and that level is heaven.

But then I turn to see the Forest Flower Oxfords, and I crumple in submission. Forest-green (suede?) leather oxfords with rosettes and a stacked 4" heel, the emerald color of my dreams, the price of my nightmares. I give in, Anthropologie. Just take me. Violate me! Violate my wallet! Frighten the cat away who is trying to eat my wallet and let me give you everything I own! You win. You do. Until your fashion will live in my wardrobe, and then I will win. Eternally. Because that is how well I intend to take care of this season which is clearly emanating down to earth as the breath of angels.

I think maybe Trader Joe's shouldn't sell such good wine for $5.49 a bottle. ;)

The Rally to Restore Sanity Could Have Done More

2010-10-30T18:16:00.003-04:00

I don't know what everyone else was expecting of the Rally to Restore Sanity. But I'd really like to know how many people were disappointed by it. I was, truthfully.

Especially after all the hype, I was expecting something more than two and a half hours of Colbert making a distracting ass of himself and an incredible amount of musical guests. I think that I was hoping for something more than a comedy presentation. Because, honestly, this country does make me afraid.

I'm horrified of the extreme reactions that lead people to do idiot things like arrange a Koran-burning rally, elect candidates based on things that have nothing to do with policy or intelligence and much to do with notoriety and the ability to catch media attention by, for example, condemning masturbation. It terrifies me to think that there are intelligent, capable candidates who won't be able to be elected to serve today because they may be Islamic or because they're Democrats. And I feel offended, hurt, and outraged whenever I listen to people making statements about atheists being parasites, liberals being Marxists trying to bring down the Constitution, Democrats being terrorists, college-educated people being racist elitists, and the like.

On the other side of the line, I also have a tendency to protest when people tell me that all Tea Partiers are racists, or that conservative policies will ruin the world and bring down the next Apocalypse. I realize that this kind of talk is stupid, generalizing, and ultimately untrue. Along with Jon Stewart, I like to save impressive labels for those who can tote forth the unpadded résumé. This isn't to say that I agree with most commonly-toted conservative ideas and policies: I don't. I believe that a country with a massive amount of poor, sick, unaided people making up a large percent of its population has the bright future of a very determined door-to-door hand grenade salesman driving his van into a wall at 120mph. This is my perspective, and I know this, and I am perfectly willing and happy to talk to people who have a totally opposite point of view.

But, you see, I said "TALK".

Not argue. Not debate. Not blame. Not scream endlessly until one person's rudeness, temporary deafness, and ear-splitting screams have drowned out the other person. I really mean "talk". I will listen, and in return I expect the other person to do the same. It needs to be an option for people to really open their ears to what the other person has to say, and this means possibly even making concessions when the other person is right. It means reminding Americans that we are not, no matter how convinced we are, ever going to be right about everything, so we should shut our loud mouths for once and pay attention to the other human being in the room.

So, yes, I truly wanted the Rally to Restore Sanity to have much more to say than it did. I wanted persuasive speeches that would try to shake the nation into something approaching middle ground. I wanted to shut Stephen Colbert up somewhere quiet until he could stop interrupting, because by hour two, I was pretty darn tired of of watching no actual serious points get made because Colbert's script kept him married to his ridiculous fear-parody. The last half-hour of the rally just wasn't enough.

For once, for once, sane people had a cause around which to rally, and I would have liked them to celebrate their commitment to not being crazy, not drown it out with musical performances and R2-D2, as cute as he was. (Although R2-D2 running over Jon Stewart's foot was probably one of the funniest parts of the rally.)

Seriously. Why do we need this rally? Why do we need medals of reasonableness, and why is what sane people all over the world are doing important? I'd have liked to see this explained, and promoted--not in a liberal sense, and not even in a political sense, but in a pretty darn sensible "Hi, we're all humans, we're not going to blow up the world because we're not that unhinged, and we should probably stop dividing into factions and killing our country from within" kind of way.

This kind of division and occasional hysteria isn't specific to our time. Revolutions, as the name implies, don't happen just once. I'd be very interested to discover a historical atrocity or a governmental overthrow that happened because people weren't extreme enough and sat around trying to see both sides of an argument.

I cannot see any harm to being only moderately passionate about your causes, as long as the cause you're opposing is not actually killing people, animals, or things like the world's freshwater supply. If you're opposing a specific genocide, that's not the time to pussyfoot about. But for the rest of your life, if you find yourself closing yourself off to any other potentially rational point of view by the sand surrounding your head, just think twice. If someone else is being rational, they deserve to be listened to rather than to be shut into a fearmongering, pigeonholing corner of the national media's profit margins.

That, I feel, is what I wanted the Rally to Restore Sanity to elaborate on.

What about you? Did you watch it? What did you think? Were you happy, or did you want more?

Spicy-Sinful Thai Red Curry

2010-10-29T19:52:00.004-04:00

Ever since working at Lemongrass Thai Bistro in Macon, GA, I've been a huge, huge fan of Thai food. However, I'm also addicted to trying to figure out amazing recipes and making my kitchen smell awesome. One of my favorite recipes at that restaurant, and one I always find myself ordering, despite the summer shrimp basil rolls, the duck with mandarin oranges, and the clay pot, is the red curry.

That dish is simply unbelievable, and I'm going into so much withdrawal that I refused to just buy red curry paste. I had to make it for myself. Especially since I've got a Thai basil and a Thai chili pepper plant doing very well on my balcony; check out the picture! I'm pretty proud of that hot piece of flora!

Needless to say, this will be a much simpler task if you just go buy red, green, or yellow curry paste at your local Asian market or online. Amazon had 480 results when I typed in "Thai red curry paste," of which I'm assuming at least thirty are actual jars of potential food.

Thai Red Curry Paste
Makes about 1 cup

Ingredients
1/3-1/2 cup Thai chili peppers
1/4 cup sweet onion, chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
4 cloves garlic
1 1-inch piece of galangal or ginger, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup lime juice
2 Tbsp soy sauce, preferably Nama Shoyu
1 Tbsp fish sauce (optional; add a pinch of sea salt to substitute)
1/4 cup canned coconut milk (or about 2 Tbsp almond milk for detoxers)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

Directions
Put all ingredients except the coconut milk (or almond milk) into a blender or food processor and process very well to create a smooth paste, unlike the picture. I do not have a Vitamix for optimal demonstration, sadly.

Add the coconut/almond milk a little at a time if your machinery needs a little help processing into a paste. DO NOT taste this without a glass of something soothing and cool nearby. (I was out of ice cubes so I ate about half a tablespoon of pumpkin butter. Surprisingly, it worked! The chilies did not shatter my skull with their immense powers to torture.) It will be hard to gauge, anyway, because the flavor's supposed to be so strong and spicy--if it's off, you can tell best when you're actually using it in curry. Fix it then. Use whatever you need immediately and put the rest into an airtight container; store in the refrigerator. After 10 days or so, transfer it to the freezer for optimal storage.

Thai Red Curry
Serves 1-2

Ingredients
1 tbsp Thai red curry paste
12-oz can coconut milk , minus the 1/4 cup used for the paste (or 1 1/4 cup almond milk for detoxers; in which case, use much less or no vegetable broth)
1 Japanese eggplant, chopped
1/2 sweet onion, chopped
1/2 cup broccoli
1/2 cup red bell peppers, chopped
8-10 shiitake mushrooms, chopped into thirds
1-2 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2-1 cup vegetable broth, as desired
1/2 tbsp vegetable oil or coconut oil (preferred)
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
5-6 Thai basil leaves (optional)
2 Kaffir lime leaves (optional)
1 cinnamon stick or 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
Salt and pepper

Directions
In a large sauté pan or a wok, heat the coconut oil over medium high. When sizzling, toss in the chopped eggplant, onions, red bell peppers, mushrooms, and broccoli. Toss until coated in the coconut oil, then add the curry paste. Toss to coat the vegetables in the curry paste and let sauté for 2-3 minutes, stirring as needed.

Add in the coconut/almond milk, cinnamon stick (if using), and green onions. Stir and cook for about 1 minute. The sauce should be fairly thick now. My favorite version of this curry has a great souplike sauce that welcomes a good deal of hearty brown rice, so I'd add in a decent amount of vegetable stock, but simply add a little at a time, stirring, until you get the consistency that's right for you. Add in the cilantro, Thai basil (if using), and Kaffir lime leaves (if using).

I actually did not use the Kaffir lime leaves, because I was on a budget, and it still turned out great--however, they're fantastic as well as authentic.

Taste-test the curry: if too spicy, add more coconut/almond milk. If too salty, add a little bit of lime juice (this also works well with too-salty guacamole); if not salty enough, add soy sauce, fish sauce, or salt. If not spicy enough, add anything spicy in your cupboard, although Thai chili garlic sauce works best. If too sour, add something sweet: stevia, agave nectar, or honey.

Before serving, remove the cinnamon stick (if used). Serve in individual bowls, either by itself or with a mound of rice per person. Sprinkle some cilantro over the top and enjoy!

Trader Joe's Opening in Athens & Stovetop Espresso

2010-10-29T11:52:00.002-04:00

Trader Joe's Athens (736) - Scheduled to Open Oct. 29th!
1850 Epps Bridge Parkway
Athens, GA 30606
Phone Number: 706-583-8934
Trading Hours: 8:00 am - 9:00 pm
4.6 miles

I AM SO EXCITED!!!

Okay, so I haven't been waiting for this forever--it's something I found out Thursday in the costume shop while cutting up gas station Mexican blankets. But! Trader Joe's opened today! I am going to be there as early as the boyfriend can stand to get out of bed, believe you me. No more two-hour drives to Atlanta!

I am going to get so much wine, you guys. I am going to go and stock up on wine and goodies. The wine rack we inherited from the boyfriend's grandfather is going to be respected as it should be! I'll be able to buy 100% pure stevia--as opposed to freaking Truvia!

Maybe, just maybe, they'll carry French chestnut puree. I bought so much of that in Paris this summer and had to throw it all out at security, because apparently substances that do not move when you turn the jar on its head with the lid open are considered a liquid and not allowed on planes, wtf. (Seriously? Nutella is also not allowed in your carryons; did you know this?)

The sad thing is that I don't think I'd be this devastatingly excited if only I could shop at our local EarthFare and be able to afford more than half a pomegranate and a tablespoon of Nama Shoyu. At least Trader Joe's respects its wine enough to allow a great deal of it to be imbibed by, ahem, significantly lowering the price. It makes no economic sense, but then I don't think it is intended to; the story I heard is that the Two Buck Chuck comes from a vineyard that suffered from a divorce; it's a vindictive asset-dumping issue or something like that, and the determination to refuse the ex as much money as possible is keeping down the price.

Although I just googled it, and apparently that is total myth. The grapes are just from a less expensive region of Napa Valley. Or, as another Google source claims, the grapes are from anywhere but they are BOTTLED in Napa Valley, which is cheating but tremendously funny. (Oh, Google. You're as bad as Wikipedia.)

On the schedule for this weekend: reading, researching, memorizing, and redecorating the house for Halloween! This will most definitely involve a jack o'lantern. Oh, yes, it will. And roasted pumpkin seeds, miniature pumpkin pies in ramekins, and probably some butternut squash soup. (I invented this soup a year or two ago, and it is superfantastic amazing.) And wine.

Yes. Wine.

You guys, this means I don't have to buy presalted cooking wine from the vinegar aisle anymore, which is so nasty by itself that you can buy it on Sundays! I'm dancing in my seat a little.

However, before I go buy out Trader Joe's, I want to recommend this Gatao Vinho Verde highly; it's great for those who don't want an incredibly sweet white wine, it's inexpensive, and good for cooking. I've used it in any recipe I've posted in the past month that involves white wine. I bought it because it was a Vinho Verde and it had a cat on it, but it was surprisingly good. Price is between $6 and $8, so it's a pretty good deal for a nice, crisp wine. Check it out on Google Shopping; you can even find it for $3.99.

This morning was gorgeous, because classes were cancelled and I spent a lot of time hanging out with the cat and a Georgette Heyer book, and it was chilly and sleepy enough for me to be seriously interested in a cup of coffee. However, I don't drink or make coffee much, so it's a waste of counter space to buy a coffee maker. Instead, I have a gorgeous little macchinetta, which is a stovetop espresso maker, and I believe it is one of the items, like the garlic press, that my mother picked up while traveling all around Europe auditioning for orchestras.

Want espresso but have no desire to plunk down $100-$1,000 for a fancy espresso maker? Seriously, don't spend over $30. The traditional espresso makers are amazing. But they're not totally self-evident, so I photographed the process!

What You Need
Italian macchinetta
Freshly ground or pre-ground coffee
Filtered water
Coffee fixings (optional)

So you begin with this cool shiny coffeepot, and you think "How in heaven's name does this make espresso? I am confused. Let me go search the Internet for directions. I feel that operachild may have written something about this recently. AHA!

Directions
There are five parts to the coffeepot: the bottom, the middle filter with the downwards-pointing tube, a round piece of rubber, a small disc with holes in it, and the top bit with the handle and the lid that opens. The small round disc goes into the underside of the top part of the pot (with the handle, on the far right), and the round piece of rubber holds it in place.

Then, you fill the bottom part with filtered water. If you want to make the maximum amount of espresso, fill the pot until the water level reaches a small raised aluminum line on the inside. Put the large filter with the downwards-sticking tube in it onto the bottom of the pot, like so:

Add the ground coffee. It usually isn't more than 1/4 to 1/3 cup. As a rule, the stronger you want your espresso, the more coffee you put in. But don't fill it full to bursting; you want to be able to screw the top on. You don't have to use an espresso roast; use whatever you like best.

I switched from Starbucks Sumatra to this African Kitamu, because it looked interesting and was on sale. Normally, I'd try to buy whole beans and then grind them at home, but this was only available in preground--and it still turned out a nice cup of coffee.

Screw the lid on and place on the stove. Turn the heat to medium-high and wait. This will take between 4-6 minutes, but you will hear the coffee steam bubbling up through the middle of the pot. You can pop the lid open to check and see if it's full, because you don't want overflowing coffee on your burner, pot, and stove, but don't do it too often; you don't want to let the steam that's making your espresso have a chance to escape.

Pour and enjoy!

I drink my espresso black, because I remember thinking in college that only cool, hardcore coffee lovers drank their coffee black, so I would learn to love it. I think this is the same reason I drink mostly red wine. So don't be a dunce like me, and drink yours however you want to! I occasionally fiddle with the idea of adding a bit of almond milk. You never know.

One other thing: the macchinettas are sold with measurements like "3 Cups" and "6 Cups". The cup measurement has nothing to do with huge eight-ounce mugs; they mean demitasses. Check out the picture on the left: they mean the really small white one. I believe that mine is a six-cup macchinetta, but it fills about two of the gold and white cups at the right of the picture. Keep this in mind when you're buying.

Voilà! Enjoy your very inexpensive, very traditional homemade espresso! Which, by the way, you can also use in a variety of baked goods, including some out-of-this-world coffee cake.

I leave you with a cutesy quote from the "vegan" list of products on the Trader Joe's website, which, coincidentally, is also from one of the two plays I'm in:

Sir AndrewAguecheek: "I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit."

Sir Toby Belch: "No question."

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene III

Embarrassingly Dirty Googling

2010-10-25T21:46:00.001-04:00

I feel I should mention that I just googled this blog for kicks and giggles, and one of the really fun snippets of text that popped up was "If a bit of garlic is really stubborn, blow through the holes and make a fun spitting sound that entertains children worldwide!"

It is, in case you are curious, the third result that pops up if you just type in "observations of an opera child." I have rarely been so embarrassed, and have never felt that a sentence about a garlic press could possibly be so indescribably dirty. Indescribably.

I am still cringing.

Yet, I notice, not cringing enough to make me go back and edit that post.

I feel that I want it to stand there in all of its naked spitting shame for all of eternity, mostly so that I have yet another thing to bring me back to earth if my ego starts to inflate so much that I start to hover.

Blogs, I feel, are either for those with stupendous self-control or the willingness to be publicly unveiled as a complete idiot. Really, they aren't for the in-between.

On a totally different note, I have a surprisingly busy school year ahead of me. I just got cast as Aunt Dan in Aunt Dan and Lemon, which is going to be, let me tell you, a misery to memorize. I counted, and my monologues take up a total of twenty-three pages. TWENTY-THREE PAGES of just me talking. Lemon's worse off; her last monologue alone is a staggering eight pages long. It's a very cheerful play, too: all about the virtues inherent in lacking compassion, like the Nazis. Aunt Dan is also pretty much in love with Henry Kissinger. It will be fun!

Other plays include Twelfth Night, in which I'm playing Olivia, and Samuel Beckett's Endgame, in which I am playing Nell and spend most of the play except for eight pages buried in a trash can in a nightie and a lot of age makeup while disdaining my husband's biscuit and wanting to die. It is a very, very good play, and they are cutting holes in the back of the trash can so I don't have to squat on my heels for an hour. In addition to that, I've got a whole lot of memorizing to do over the weekend so that I can suitably beg Hubert not to burn my eyes with a hot iron in a scene from King John.

Also a paper for my 8100 Critical Methods class, in which I have got to come up with a way to apply Materialist theory to something relevant. The other option is being a white girl and talking about a play using race theory, which, haha, I clearly cannot do because I cannot fully comprehend what it is like to be anything but a white girl. That last pretty much bums me out, because I tend to err on the "our DNA is like 99% similar across the globe ANYWAY, so shouldn't the important thing be that we're all human?" side of things, but apparently I am only white girl human, and cannot speak about male human, black human, Latino human, Asian human, or South American human.. I'm just not the right kind of human. Irritating, but whatever. I shall still hug my theory of universal equality to my chest and cuddle it to keep warm at night.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman once wrote this amazing sentence in Good Omens that I am now paraphrasing, and it goes something like this: "Newt felt uncomfortable around African Americans, in case they turned around and blamed him for two hundred years of slave trading."

I've thought about that sentence a couple of times in the past month after running into some very angry people who apparently generalize so freely about white people that I suddenly became responsible for all the historical atrocities committed against African-Americans, even though half my family is from Germany, the other half from Austria, and about a drop of blood comes from Pocahontas. It does not matter that I did not know what racism was or that it existed until setting foot on American soil when I was nine, or that I think it is cruel bullshit. The only thing that mattered to those very angry people was that I have pale skin.

Now, I may be ridiculously naive, but I feel that behavior like this is just exacerbating a pretty horrid situation instead of actually making it better. Tell me if I'm stupid, please, but doesn't it seem to you that the best way to eradicate racism might be to quit focusing on the minor bits of DNA that make us different and instead focus on what we can actually do together?

...Although there are some boundaries that prejudice probably needs to keep standing strong, like the prejudice against people who don't bathe making my coffee.

Woot T-Shirt Contest: Release!

2010-10-24T00:25:00.000-04:00

Release!

I'm going to shamelessly plug my boyfriend's design for the Shirt Woot T-shirt derby, because it's gorgeous and I want it to win so that I can buy it and wear it everywhere!

The theme is autumn, and along with other stipulations designs may not include coded messages to the criminally insane... ;)

Didn't he do an amazing job? I love the disintegration effect, it's gorgeous enough so that I'd be interested but cool enough so that a guy would like being seen in it, the limited color palette is dramatic and striking...and you've got to keep in mind that he had never drawn in his life before January 2010. And he's this awesome.

Doesn't that warrant your vote?

Voting is pretty simple: you have to have bought something from Woot before, and then you can give your vote to as many entries as you like, although only once per entry. Woot's shirts are just $10, and we have a pretty good collection of some awesome designs. They hold up well in the wash, too--I accidentally washed the boyfriend's favorite black on white shirt with some red sheets, and although the red came out when I boiled it with dye remover, the black design stayed on. They're pretty darn good quality, and will last you for awhile. They're also really nice gifts, because they're so unique.

Release! by astryfan

So come on! How can you not give this gorgeous design the chance to be printed?

Freshly Revamped Black Bean Mango

2010-10-23T23:56:00.007-04:00

No matter how tired you are, watching your cat try to be a Monorail Cat in order to cheer you up always makes everything instantly awesome. Check him out: he not only folds his feet underneath himself but his tail, too!

I came running when the boyfriend called "Oh, come look! He's sitting on his feets!" and this is the ridiculously adorable spectacle that presented itself. This cat actually stayed put while I went, got the enormous camera, folded up the huge strap that holds the camera around the wearer's neck so he wouldn't jump up and paw at it, accidentally took a picture with flash, and then tried to take them without flash before realizing the focus light was still on...so, basically, Simon got flashed in the face a lot for this picture and he still looks breathtakingly cute and trusting.

He fascinates me. =)

This evening's kitchen experiments were all about trying to make my own Black Bean Mango, one of my mother's favorite Kashi frozen entrées.

I've always loved the general idea, but the price is an issue and it also bothers me that everything's frozen and you have to nuke all the ingredients in the microwave. I realize there is an option to heat it in the oven, but come on--I'm not wasting all that money and electricity to power the oven for 30 minutes just for one frozen dinner. So the next best plan is--find a way to make it myself! And I think it's better, cheaper, and much, much fresher. Bow down, Kashi!

Although I will add that if you can make this with the actual Kashi 7-grain pilaf, you might want to try that. I've still got to talk our Kroger into carrying it, sadly.

These pretty jars carry my makeshift pilaf: millet, cracked wheat, and whole grain bulgur, and although I thought those last two were exactly the same thing, apparently this is not the case, hence the color difference between the two on the left of the picture. Could anybody explain this phenomenon?

Multigrain Pilaf with Black Bean Mango

Serves 4

Ingredients

Pilaf

Extra virgin olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 cup uncooked mixed grains (I used 1/2 cup millet, 1/4 cup cracked wheat, and 1/4 cup whole grain bulgur)

1/4 cup dry white wine

1 3/4 cups vegetable broth

2-3 shakes of cumin

1 tsp salt

Pepper to taste

Black Beans and Mango

1 15-oz can black beans, drained

1 ripe room temperature mango, peeled and diced into small cubes

1/2 cup bell peppers, sliced into matchsticks, preferably red and green (just for color)

1/4 cup carrots, sliced into matchsticks

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced or pressed

1 tbsp honey or agave nectar

1 large lime, juiced

Few shakes cayenne

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Pilaf

Drizzle olive oil into your pot, turn to medium high, and add the garlic when hot. Before the garlic browns (this can happen quickly), add in the pilaf mixture. Toss and/or stir to coat the grains in the olive oil and garlic, then keep the pot over heat, stirring often, to toast the grains and bring out the flavor.

After about 3-4 minutes, or earlier if the grains are starting to turn dark (bad!), add in the 1/4 cup of white wine, cumin, salt, and pepper. Stir and cook for about 1-2 minutes, or until the alcohol has evaporated. Pour in the vegetable broth, stir once, and cover.

Cook for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and let sit 10-15 minutes.

Optional: add the matchstick carrots and bell peppers after about 8-10 minutes to lightly steam them, if you aren't a huge raw vegetable fan. Personally, I love the crunch...

Black Beans and Mango

In a large bowl, combine drained black beans*, cubed fresh mango, bell peppers, and carrots. In a small bowl, combine lime juice, honey or agave, garlic, cilantro, a shake or two of cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir pretty vigorously. Pour over the mango and vegetable mixture and toss well.

To serve, place a few spoonfuls of pilaf onto each plate and top with the black bean/mango mixture. Shake on a little bit of paprika for color...and maybe add a few avocado slices or some leftover guacamole (as I did) for garnish! Enjoy!

*You really do not need to warm this mixture. If you like, drain the black beans with very warm water; that will bring the temperature up comfortably, and if you begin with a room temperature mango, the heat from the pilaf will do the rest. This way, the cilantro stays bright green and gorgeous!

I also think the bean/mango mixture would work excellently as a sweetish savory salad. I wanted to gobble it all up without the pilaf! I don't subscribe to the idea that we need an incredible amount of grain to survive, and the vegetable flavors marry so beautifully with the fruit that I was truly in awe.

Mango, cilantro, and lime together are my new favorite threesome. =) Although nothing can really beat the awwwww factor of my Monorail Cat.

Orange-Kiwi Oatmeal

2010-10-23T10:45:00.002-04:00

Simon seems to have a real thing for biting anything that has even the most minute potential to wiggle. Currently, his little focused kitty attention is riveted on my heart necklace, and I am typing with the occasional interruption of a misplaced paw batting at my nose. We clipped his claws the other night, so it's actually kind of cute.

But one thing he is NOT allowed to get his precious little nose into is my newest oatmeal breakfast. It's been so chilly lately in the mornings that I've gone through a whole cylindrical box of oats in the past week and a half! The latest experiment comes from the amazing amount of fruit my mother blessed me with and some leftovers from my eager days of making truffles. (I have a knock-your-socks off Earl Grey Truffle recipe that will make you slip into a blissful state of uninterrupted enjoyment and calm, and I shall have to bring that one out once it starts getting cool enough for me to stand over a double boiler. It's heavenly!)

So here we go! Oatmeal experiment number...I forget; probably 56. =)

Orange-Kiwi Oatmeal

Serves 1-2

Ingredients
1 cup original flavor almond milk

1/2 cup oats

Pinch freshly ground salt

1/2 teaspoon pure orange extract*

1 kiwi, rind on or off, chopped (but do take the rind off if it isn't organic)

1 small orange

Drizzle agave nectar

Cinnamon (optional)

Directions

In a small pot, bring the almond milk, salt, and orange extract to a boil, stirring occasionally. (Almond milk WILL behave like regular milk and bubble over the sides of the pot if you are not careful, so you have to watch it!) Pour in the oats, stir, and cook for 1 minute. Turn the heat down to simmer and cook for 3-5 minutes.

Fold in the chopped kiwi and stir. Pour into bowl(s) to serve. Drizzle with agave nectar. Take a microplane and grate some of the orange skin into zest just over the bowl of oatmeal, to garnish and for an extra citrusy zing.** For a little bit of a warming spice, sprinkle some cinnamon on top. Happy breakfasting!

*This is also pretty darn good with a grapefruit theme; just cut off the top and bottom of the grapefruit, set it on one of the cut ends, and with a knife, carefully slide your knife along the inside of the rind in strips, going from the top to bottom, getting rid of all the white pith along the reddish grapefruit flesh. With the knife, cut out each grapefruit wedge from the dividing skin pieces. You will be left with a very juicy grapefruit core. Squeeze it into the pot instead of orange extract, and garnish with the grapefruit slices. If you like, you can even zest some of the rind over the top of the bowl. Voilà: grapefruit oatmeal!

**If you like, you can add some orange slices to the oatmeal, but keep in mind that they have so much juice that they will water down the oatmeal a bit; you might consider adding about 1/4 cup more oats. And be sure to keep some of the rind intact so you can zest it!

I think this calls for a bike ride to the store to pick up some more oatmeal...I'm still loving it!

Guacamole and Asparagus Feasting!

2010-10-21T17:33:00.000-04:00

I had an amazing time in my kitchen last night. So many vegetables said goodbye to the world, and it was glorious! My apartment's refrigerator (which I am not complaining about at all, because the last one leaked and management replaced it immediately) has a tendency to freeze everything in the very back of the freezer and to undercool everything else. So the first thing that had to go was a beautiful bunch of asparagus with slightly soft tips (bad!) and frozen ends (not so bad, really). I have never made vegan asparagus cream soup before, but let me tell you, it's pretty darn hard to mess up asparagus! I thought it was pretty darn fantastic.

I also had my first-ever successful foray into the world of baking your own vegetable chips. We're having people over tonight, and I thought I'd practice yesterday. (The secret, as I found out, is to grease the baking sheet! Rocket science, I know. I felt pretty silly when I realized that, let me tell you.) I thought they were pretty darn good, and so did the boyfriend, who is notoriously picky. He can get past the "sweet potato" part when he hears the "chip" addendum. I felt very proud when I figured this out.

The last recipe is my dearly beloved guacamole, which my mother and I are nuts over. We've tinkered with this recipe for years, and I think I may finally have a world's-best-guacamole recipe. Just maybe. It's a contender, at the very least. But here they all are! And, not least...they're all vegan and all part of a starch-based Natalia Rose dinner. I was so proud. =)

Creamy Vegan Asparagus Soup
Serves 2-4

Ingredients
1 bunch asparagus, chopped
1 sweet onion, diced
1/4 cup dry white wine
1-2 cloves garlic
Spike Vegetable Seasoning, to taste
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Pinch herbes de Provence
2 cups original flavor almond milk
1 lime, juiced

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
Sweat the onions in a tablespoon of olive oil until translucent; add a few pinches of salt and pepper.

Add the chopped asparagus, the garlic, the white wine, the red pepper flakes, the herbes de Provence, and the Spike seasoning; simmer for about 3 minutes, tossing occasionally.

Turn down the heat to Medium and add the almond milk.

Stir and simmer for about 1 minute, then pour into a high-speed blender. (Oh, you with the Vitamix god, I envy you so much. I want one desperately.) Blend very well.

Pour back into the pot and add salt, pepper, and Spike to taste. Add the juice of the lime, stir well, and voila! Magnificent savory magnificence!

Sweet Potato Vegetable Chips
Serves 2-4

Ingredients

2 sweet potatoes, washed (or a combination of other vegetables, like zucchini, parsnips, beets, carrots, yucca, etc.)
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Optional: herbes de Provence, rosemary, garlic, dill, or your favorite spices

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375. Cover two baking sheets with aluminum foil (less mess!) and grease it with olive oil.

Slice the raw vegetables into very thin slices on a mandoline, or just slice them very thinly with a knife. I like to leave the skin on; it keeps in a few nutrients, tastes good, and looks interesting. Take each slice of vegetable and rub it onto the greased baking sheet, on both sides. Arrange the slices closely but do not overlap them. Sprinkle chips with salt and pepper, or anything else you like (just on one side; otherwise it ends up waaay too overseasoned)

Bake for 13 minutes. Remove from oven, turn the slices over, and bake for 10 more minutes. Let chips cool while still on sheet and NOT overlapping; if they do, they will get soggy. They crisp up after they come out of the oven; so don't worry if they are pliable when they come out. Transfer to a bowl and scoop up some guacamole!

Out-Of-This-World Guacamole
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
3 very ripe avocados

1 sweet onion, minced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 cup cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 limes, juiced
3 shakes cumin
2 shakes cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
Run your knife lengthwise down each avocado and split it in half. Grab the pit by sticking your knife into it and pulling/twisting the knife and pit out; discard the pit IN THE TRASH; NOT IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL. Take your knife and slice the avocado up in a chess-board grid pattern while still in its skin; do not cut through the skin. Take a spoon and run it around the inside of the skin, letting all the avocado chunks fall out into your mixing bowl. Repeat for each avocado half. Take a fork and mash the avocados up pretty well until you get the consistency you want (some may like it very finely mashed, while I like a few chunks), and remember, this is easier the riper the avocados are.

Add in the minced onion, the tomatoes, the garlic, the cilantro, the cumin, the lime juice, and the cayenne pepper; mix well. Taste, and add in salt and pepper as needed. Scoop up with an amazing sweet potato chip and smile as your taste buds dance!

My final recipe for the evening is for all those out there who aren't as into the health food thing but have people who cook for them who are. It's a thin-crust pizza: take a 10-inch wrap, place it on a greased baking sheet, add a small amount of sauce, some cheese, and up to two toppings of your choice (the boyfriend likes pepperoni with some herbes de Provence)--slide into a 400-degree oven for 10 minutes, and you have a thin-crust pizza! Fast and simple--and with far fewer simple carbohydrates than getting pizza delivered. And it's cheaper! Mmmmmm.

Seasonal Produce Bliss

2010-10-20T16:35:00.000-04:00

Arabian Nights finally opened and closed! Guess what that means? Extra sleep and family visits! My mother came up to see the show, and she stared at my sadly depleted refrigerator, which was totally devoid of fruit by that point (thanks, new oatmeal addiction!), and by the time I came back from our last performance on Sunday night, there were a few Publix paper bags in front of my door: a gorgeous yellow-and-orange potted mum (yes, the one in the picture) and two bags of produce--mmm! Ripe plums, three Bosc pears, a whole bag of grapefruit, limes, asparagus, a mango, two tomatoes, a few little cucumbers, and a pineapple! And she'd sneaked about five avocados into my dining room, too. Isn't that simply amazing? I thought so. =)

She's left me with a challenge: to help her recreate the Kashi Black Bean Mango frozen entree and to revel in guacamole. I absolutely cannot wait!

And in other seasonal news...check out the photo to the right: see that crazy pink liquid in the wine glass? It's red grapefruit time!

I love that time of year when grapefruit actually turns bright, beautiful reddish pink. It tastes seventy thousand times better, and it's so gorgeous that I want to do everything from juice all the ones I can find to displaying slices of grapefruit gorgeously on top of salads or making a grapefruit tart. Something. It's so inspiring! The picture to the right doesn't do it enough justice.

So, for the past few days, I've been luxuriating in actual, fresh produce, actual sleep, and actual free time! My favorite salad, which I threw together last night, is as follows:

Ingredients
A few handfuls of Spring Mix
1 diced tomato
1/2 minced sweet onion
1/4 cup each chopped red, yellow, and green bell peppers
1 cob of raw corn, cut off the cob
1/4 cup cooked, chilled beets
A few sliced portobello mushrooms
Julienned basil, to taste, plus sprigs for garnish

Dressing
1 tbsp walnut oil
1 lime, juiced
1 tsp Dijon Country Mustard
Pinch herbes de Provence
Freshly ground salt and pepper, to taste

I mix the dressing in a small bowl, add in the minced onions, whisk together, and pour on top of the mound of chopped produce--mmm! There's something about raw corn with the mustard and walnut oil dressing that just makes me smile--sweet, tangy, and flavorful!

I leave you with a picture of that glorious red liquid grapefruit elixir. I'm choosing it hands down over wine right now, guys. That's some seriously good stuff!

Guacamole and cream of asparagus soup (well, with almond milk) are on the recipe for tonight, so hold onto your hats! I have never, ever, heard anything but awe and praise for this guacamole recipe...

Sweetly Comforting Almond-Pear Oatmeal

2010-10-12T16:48:00.001-04:00

I love, love, love everything about fall, from the color scheme to the fashion to the blessed relief from boiling hot air. (I mean boiling. In the sense that something needs to be liquid to boil. Georgia air is like wading through hot mud, some days.) I also love the recipes that come with fall, and eatingbirdfood posted an amazing oatmeal recipe the other day. But then the boyfriend's mother took us to Publix and insisted on buying us over $100 of groceries (because she is spectacular), so I found myself with all kinds of amazing produce--and, first and foremost, Bartlett pears.

Now, I love pears, raw, in salads, marinated, in pies, and poached. But I've never had them in oatmeal, and haven't always been the biggest fan of bananas, which is what this original recipe used. So I tinkered around a bit, and this is what I came up with:

Sweetly Comforting Almond-Pear Oatmeal
Serves 1-2

Ingredients

1 cup plain almond milk
Pinch of salt
1/2 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup oats
1 pear, chopped into cubes (preferably a reddish one, because the colors are pretty! I realized this after I'd taken pictures of the recipe made with a yellow Bartlett pear. Silly me.)
Sliced raw almonds to garnish
Drizzle of agave nectar

Directions
On the stove, bring almond milk, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla bean seeds to a boil. Add in the oats, stir, cook for one minute, then cover, turn the heat off, and let sit for 3-4 minutes. Stir in the chopped pear, spoon into bowls, and top with sliced almonds, a little more cinnamon, and a drizzle of agave. Enjoy!

Note: I've been experimenting with this since I ran out of pears and vanilla beans, and have found that adding a teaspoon of amaretto or a little almond extract instead of the vanilla is a fabulous treat, and apples are a much crisper alternative to pears. I intend to try kiwi next!

What are your favorite oatmeal recipes?

Henna Extravaganza!

2010-10-10T02:23:00.001-04:00

What's a girl to do if she's in the middle of a crazy football town on game day, is excited about Arabian Nights opening on Tuesday, and whose friend has just discovered the existence of Kimberly Roberts, a henna artist who works on Fridays starting at 10 AM at Worldwide Fashion & Gifts at 1375 Prince Avenue, Athens, GA?

Guys, it was awesome. Almost every single girl in our cast showed up to get henna tattoos, both Friday and Saturday. We didn't go all out and get so decorated we look like we're wearing gloves, but everyone has some really gorgeously decorated hands with different twining flowers--and this is the coolest part; Kimberly freestyled everything without needing to talk to us so much beforehand so that she knew us down to the deep bottoms of our souls, and the results were baffling: each girl ended up with a design that matched her personality uncannily well, to the extent that one girl really loves lotus flowers, and another sunflowers--guess what ended up on their hands? Exactly! It was pretty darn cool. And our timing was fortuitous--I learned today that Friday was their first day experimenting with the Henna Fridays, and miraculously that happened just in time for our Tuesday night opening! (Thank heavens henna lasts two weeks or so.)

Being the slightly exacting dork that I am, I actually came with pictures. I'm the only girl in the play who consistently wanders around in a state of moderate undress (well, a belly dancing outfit), and I spend a decent amount of time watching stories and alternately watching the king in a stricken little lovelorn state, all with my right shoulder to the audience, so that shoulder has a gorgeous design going all the way down the arm, and it's stunning.

And, having a penchant for history, especially when it comes to costume/makeup history, I asked a bunch of questions. Apparently, henna originated as a cooling agent: you press a dot of the paste in each palm and under the sole of each foot, and it cools you down. Gradually, this extended to the breathtakingly gorgeous and intricate designs that you see all over Indian brides today. And that tradition is pretty cool, too, and waaaay more involved than a bachelorette party: traditionally, the bride is taken to her husband's family's house a few days before the wedding, and up to two days are spent doing the henna on her hands and feet. And during this time, the bride doesn't even dress herself, but everything is done for her, as sort of a welcome to the family and also a chance for her to sit still and listen to advice about how to be a good wife and the ins and outs of marriage. Ever so much more dignified than showing up on a rerun of Bridezillas with vomit in your hair after the bachelorette party.

Kimberly explained that henna is made of the crushed leaves of the henna bush (well, flowering shrub), and you mix the powder with an acid and an oil to make the paste. Usually, lemon juice is the acid, but she said you could even use coffee. The type of oil changes the color and intensity of the final product. The paste dries quickly, but to prevent it from flaking off immediately, you either add sugar into the paste or you spray it with lemon juice mixed with sugar, which makes it more pliable. (Lemonade. My shoulder still smells like lemonade. I wanted to eat my own shoulder, guys.)

So all the paste has come off now, and as promised, it is quite a bit darker around my fingers than it is on my shoulder. But within the next three days it should turn brown, and in the few hours before the show I can even go back and get different kinds of glitter put on! I have my eye on some gold and some opalescent glitter, which would look spectacular with our gold-based makeup designs, but she's got everything from red to pink to blue to lots of other colors, and the glitter lasts about three days. We'll see if I have time, but I really hope I do.

By the way, can you see those earrings in the first picture of me? They're spectacular: gorgeous designs in red and silver for $18 at Worldwide Fashion & Gifts. Thank heavens my school colors are red and black, because they had an amazing array of jewelry to match my costume...

Plus they have everything from zillers to bellydance outfits to really cute dresses and shirts that you can wear daily! If you're in the area, go check it out. Prices are really reasonable and it's definitely worth your time! And the bar next door, Normal Bar, has a drop-dead-awesome Bloody Mary that's practically a meal in itself. They make their own tomato mix, they make the okra pickles that near knocked my socks off, they were so good (and this coming from a girl who cannot stand okra!), they add a fresh olive, a huge lime wedge, small squares of celery, and a huge pepperoncini. It's spicy, it's got a decent amount of vodka in it, you can drink it at the picnic table in the back with a lot of really friendly staffers from several restaurants on that side of the street, and you can do all of this while getting your henna tattoos done. What an unbelievable afternoon!

Call 706-208-9915 to set up an appointment for a henna session, according to the Facebook page. Better yet, get a group of your friends together and do it as a group! We invaded Kimberly's life like a horde of fawning kittens and there were so many of us that she had to come back on Saturday to finish up our group, and she was brilliantly kind throughout both sessions.

Speaking of kittens, I have a feeling that PETA may be on to something when they say that humans should not keep animals as pets. I do not think that I made Simon feel loved today when I put him in his Halloween jester outfit. But he is precious in his fury! Isn't he?

Munched on snow pea pods for a snack this evening instead of actual chips. Mmmmm....sweet, crunchy, and refreshing. Awesome alternative!

A Tribute to Giada

2010-10-08T16:49:00.001-04:00

I'd like to cast a vote wholly in favor of Giada de Laurentiis ' presence on the Food Network. I remember being terrifically bored when I was sick one day and this strange Italian woman with a big smile and a very interesting nose talking about grapefruit zabaglione was the only thing I was vaguely interested in.

But then, you see, I got interested. I like watching her; she's incredibly pretty, and I like the way she dresses. She's pretty darn good-natured and excited about what she's doing, which is sweet. But she has these awesome close-ups of the food she makes which do focus a whole lot of the attention on what she's doing rather than how low her shirt is. I love watching Alton Brown's half-cooking, half-science show on which he is ridiculous and entertaining, but I feel like I'm in the kitchen with that woman because she actually cuts up all the food she uses. She's an innovative cook, too, I've got to give her that. Anthony Bourdain, famously picky, noted that she was about the only Food Network chef who could actually cook. She's got the Grand Diplome from the Cordon Bleu in Paris, meaning she specialized in both cuisine and pastry. And she does fascinating things in the kitchen--I knew zabaglione as a combination of eggs, sugar, and Marsala wine--now, thanks to her, I've played around with lime, pomegranate, DiSaronno, and stevia instead of sugar in zabaglione. (DiSaronno and pomegranate work brilliantly. Lime doesn't mix that well with strawberries.)

I've added mint, Italian parsley, and lemon thyme to my balcony garden. I've made my own tomato sauce. I've roasted a whole chicken for my boyfriend--who will never be anything but my darling inveterate meat lover--and then made the cat really happy with the packet of giblets. I marinate sun-dried tomatoes in a pretty glass jar with garlic, onion, oregano, lemon thyme, salt and pepper, and olive oil. I infuse olive oil with dried garden rosemary and a clove of garlic or two--it's amazing for bruschetta and salad dressings. I hosted a spring dinner for my boyfriend's professor with tomato-basil salad, grilled chicken with spinach pesto, lemon spaghetti, and the zabaglione over berries. (Admittedly, I had a vegetable version, but that's what happens when the rest of the world isn't mostly vegan and doesn't want to be--you cook two meals.) I've tried grapefruit in salad. I've put mint in something that isn't dessert. I've burrowed through my boyfriend's grandfather's cookbooks and have amassed a wide selection of everything from Food from the Arab World to Truffles.

Say what you like about her appearance or her cheerfulness, the woman's inspiring. I've always liked cooking--my mother is absolutely brilliant at it and I discovered the culinary appeal of Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat in undergrad (her new cookbook came out on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010)--but Giada de Laurentiis is making me want to invent for myself--and see whether the amount of sugar she uses really is too much. (It usually is. But not for the zabaglione.)

And, yes, I can see why "cleavage" pops up as a google option if you type in her name. But, seriously, to those few who have a problem with this--she isn't doing anything wrong. She isn't a floozy, she's cheerful, she doesn't have a scandalous past, she isn't stripping, she isn't sleeping around to get to the top--what she is doing, in fact, is being a better, more passionate cooking housewife on national television than a lot of women have the energy or inclination for, and she's doing it effortlessly and with a smile. No wonder a lot of very conservative women resent her.

I, for one, intend to toast her with the pitcher of champagne Sangria I'm making this weekend. Although I'm leaving out half the mint syrup.

Gays and Unwed Mothers Shouldn't Be in Education

2010-10-07T16:59:00.000-04:00

According to Republican South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, gays and unwed mothers should not be allowed to teach this country's children.

This comes after a slew of widely publicized suicides by gay teens as a result of bullying.

The gay thing I can sort of but not really understand, considering the stereotypical Republican homophobia. It's disgusting, but it's not that surprising, sadly. But unwed mothers? Seriously?

Naturally, it's the women who are the problem. Women, who are loose, who engage in promiscuous, immoral, adulterous sex, who become pregnant, and who should be punished forever after on earth and in the afterlife for their horrific deed of copulation. Not men, of course. Unwed fathers are totally fine. After all, it's normal for a guy to go around whoring himself out. It's just not normal for women to let them.

Of course, this initiative would assume that we scrap the whole "you can not be fired or hired on the basis of gender" thing that also includes minor things like race and religion. It's not like it was instituted for a reason, anyway. A good reason, at least. Let's just throw out all old legislation that people fought tooth and nail and sometimes to the death for, and everything will henceforth be awesome.

Naturally, this crap is totally revolting, but the much more frightening thing about that statement is that it implies that it doesn't matter whether a teacher is good or not, whether children actually get an education--what is far more important is that their precious little innocent, moral minds aren't endangered. I have some slightly unpopular ideas about children, but I'm going to voice them, because it isn't likely that other people will and someone's got to present an additional side to an issue.

We learn morality. We aren't born with it. If we were, we would understand the concept of "stealing", which a baby clearly doesn't, or "honor your father and mother", which has to be learned after the toddler is taught that the word "no" is bad. It's why children are so horrible to each other; it's why they steal from each other, from their parents, and from stores. Children are often merciless; they have yet to come to terms with themselves and very few of them have room in their hearts for others on this planet. They exclude each other, they think they're invincible, they care so little about the feelings of others, even their parents, that many will throw enormous tantrums in the middle of grocery stores when a parent refuses to buy them something sugary or something plastic and expensive. They're messy. They rip up flowers and experiment to see what they can tear apart. Their unconditional love for their parents does not translate into a healthy kind of love that respects and acknowledges the parent's feelings; how many children do you know who take well to a new stepfather or stepmother? In short, they are not perfect when they are young, and every aspect of whatever morality they grow into is one they have to learn from others. They have to learn to control their own selfishness, which is really all morality is. Suppress the good of the individual for the good of the individual and the group.

You've got to do something pretty drastic to corrupt children, like force them into being part of a savage army or to abuse them. Everything else is just running with their own instincts of selfishness and survival. Education is the only weapon we have to fight this animalistic side of ourselves that, if allowed unbridled freedom, will explode our race into chaos.

Children ask "why" all the time. They want to know why they're supposed to do something or not to do something, and the answer "because I said so" is always considered stupid. If you want to know why you shouldn't hit your sister, the best answer isn't "because it's naughty" but "because you could seriously hurt her here and here and she could resent you afterwards and start to hate you and you would constantly get into fights and make your sister stop loving you. You could also keep hitting people and harming them and the police would put you in jail to keep you from hurting any more people, and to stop this before it starts, I as your parent would have to make you stop hitting her and if you will not learn this way, I will have to punish you to make you understand that hitting brings punishment." It's long and involved, but it gets the idea across that the child's actions have results.

Or, later on, when the child is old enough to understand this, the idea that "you cannot just take whatever you want" can be thoroughly reinforced by history, with choice stories like the banishment of the Moors from Spain, the taking of the Alhambra, and the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition. Or the snatching of the New World, the beginnings of slavery, and the constant deaths and wars against the Native Americans and their eventual cultural eradication, leaving us with a capitalistic culture that ruins and rapes our earth and causes us to breathe in polluted air, ruin our ozone layer, and kill off hundreds of species of animals.

Or the answer to "Why can't I jump off the roof" can be slightly more thorough than "You will hurt yourself" (because the automatic answer is "Why?"), because you can invoke physics, geometry, force of impact, and a bit of anatomy into describing how hard you will fall and what you will break, how badly it will hurt, and how long you will be out of commission.

Basically: kids need education to bring them up as something other than animals. And we are living in a society that thinks that the teacher's private life is more important than the good job he or she may or may not do? Seriously? You'd pass over an amazing teacher who is gay or a woman left alone with a child (or, heaven forbid, a single woman in her forties opting for in vitro fertilization) and you'd rather pick an absolute moron who couldn't tell his ears from his behind if he's heterosexual? What kind of education would that give kids? Hello, children, we care more about dominating your minds with our morals rather than to give you an actual foundation of learning that will help turn you into a complete human being! School? Pssssht.

It's like saying "Forget school; just send kids to Sunday school and they'll all be fine. The Muslim kids will be fine, too. And the Jewish kids, and the Hindu kids, and the Buddhists and Agnostics and atheists and Wiccans and who knows what else. It'll all be AWESOME when we force them to sit and recite the Bible word for word. And when we don't let them ask questions about it. Let some other country win the Pulitzer Prizes and win all the wars. Pretty soon, we'll be conquered by other nations who realize that we don't even care enough about learning to manufacture suitable defensive weapons! Wheeeee!"

I foresee the burgeoning of the private school sector. And the gradual death of American intelligence.

Let's all just listen to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, shall we? They can spoon-feed us our daily dose of unquestioning idotic hatred of everything , and we will grow into resentful, angry animals. Excellent.

Slightly Manhattan Clam Chowder

2010-10-07T01:42:00.003-04:00

I promised another recipe tonight, didn't I? Well, although rehearsal for Arabian Nights went on till eleven, here I sit, flopped on the couch after being unable to contemplate an evening without cooking and therefore wandering into the kitchen and blissfully giving up sleep.

Seriously. It's kind of embarrassing. I get a weird kick out of chopping fennel and julienning basil. I stand in the kitchen for an hour as the boyfriend patiently waits for dinner, shouting back "Yes, I heard that!" as he watches the latest recorded Jon Stewart or Community, and keeps hoping I'm laughing at the latest jokes. Instead of, you know, doing a quick sauté of vegetables and snuggling up to him and to the cat. (Oh, priorities. But y'all, cooking is addictive.) My mother and I have a very closely knit relationship over food: on her last visit, we spent a morning on the balcony eating fruit spring rolls with mint and honey while relettering my spice jars to showcase her calligraphy skills.

By the way, I feel like I should explain the label pictured above. The words "Crushed Red Peppers" are very difficult to translate into calligraphy. I suggested "Crushed Slightly Orange Peppers", which looked much prettier. It does make sense. I swear.

But! Here we go. I do realize that the only relation this has to Manhattan clam chowder is the tomatoes, but this is called creativity. And it worked. And it's Natalia-Rose detox-friendly: flesh-based.

Slightly Manhattan Clam Chowder
Serves 4-8 or 1 for two days

Ingredients
1 onion, minced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 large bulb or 1 small bulb fennel, diced
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
4 15-oz cans diced tomatoes, unseasoned (since you don't usually make soup when great tomatoes are in season)
2 cans clams with liquor (or about 18 scrubbed fresh clams; steam them for about 8-10 minutes in a covered pot instead of the 3-4 minutes at the end of step 3.)
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups vegetable broth
1 heaping tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp Herbes de Provence
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf
1 lemon or lime (preferably lemon, but I've got to use up a whole bag of limes!)
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
Fennel fronds or torn basil leaves, to garnish

Directions
1. Drizzle your largest pot with about a tablespoon of olive oil and turn heat to medium high. When the oil sputters when you sprinkle it with drops of water, add the onions and some salt and pepper. Sweat the onions until they turn translucent.

2. Add the diced carrots, fennel, and garlic, toss, and season with more salt and pepper. Sweat for a few minutes, then add the diced tomatoes in their juice. Season with a little more salt and pepper*. Bring to a slow boil.

3. Add the clam liquor**, dry white wine, herbes de Provence, red pepper flakes, and the tomato paste, stir, and simmer for about 3-4 minutes. If you like, you can add about half the mixture to a blender to make a soup with a slightly thicker texture; it makes for a slightly creamy-looking soup without actual cream...

4. Add the vegetable broth, the lemon or lime juice, and the bay leaf. Bring to a slow boil and then turn the heat down to low; simmer for 15 minutes. Add in the clams and simmer for 5 minutes more, then serve, garnished with some fennel fronds or julienned basil leaves. Also possibly a bit of cracked pepper. Enjoy!

This soup, too, gets better the longer you allow the flavors to marry.

*The reason for the continual seasoning with salt and pepper is that each ingredient absorbs the seasoning as it cooks, thus giving you more flavor if you add salt and pepper gradually versus adding all at once at the end.
**Not the canned clams, not yet; just open the can almost all the way and keep the lid on to let only the liquor pour out while the clams stay inside. They will get tough if you add them too soon.

The soup kick will be over soon, I feel. And it's still warm enough for some truly out-of-this-world guacamole...

Mmmm. I think I have to go shopping for avocados now.

Even Though Marie-Claire Hires Terrible Journalists...

2010-10-06T14:28:00.000-04:00

At the point, who hasn't heard of the infamous Marie Claire article?

Well, obviously, those who don't care about the blogging world. But otherwise, I'd guess, not many. It's a piece that catches your attention, no matter which side of the aisle you stand on, but since there are so many well-written refutations and analyses out there, I'm going to keep mine to myself. After all, the worst thing we can do for a journalist who isn't interested in fact but only in her own agenda is to give her national attention, which can easily be confused with respect. (Oh, Fox News. Don't pretend that this doesn't apply to you, too.) But what kind of good can we glean from this article?

First, that Americans aren't as oblivious to their own health as we are generally portrayed: not all of us are addicted to corn syrup and the deep-fryer. Clearly, a significant number of people are passionate about health, both nutrition and exercise, and isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? To wake up and smell the green juice? To pay attention to our bodies, to give them what they need and to exercise them so that we are capable of reaching our fullest potential, instead of dying forty years too early from diabetes because we suddenly weigh 600 pounds? I think that's a darn good positive side.

Second, that the health movement is influential, instead of fighting a crippled, dying battle. It's nice to realize that Michelle Obama, as influenced by the lobbyist-created government food pyramid as her ideas are, is not singlehandedly trying to hammer down a pair of doors as massive and heavy as Mount Everest. Not that we didn't know this already, but this article is publicly admitting, in a very popular magazine, that the health community has a great deal of pull. That's pretty awesome to realize.

Third, that our dedication to publicizing the value of nutritional and physical health can net us money through books and/or hopeful sponsors. Personally, unless you're just reccing something for the money without caring whether or not it's actually a good product, I think that seems like an awesome way to get publicity for hitherto unrecognized but really great foods, new restaurants, eco-friendly towels or toilet paper or clothing or anything.

Fourth, that we really need journalist reform in this country. What kind of journalist runs a story without referencing the other side's opinion? That's pretty disgusting and unethical. I intend to send a politely worded letter to Marie Claire about that kind of fearmongering, biased writing. It's pretty shameful.

So what I intend to do about this ridiculous attack on the health-centered blogging world is this: I'm going to dust off every single cookbook and recipe collection I own. I'm going to be doing my part to showcase (with pictures) the freaking awesome healthy, usually vegan, usually lowfat, often raw foods that I enjoy, and I intend to celebrate every quality of all this crazy hippie earthmother sunfood treehugger lifestyle that I embrace. This dedication we have to healthy living that goes beyond our own personal wellbeing and extends to the lives and quality-of-life of others and our planet is a dedication that deserves to be celebrated.

So, guys, let's celebrate own own self-worth. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Tonight it's going to be a tomato-based clam chowder (hey, I've got clams left from the tomato soup!), slightly sweetened with thinly diced carrots and sweet onions, seasoned with a bay leaf and some fresh basil, and kicked up a notch with some dry white wine. I can't wait!

Gorgeous Mirror-Themed Décor

2010-10-05T12:00:00.005-04:00

There's something about decorating with reflective surfaces that makes a room look instantly more glamorous, large, and appealing than it did before. Besides, they go with everything, and they're really fun to place a cat in front of so that he goes insane trying to play with the kitty in the glass.

So, I've got to share this with you: it's the most beautiful light I've ever seen in my entire life, and the second I saw it in Macon, GA's Lemongrass Thai Bistro (picture on the right; isn't the restaurant gorgeous?) I knew I had to at least know where to get it in case I ever made enough money to splurge on it. So, away at graduate school and unable to wander in and just ask the owners (like a sensible person), I Google Imaged (yes, that's now a verb) until I finally, finally found the unforgettable Pistillino light.

Yes, it's expensive. Unfortunately. The small one, pictured top left (which throws the amazing light on the Lemongrass wall) is marked down to $299 from $399, and there's also a larger one, the Pistillo (pictured bottom left), which would run you $599 (apparently marked down from $1250). Still, the Pistillino is so beautiful and throws such a breathtaking array of shadows and glowing light that it's all I can imagine wanting. They were both designed by Studio Tetrarch in Italy in 1969, and you know it's got to be a beautiful product that gives you your money's worth if they're still producing and selling it. The whole effect is actually made by just one 100W lightbulb with the top half of the bulb covered in a chrome mirror, which has the double effect of making the center look just like the chrome arms around the outside and reflecting light back to bounce off of the wall and arms and create those awesome shadows. It's a masterpiece of lighting design, and there's a place for it in every home with a little modern touch.

Of course, I'm a total sucker for anything involving mirrors. Speaking of which, CB2's Perspective Mirror is another one of my favorites, marked to buy whenever I get paid to do more than teach undergraduates. $149 apiece, but look at how gorgeous those four look together. The miniature mirrors are all slightly tilted to create a "funhouse perception"; what I see is a jumble of reflected light that adds immediate interest and focus to the room.

So what do you think? Have you got any stylish mirrored favorites? What's your favorite way to decorate?

Work Session with Nicolas Coster

2010-10-04T18:07:00.001-04:00

I am so excited, y'all. Nicolas Coster came to school today to work with the undergrads and the graduate students, and I just came from my session with this beautiful fuzzy feeling swarming around my heart like a furry snuggie blanket.

First of all, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and for five years with Lee Strasberg. It's not like he got into the business thanks to nothing but dumb luck. He comes to UGA quite often, usually to work with students and to help them, and then they go on imdb and stare at his excessively long list of movie/TV credits and wibble a little in their chairs. So there was that.

I did a piece from The Battle of Bull Run Always Makes Me Cry, and to be totally honest, I've never done it before except in voice class for the New York accent recording. I just knew I wanted to use it for this year's SETCs and wanted feedback. My huge issue is speaking with full voice really down deep in my belly, since I thought for years that I was a soprano and speaking lower was lazy...of course, then I ran into actual voice teachers who said that I've got a pretty darn wide range, but my home is down among the lower notes. Feels better, sounds sexier, and also sounds more powerful and yet more vulnerable, so that's cool. But from the kickoff my voice was right where I wanted it to be, I took my time, and it came out beautifully. He actually used the words "when something is that good, all you have to do is make a few brushstrokes to make it perfect" right before he had me do it again with a minor adjustment. He was so kind, and so complimentary, and punctuated a lot of sentences like "That was really lovely" with "And take that as a compliment."

Oh, my gosh. I am floating a few inches of the ground in happiness right now.

I love these moments in life.

Unforgettable Winter Potato Soup

2010-10-03T15:48:00.006-04:00

I've been longing for this soup for ages, and finally it rained and dropped Georgia temperatures down to the 70s! Not ideal, but, hey, I'll take what I can get. I've loved this soup for years, and my mother, who is a brilliant cook herself, originated it one long winter when we had a whole lot of Yukon Gold potatoes in the house. It's unbelievable.

If you're not too worried about miscombining (a la Natalia Rose), add the clams (directions for those in italics). It's out of this world!

Unforgettable Winter Potato Soup
Serves 4-8, or one for two days if you don't feel like sharing!
5 large gold potatoes (Yes, they must be gold potatoes.)
1 sweet onion. diced
2 large carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 carton low-sodium organic vegetable broth
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 lemon or lime, juiced
1/2 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tbsp Herbes de Provence
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

1/4 cup Cognac or brandy (V.S.O.P., preferably)
2 small cans chopped organic clams

Directions
Prick the gold potatoes with a fork a few times and boil them in water with a tablespoon of salt until they're soft inside. Drain, run cold water over the potatoes, and peel them quickly. (Or don't, if you like potato skins. I love them!) Chop into cubes and set aside.

In the largest pot you have, turn heat to medium-high and add olive oil. When the oil sputters when you flick a few drops of water onto it, add the diced onion, a pinch of salt and pepper, and cook, occasionally stirring, until the onions turn translucent. Add in the diced carrots, celery, and garlic, season with a bit of salt and pepper, and cook for about 4-5 minutes, stirring.

Add in the 1/4 cup Cognac or brandy and let boil for about a minute. Open the cans of clams almost all the way and drain out the clam liquor into the pot, keeping the clams in the can. Add in the potatoes, some more salt and pepper, at least a tablespoon of herbes de Provence, and the crushed red pepper flakes. Toss the vegetable mixture so that each cubed piece is coated in everything and spends a bit of time cooking directly in the cognac and clam liquor. Add the carton of vegetable broth and the juice of the lemon or lime. Stir, and use the back of the spoon to mash up the potatoes a bit if you want a thicker broth (and this is why we wait to add the clams, plus they get tough easily).

Bring to a boil and simmer for at least 15 minutes. It gets better the longer it sits, although it will be most brothy in the beginning, before the potatoes have begun to absorb all the liquid. I like my soup with lots of broth, so I add extra water and a bit of seasoning if I think it's become too thick. Serve and enjoy!

Tips

I use a Westmark garlic press, which is better than any American one I have ever found. I grew up with it in Germany, and was desolate without it when I moved away from my mother's house until Amazon's endless suppliers saved me. It's small, which means that it's lightweight, and all the garlic comes out of the bottom instead of spreading out and sneaking out the top of the press. It's also easy to clean--just rub it under running water to get the bits of garlic out of the holes. If a bit of garlic is really stubborn, blow through the holes and make a fun spitting sound that entertains children worldwide! But the most brilliant thing about this garlic press is that it actually presses so hard that you get garlic juice, not just garlic pieces! It infuses everything you make with intense garlic flavor, so you get to save on the amount of garlic you use. It's a win all the way around!
You can use a tablespoon of butter instead of olive oil to sweat the onions; this is just the vegan version. But nothing really beats the smell of onions in butter, does it?
I usually add in a bit of water on top of the vegetable broth, just because I like to spoon liquid soup. It's up to you!
This tastes pretty awesome with a slice of the Publix gourmet Sports Loaf or Multigrain Loaf.
By the way, the Sports Loaf is on sale this week for $3.99! Just be sure to ask for it in one of those bags covered with holes, and then take it out of the bag immediately upon getting home to preserve the crust. I have a small wooden cutting board for bread, so I just cut whatever I want and leave it, cut side down, on the wood board. The crust stays crusty until the bread is gone, which is usually very quickly! If you don't have one specifically for bread, just use your regular one, although I'd prefer wood or bamboo.

I'll share more recipes soon! Cooking, to me, is the supreme form of fun, relaxation, and winding down, so I get a whole lot of practice!

Why Dammann-Frères Is Probably A Beneficient Deity In Disguise

2010-10-03T00:58:00.000-04:00

Whether we're detoxing, dieting, or indulging, tea is a completely guilt-free cup of happiness. Some people may go for the white, green, or herbal teas, while some people love the zing of black tea, and others are addicted to the flavor of black tea with milk (which I was for a while after spending a semester in England). Some people really can't deal with tea unless it's sweetened, and some people love the kind of chai you get at Starbucks (and I have to confess that one winter when our heating in our 1907 house was broken, my mother and I subsisted on boiling hot chai tea made from powdered stuff from Kroger, which is never the best thing for you unless it is keeping your safe from hypothermia!) But, hiding out there in the exotic world of tea, mysteries await! (And it's October, so I can finally blog about hot tea without sounding totally nuts.)

Well, it's a bit less romantic than that. I was on a four-day weekend trip to Paris while going to school in England, and stopped by a Monoprix to buy a baguette and some apples. Then I realized I hadn't bought forty gifts for my mother yet, and clearly she needed yet another souvenir from Paris. We're huge tea drinkers, so I wandered over to the tea aisle to pick up some authentic French tea (from, uh, the cheap grocery in a basement on the Champs Elysées. I figured she never had to know). I found a really pretty embossed black box and bought it because it was gorgeous. Months later, I unpack my suitcase in the United States, we make tea in celebration despite the boiling hot Georgia summer, and it was love at first scent.

I'd accidentally stumbled upon twenty bags of Dammann-Frères' Goût Russe Douchka, one of the most delicately flavored gourmet black teas I'd ever tasted in my life. Dammann-Frères calls it "citrusy"; I call it "awesome". We stretched those twenty bags out to last a year, and then my mother hit on the brilliant idea of checking to see if they had a website. They did! It was a miracle! It seemed enormously pricey, especially with shipping, but we couldn't help ourselves. For the winter holidays, we treated ourselves to a bag of Goût Russe Douchka and another of Earl Grey Goût Russe. And we've never looked back.

The Earl Grey is the best I've ever tasted. The bergamot is brilliant, the tea leaves are fresh, and there are actual pieces of orange peel and blue bonnet flowers in the mix. It's lovely to look at, and the infused tea color is a stunning golden amber. The aroma has dashes of citron in it mixing with the oil of bergamot, and the flavor is beautifully balanced--it's 5 euros for 100 grams, and these leaves are such high-quality that two pinches are enough to infuse an entire teapot!

When last winter came around, it was my turn to splurge for my mother, and I went all out! (Perhaps secretly knowing that she'd offer me some tea to keep me cosy in my apartment so far away from her. But only perhaps.) I ordered bags of the two I've already described, and found three others, mainly operating on pure luck and the knowledge that she doesn't like caramel...

Coquelicot Gourmand is just a gorgeous tea--look at it! Pink peony and cornflower petals make up the color, and the flavors are a blend of tea along with poppy, marzipan, and whatever "biscuit" is. It's a sweeter scent, and it reminds me a bit of a raspberry glaze over a tart. I drink it whenever I feel particularly cheerful.

7 Parfums has my beloved bergamot oil and citrus, and gets its lovely color from actual red and white rose petals. Stunning. Absolutely stunning. It tastes as luxurious as a red carpet gown. It's not as candy-like as Coquelicot Gourmand, which I love--and when I'm not practically making love to the Earl Grey, this is my favorite tea.

Temple d'Angkor is a green flavored tea, and although the description says that it's got flavors of green apple, green lemon, and melon, the impression I got was somewhere between a faint flavor of a sour apple piece of hard candy and a piece of caramel. Which, occasionally, I'm in the mood for--and my mother, who is an avowed despiser of caramel, loves it! So you know. To each her own.

This one is the coolest one ever. I haven't dared to buy it, because it's so darn expensive (12 euros!) and presumably has only one use, but my gosh. Look at it! The Dragon Enchanté is an actual dragon! It's tea leaves crafted together to produce a dragon whose eyes glow orange and whose mane swells when dropped into hot water! You've got to have a glass teapot for this; there's no other way. Wow! Have you ever seen anything like this?

So there go my plugs for the most amazing tea I've ever tasted. No, nobody is paying me to gush about these, but they make me so happy I cannot help myself. If you, or anyone you know, really loves drinking tea, give this brand a shot.

As a girl who has such an overwhelming love of really good bread, I have to say that the amazing flavor of these teas has often stopped me from inhaling an entire loaf of freshly baked bread in a morning. It's a life- and waistline-saver!

La danse du ventre

2010-10-02T23:57:00.000-04:00

You know, I despise the gym. Really and truly despise it. Obviously, I've never been the sporty type--no track athlete is going to title her blog "observations of an opera child"--but I've never seen the sense of shutting myself up in a room with a whole lot of machines to torture myself for an hour when I could take a ballet or modern dance class instead. I like to think of myself as slim and flexible rather than an energetic, muscular powerhouse. (Of course, I say this with an open bar of German nougat beside me. So you see where my priorities lie!) However, I'm the youngest girl in our graduate class, the slenderest, and the one who looooves classical and stylistic theatre. So I was Eurydice in Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl, in an authentic peach-colored 1950s bathing suit last year, had a kind of awkward post-sex scene in The Shape of Things, by Neil LaBute, as Evelyn, and this fall I'm Scheherezade in Mary Zimmerman's Arabian Nights. And, since I'm a dancer as well as tiny (oh, that really terrible joke was so not on purpose, I swear), the first thought in everyone's heads was apparently "OMG SHE COULD BELLYDANCE!"

My first reaction, to be totally honest, was "Hot diggety!" Haven't used that phrase since reading a childhood favorite about a girl dragged out west called California Morning Whipple. My second was "holy mess, I feel like I am in trouble."

Now, I am not averse to bellydancing. However, I don't have the faintest idea how. Or I think I should say didn't have the faintest idea how. For the past three weeks, I've been practicing belly rolls, undulations, different arm postures, head movements, isolations, hip rolls, floor work, shawl work, and y'all, my abs hurt like crazy. But it is sexy. I have never exercised in such a sexy way before. I'm lucky in that it's fairly similar to ballet, but all you have to do is to watch a San Francisco tribal dancer to realize that this takes years and years of dedicated practice. For inspiration, because I have to choreograph my own dance, I've been watching Bellydance Superstars Live in Paris at the Folies Bergère and On Fire! which are two stunning presentations, except for the Marilyn Monroe impersonator. (Intrigued? You should be!)

And I'm in love with Ansuya, a professional bellydance star from Miami. Yes, she's the one in the picture on the right. Both pictures, actually. I am feeling crazy tugs at my psyche to go move to Miami and rob Cuban restaurants for money to take her classes.

The other truly amazing thing about bellydance is that any woman of any age can do this as long as she can stand upright. Ten years old or ninety; you can do this beautifully; large or small, this is a gorgeous hobby or profession. Imagine! A profession in dance that doesn't require you to give up when you're thirty! (Much as I love ballet, this is why I'm not a ballet dancer.) And, y'all, the costumes. Bedazzlement and fluttery silk! And the muscle isolations in the stomach! It is way, waaaay harder than it looks.

I've got to say, it's one of the best ways to exercise that I've ever found. According to my crazy darling brilliant Polish friend, it also helps to massage your internal organs and ready your hips for childbirth. I am not touting this as medical fact, but it sounds cool. And I'm sure it helps you have better sex. ;) Show me the treadmill that can do that!

Anthropologie Fall Discoveries

2010-10-02T18:24:00.000-04:00

I've got a seriously precious cat sitting on my lap, arrogantly perched so that he will fall the second I take my supporting arm away and confident that I would rather eat my own elbow than disturb him. He is eating my buttons.

What buttons is he eating? He is eating amazing buttons. It's been awhile since I've spent serious money on clothes (that whole graduate student thing), but this fall season at Anthropologie has been so breathtaking that I couldn't help myself. I've got to say, there are few materialistic things that tug at my heart more than fall fashion, especially when it incorporates an equestrian/British tinge. So, after dreamily collecting a shopping bag of items I wanted (yeah, over $1000), my boyfriend's mother took me to Lenox in Atlanta, where she lost herself in Ann Taylor and accidentally left me in Anthropologie for three whole hours. I tried on everything in that shopping bag, and, oh, boy. Oh, my gosh. I have been back to school for a week and I have never, NEVER received so many compliments as on the clothes I bought. I've got to post pictures:

The buttons Simon is chewing on belong to the Rutledge Sweatercoat, a long sweater with the most stunning diagonal lines that flatter you in every way--making you look long and lean while thinning your waist and accentuating the hips. The back is laced up and provides for some really pretty gathers--although there are two floppy bits that look like wings that looked pretty huge from the side, although all that took was a few stitches on either side and the whole look is stunning. And apparently the buttons are yummy!

This next one has at least three different ways to wear it. The Best of the Bunch Cardigan--it's comfy, it's great for southern climates (so even though it looks like a coat, it really is a sweater), it's fitted to the waist, and it might take you a few tries to figure out how to button it up, but I feel like a pretty little stylish French woman in it. I love the ruffled space between buttonholes! It's breathtaking, let me tell you, and sweet with jeans and knee-high boots, black or brown. If I want to turn heads, either of those two sweaters is a no-brainer!

Either you can wear it this way, buttoned all the way up, half-buttoned and swinging like they show you on the website, OR you can keep the left side totally buttoned underneath the right shoulder seam and undo the right side halfway down, so you get some beautiful drapes hanging down attractively from your shoulder. Either way, this sweater is brilliant!

The Eze-sur-Mer top is more of a basic, but I was in love with the navy/brown stripe combo from the very beginning and I found out when I tried on half the things in the store that the orange is beautiful on pale brunettes with a yellow undertone to their skin...in other words, if you can pull off Clinique spiced apple lipstick, this shirt will be stunning on you (that lipstick is my go-to in winter, fall, and summer; it seems to work for all three beautifully! Don't let the website fool you; it's a gorgeous dark orange tint that has enough pink in it to still look natural on lips). Slightly sheer, though, if you pick the more tightly fitted size, so with the XS I just don't wear a black bra and try to keep Simon-cat away from the gold buttons at the shoulders. (I really don't know what it is with him and buttons . I think it's because they wiggle.)

The Two-by-Two Shorts are gorgeous. They're soft wool, feel amazing, and are lined with some pretty quality lining. However, they're on sale, and for a reason. When I tried on the size 2, the shank of the top button just came right off the top of the button. Luckily, the shorts come with an extra button, and the lovely people at Anthro gave me an extra $5 off, but...well, thank goodness I'm a seamstress; I'd have hated to leave these in the store. They're pretty cute with boots and a blazer.

The long and the short of it is that I spent waaay too much money and really wanted to spend more...just check out the River Tyne Tee in neutral, the stunning wine-colored Draped V-Neck, the adorably polka-dotted Coming and Going Skirt, the truly British Made to Measure Skirt, the gorgeously decorated Paisley Paths Skirt, the online-only (aaack!) Everything-In-Place Cape, with a fun splash of reddish-yellow plaid lining inside the hood, and the amazing, amazing Craftsmanship Capelet, which I totally would have bought had they had a size smaller than a Medium. (For anyone considering this gorgeous capelet, DON'T SIZE UP. I'm usually an XS/2 and the Medium felt like it had a foot of extra fabric around the waist.)

I'm officially in love with Anthropologie, the only place I've found in Georgia that sells clothing designed by people with creative minds who appreciate that we ladies want to look sexy, daring, classy, and gorgeous without being shunted into either the preteen section or into the boring country-club department! Anthropologie, thank you for existing.

Also, please stop making your buttons so tasty.

The Mass of Stupidity

2010-07-11T18:53:00.002-04:00

Why do some Americans consider themselves better than Muslims?

More to the point: why do some Americans think they have the right to murder all Muslims?

I kid you not. It's a revolting realization. My two choice quotes from a recent debate are "there is no such thing as a good moslem" and "you fight your enemies the way they fight you."

I began this by responding to another person's letter to the newspaper, who claimed that President Obama's overtures to the Muslim world were despicable and were pandering to an enemy. I put forward the opinion that the best way to create peace is to do so peaceably, that murder, war, bigotry, and hate only bring about vengeful suppression and breed people who are boiling mad, ready on a knife edge to fight back. I suggested that, instead of lashing out vindictively at all Muslims, we employ a little bit of rationality and ask why the Muslim terrorists hate Americans in the first place and address that issue. I pointed out that you don't fix a broken arm by cutting it off; you set the break, gently let it heal, and avoid precarious situations in the future. Somehow, this was received as a green light for the spout of hatred to begin gushing.

If a Muslim believer lives by the Koran, he will go kill all Americans. They have been promised lots of virgins. They are totally responsible for their own actions and suicide bombers are not victims of anything. They all want to see us dead. We have to kill them first. It is ridiculous to ask for the reason why 9/11 happened. We should just hate. Hate, kill, and alienate.

Fascinating.

Also incredibly stupid.

I know and am friendly with quite a few Muslims. Aside from the insulting nature of all of this drivel, it simply isn't true. None of them have shown even the slightest desire to stab me with a pizza cutter over dinner or smother me with a couch pillow. They don't start frothing at the mouth when they see me in a swimsuit. And not only do they not want to kill all Americans, they aren't anomalies.

Human beings have to go through a great deal of psychological preparation before they can kill someone. Their lives have to accustom them to the idea. Even impulse murders don't simply just happen; they are a buildup; that's why people without that necessary psychological makeup or training cannot imagine themselves doing that. The necessary self-defense impulse can catapult a person into killing with a pretty large dash of fear. Soldiers are trained for months to kill, and many still come back with PTSD and worse. Killing someone of your own species is evolutionarily idiotic, and we have biological mental defenses against it. It is pure ignorance to suppose that millions of people have managed to magically do away with this essential part of our biological makeup. More to the point: it's stupid.

Additionally, I'd love for someone to explain to me how all Muslims deserve to be lumped together into one group destined for American hatred when the Columbine shootings, the Oklahoma City bombing, the murdering of abortion doctors, and hundreds of other prime examples don't allow us to lump white people into a large group of violent terrorists who should be exterminated. Just explain that logic to me, please. Is it because Muslims believe in a different book? Is it because they're mostly on the other side of the Atlantic? Is it because you have actually never met one?

I really think that last is true.

So, moderate, non-fanatic Americans, wake up out of your moderation, because these idiot extremists have louder mouths than you do, and by virtue of shouting loud enough, they are managing to indoctrinate a lot of essentially good but really stupid people with this verbal excrement. And you're making it really easy for them by minding your own business.

The people, taken together, have the I.Q. of a mob. Do you really want that in charge of your country? This mob of a people has actually decided that anyone intelligent is an "elitist" and they don't want someone like that in government. These people want idiots in charge. They want uneducated people with a loud mouth ruling them, because they are "just like us".

Let me tell you something: we need people who are NOT like us in government. We need smarter people. We need people who would be better at their jobs than we would be. We need the best of the best to guide our country through these inevitable periods of shameful public idiocy, not Joe Six-Pack, who would crumble into laziness and laissez-faire in the first month.

Let your own voice be heard. It's worth more than anything Fox News blithers.

To-Die-For Dinnerware!

2010-05-27T12:22:00.000-04:00

I found these by a circuitous route: watching Everyday Italian, searching for Giada's ($100!) salt cellar, and accidentally finding recommendations for CB2. I nearly died of happiness.

First of all, I'm a graduate student, so money is tight. (Seriously. Our wages are so low that we are eligible for food stamps even though we are teaching college students.) This website has plates that cost as little as $2. And they're beautifully simple: they follow a more modern, almost Japanese style of simplicity and clean lines above everything, in order to better showcase the food. Lemongrass Thai Bistro in Macon, Georgia uses these, and although the very large ones are a bit heavy, they're hard to break but look as though they broke the bank.

Look at these! Matching. White. Elegant. Modern. The food automatically looks gourmet. They photograph beautifully. They make the food pop without any effort whatsoever.

Check out the gorgeous contrast of the green and white, the stacked triangular rounded serving plates, the perfectly sized little square plates just right for soy sauce, and the softly contrasting rounded serving bowls. Look below, at the way the curves on the fruit and cheese course accentuate the angles of the other plates and bring out the swells of the pears and the grapes. See how unnecessary anything but simplicity is? To be frank, these photos are more cluttered than they need to be to be beautiful. Naturally, I understand they had to showcase as many products as possible, though.

Just look at the wine glasses. Unadorned, they don't take away from the beauty of the wine but glint seductively in the white light like sunlight ricocheting off of icicles. And further below, the perfect combination for a summer party, especially for us girls: colorful, elegant, and so much fun! The blue is utterly gorgeous, tropical, and perfect for a Mediterranean Greek theme. They make me want to dress up in a sexy white blouse and throw on my turquoise and gold jewelry. They make me want to laugh and plan parties and have friends over to enjoy the beauty of summer, food, and a swimming pool. They also make me want to recreate amazing Thai food. Seriously. I found an Asian market (with very unfriendly staff) that sold Thai basil, Thai chili peppers, and cheap bunches of cilantro, and this is going to be fun.

Just imagine! Barely any piece is over $9.95. The little appetizer spoon plates are $0.95. The white square 6.5" dessert plate is $1.95. A small square bowl is $2.95. What are you waiting for?

So, Is Raw Food Insane?

2010-05-25T14:23:00.134-04:00

What would it take to learn to love a raw food lifestyle?

Granted, this isn't a new thought. I've been puzzling over this since finding Natalia Rose's Detox 4 Women in Barnes & Noble about thirteen months ago. It's a truly fascinating lifestyle, incorporating everything from food to food sources to compassion to supporting local organic farmers and, occasionally, to fanaticism. But what is it all about? And, more importantly, can I do it?

I truly love to cook. Veganism was a stretch, but thankfully I tried it just as I was starting work at an amazing Thai bistro, which opened up hundreds of possibilities. But--raw food? I couldn't imagine denying myself the joy of being in the kitchen; like a cute little housewife, I happily slave over dinner, chopping up mirepoix for soup, kneading bread, inventing new marinades, and reading recipe books for fun.

Natalia Rose caught my interest about a year ago, and since then, I keep drifting back to this intriguing possibility of living on raw food. It's not as extreme as it sounds; prehistoric man didn't have a microwave and even meat was originally eaten raw. No other species feels the need to cook its food. Why should we?

Are there any raw foods you're completely in love with? Mine was (and is) guacamole. It's not that hard to eat more vegetables and fruits if you adore them and then slowly expand--and I will guarantee that there is much more to the vegetable and fruit arena than you can even guess. Look up daikons, for example--it's a fruit that looks like a huge, spiky boulder all ready for the catapult! Just look at the picture above--edible flowers? They're delicious, velvety, and oh-so-pretty! Rose petals on salad are delicately unbelievable. Grated beets are an earthy, magenta nirvana, ripe tomatoes smell and taste like heaven, and avocado halves sprinkled with lime juice and sea salt are almost (almost!) better than ice cream sprinkled with seven million dollars. Spanish gazpacho (without the breadcrumbs, of course) is like an internal air conditioner on 95-degree Georgia afternoons. Walnut oil and lemon juice make a mesclun salad cry with joy. Cold Thai coconut curry soup is decadence flavored with cilantro.

I'll have to take some pictures of the brilliant salad I've been addicted to for the past few days--short julienned carrots, chopped vine-ripe blazing red tomatoes, sweet yellow raw corn off the cob, half a chopped Vidalia onion--that's one thing Georgia gave me I can't live without!--minced garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, a dash of cumin, some walnut oil, and a heaping chopped handful of basil, Italian flat-leaf-parsley, and dill, all of it drizzled with a whole seriously juicy, tangy lime. The color combination of red/orange/yellow mixed with the green herbs is to die for, and since the flavors haven't been blended by heat, it's like exploding vegetable fireworks in your mouth. With lime.

But when I first started looking at raw food, it looked gross, tasteless, and terrifying. Not to mention seriously expensive. I wasn't about to sell my stove on a whim that might easily not last for three weeks so I could afford all this extra mechanical stuff. And if you're like me, and you get distracted very easily in the kitchen, a nice, sensible, French woman's approach isn't going to help you if you suddenly learn to make baguettes, rolls, multigrain bread, sesame bread, Laugenbroetchen, croissants, ciabatta, foccacia, and God knows what else because you cannot stop experimenting. (And ravioli, which fell apart in the pot and made squishy doughy soup! Ew.)

Natalia Rose wrote books directed specifically at the magic of fruits and vegetables. For the first time, there wasn't anything for me to zero in on but the main message. It's a bit hard to read her books and miss the overall point: that you have got to make fruits and vegetables the mainstay of your diet or you are doomed into a Hell made of fat, candida, and gyms. I like her.

So what would it take, according to her, to start being healthy?

1. Willpower. Clearly. I could live without chocolate, but multigrain bread and pasta are my lovers--and she recommends staying away from grains.

2. A juicer. Dear God. Breville juicers are murderously expensive.

3. A blender. Like a $400-$500 VitaMix. AAAH.

4. A trampoline/rebounder. Over $100.

5. A messload of organic juicing produce.

6. Seriously expensive condiments and spices. Stevia. Nama Shoyu. Raw almond butter. Raw honey.

7. Wild organic seafood. (And I was doing so well as a vegan.)

8. Raw cheddar-style goat cheese. (Not so sure about this one. I like Parmesan and mozzarella, but not cheddar.)

9. Young coconuts

10. Vegetables. Fruit. Pasta sauce. And a whole lotta lemons and avocados.

11. Colonic/enema procedures, oh, my.

But, see, however scary and expensive (!) this list was, my interest was suddenly caught. I wanted to be slim and slender and lean and gorgeous without trying (much). I wanted to have better skin and feel happy all the time. I wanted the perfect, magical, awesome life experience that she promises, that most raw food devotees promise.

Guess what?

Done slowly, it's addictive.

I started with a few more salads each week, and some fruit each morning. I won't say I felt any kind of physical high or anything, but avocados and tomatoes are heaven. Eventually, I found a $55 juicier at Target, and annexed my boyfriend's blender. Then he and I went away to work at a summer nerd camp, and all the vegan food they had was usually the extensive salad bar, because they murdered all their vegetables with way too much heat and butter. Then we rented a new apartment and I got to stock my own kitchen with all the stuff I wanted for the first time ever. It was Georgia and blazing hot--salads look waaaaaaay better than 400-degree lasagna.

I won't say I'm a raw foodist. I resent labeling myself, because I'll want to rebel against it anyway and it'll make other people equate me with every crazy person claiming that label, too. But with the advent of summer, craving raw food has become a normal state of being. I've stuck mostly to fruits, vegetables, and tea, although I do go through weeks of fanatically trying to make a perfect croissant. But I feel nauseated when I eat chips or fries; I can actually feel the grease sliding through the pores on my face, and it's horrid. Pay attention to what you're eating, really zero in on it, and you can't miss your body's reactions.

Raw food, despite the initial assumptions, turns out to be far more delicious and gratifying than anything I could pick up at a fast-food restaurant.

Next goal: begin juicing regularly! (Note: if you don't have a composter or another use for the fiber, don't throw it down the sink! My complex's maintenance men left me a nice little note asking me to stop putting strange food down the drain.)

Raw Kitty Cat Food

2010-05-25T14:16:00.001-04:00

I've got to say, it's much, much easier to make somebody else be healthy than to do it yourself. Still, I've got to say that it's pretty darn inspiring.

The boyfriend and I brought Simon home on the 17th of February, 2010. He was a 1-2-year-old shelter kitty, and so cuddly and sleepy we thought he was either really old, really sick, or just really stupid. His litterbox smelled so bad that the boyfriend actually vomited when I was gone and he had to clean it. He wasn't on terrible food--it was organic dry food, and the first ingredient was actual chicken, not chicken meal or corn. Still, nobody needs that kind of a wakeup alarm clock smell emanating speedily from the bathroom. Seriously, if we didn't have a two-bathroom apartment, we'd have showered at school. It was condemned.

Through Natalia Rose's blog, I found Wild Kitty Cat Food kits. The trial was cheap with free shipping, so I finally gave in and decided to give it a go.

It arrived in two to three days--amazing. The teensy bag goes with 1 pound of ground meat, preferably more high-fat than lean chicken or turkey. You let the bag of dehydrated mixture rehydrate with six ounces of water, and then you mix in the raw meat, ignoring the kitty at your feet who feels instinctively that food will happen if he meows loudly enough. You get some cheap aluminum 4-oz muffin pans, cover them with plastic, and fill each cup with a heaping scoop of kitty food mixture. Shove it into the freezer for longer safekeeping, and when frozen, put each kitty muffin into a separate bag so you can thaw each one overnight. Give kitty half in the morning and half in the evening. I am telling you, Simon's personality exploded.

Suddenly, from being a lazy little slugabed cat rug, Simon began waking us up in the mornings (okay, that part isn't so cute) and started rocketing around the apartment. He began to play with his kitty toys. He actually finished all the food in his dish with gusto. He still cuddles, and he still snuggles like a furry little bundle of love, but suddenly he's acting like a young cat instead of a veteran four times his age. And the litterbox smell was totally gone. That sold us right away.

He's got much less goop in his eyes. He's awake and active. We had to come up with creative ideas for calming him down in the mornings--tying a knee sock around his haunches, by the way, unfocused him so much that he walked into a doorframe and then acted like his bum was glued to the ground. Good to try if your kitty is insane. Simon is a bright bundle of joyous cat who loves us so much that he camps out by the front door for hours until we return. I love that cat so much that I don't even feel murderous when he paws me awake at 6 a.m.

Wild Kitty Cat Food isn't cheap, especially if you factor in the meat you have to buy to round it out. The premade dinners are even more expensive. But Simon's worth it. The shelter we got him from had an employee who had her raw-food kitty for twenty-seven years. And vet bills apparently are really few and far between, and since they're not eating so much filler, cats are sleeker. I know this may sound odd, but obesity among cats is an enormous American pet problem. And all you have to do to figure out why is to look at the food labels: corn, wheat, bone meal, chicken meal, etc. Cats aren't meant to eat corn or the rendered, dried, ground guts, skin, and bones of slaughtered animals (that's what the word 'meal' means). That won't sustain them, and their bodies just can't use that junk. Their sharp little carnivore teeth need real, raw meat and bones to chomp on.

By the way, did you know that in order to be able to use the label "full and balanced diet", an array of tested cats only have to survive for six months eating that food? They don't have to be healthier, or healthy at all. They just have to be alive. It's like making humans live on nothing but chips, which you can do temporarily, but never for the long haul. This paper may be a student's paper, but it's exceedingly well-researched and Harvard Law School doesn't let you publish your paper on its website unless it's met with approval. If you feed your pet anything like Purina, Iams, or Science Diet, check it out. It never hurts to know what you're buying.

So check out the kits. Seriously, if you love your cat, he or she deserves nothing less.

Deviltry in Schools

2010-04-24T08:42:00.000-04:00

Judging by the amount of hate I see spewed by Christians, why is it a goal for many to conservatively re-Christianize America's public schools?

Why should our children be taught as early as kindergarten that the entire world is filled with sin and they are sinful creatures because they were born, and must work to avoid it? Why should they be taught to condemn children who might be homosexual once they realize what sex is? Why should they learn that sex, the act thanks to which they exist, is vile but that they must fight against an impulse to have it--thereby putting the idea into their heads? Why should children learn to parrot and not to think?

Christianity terrifies me. I know many very vocal people who insist that simply reading the Bible can lead us to good, self-conscious lives, but that true moral authority and problems must be referred to the superiority of the Church. Under the wing of believers like this, this means that children will be taught not to question. They will be taught to follow. They will become drones. They will slide backwards into ignorance and fear because the one book they depend upon for all their answers is mismatched and incomplete, and because the people from whom they blindly accept their morality advocate that belief is strongest and best when there is no proof. What could a Christianized school system do? (Naturally, there are many other state-supported religion scenarios that are possible, but this one strikes closest to home for most Americans.)

It could rot the questions inside every child's mind. It could delete half the curriculum because it doesn't support the religious opinion--showing that power is more important than knowledge, that fighting for dominance can be threatened by the slightest spark of reasonable dissent--and therefore showing how easily dissoluble the religious belief system actually is. It could encourage children to hate those whose sexuality is judged. It could encourage a great deal of early sex and pregnancy because students have nothing else to do. It could allow discrimination and even violence towards those who aren't of the popular religion. It will turn our children into prejudiced, uneducated little religious soldiers.

As an atheist, I see adding religion into schools as an act of insanity. Schools are not here to form a child's character. They are here to educate. Religion, as a school of belief, damns new possibilities and therefore the presence of actual education, which means the development of independent thought.

Religion is clinging to life by its fingernails. No wonder its members are acting like the Antichrist is coming.

Premarital Sex and Life

2010-04-23T13:50:00.001-04:00

I've always wondered about the logistics behind forbidding premarital sex. On the face of one side, it seems stupid. On the face of another, it seems holy. What's your take?

As an atheist, I can't, obviously, believe that an all-knowing, all-loving god first created me so imperfectly and so sinfully that I am not allowed to procreate and further advance the human race until another human, who can be ordained for $10 on the Internet, can perform a five-minute ceremony. It makes no sense to me. Rather, if I believed that, it would really make me want to shake god until his teeth rattle for being so illogical.

So what's the big deal?

I don't want to get divorced. I don't want to rip apart all our mutual belongings, pay a lawyer, deal with alimony, and mess around with child support and visitation rights. I don't want to undergo the hurt of realizing that I married someone without really knowing him, and that we're better off divorcing than staying married. I wouldn't want to do that to children.

I can understand that marriage was important in an age when women depended on men to support them--or were legally and socially forced to do so. If you were married, you were generally safe--unless he engaged in horrific cruelty. But most women had to marry for security, and it's different now. We work. A lot of us love to work, and a lot of us are very good at what we do. We don't need financial security. It might be nice, but we can get it for ourselves just as well as men can.

I don't believe that it's ethical to promise to stay with someone until death do you part unless you know that you will be able to keep that promise. You don't know how much someone will stay in love with you over the years, how much he'll help keep the house in order, how much he'll help raise the children, how prone he is to cheating, how prone you are to cheating, how well your ways of life clash or meld together until you try it out first. I should think it causes a lot more pain and sin to rip apart a family and break a solemn promise than to live together before marriage to make sure that you can, in fact, tolerate each other.

I live with my boyfriend. I adore him. However, if I'd married him, I'd feel a bit cheated, because I would have expected that he would be my helpmeet in every way of life. He gets sick to his stomach when he has to clean out the catbox and cannot stand the noise of clipping the kitty's claws. So, if I eventually decided to marry him and maybe have children with him, we'd have to seriously speak about the number of child responsibilities (specifically feeding, grooming, and diaper-changing) I'd be stuck with before I even considered a decision like that. If we can't agree, maybe it won't work out. It would hurt, but it would hurt far less than the end of a marriage and the divorce payments. I see no problem with waiting a bit before doing something as important as getting married.

So why does it bother so many people that I feel this way?

Is it possible that ancient decrees on marriage and sin might be wrong?

Is it possible that, when those ancient decrees were written, we knew no more about the universal nature of right and wrong than we do now?

Illogical Political Debates

2010-04-23T11:31:00.001-04:00

I wrote "debates", but I might just as well call them "arguments". I find it fascinating that people, mostly uninformed people who are therefore adamant in their convictions, love to argue with others and drive their own points home but never, ever seem to listen. It seems that screaming at others--via the safe medium of the Internet, usually--is the way insecure people achieve confidence and self-respect. That, and, admittedly, trying to figure out how to get around the censorship programming which forbids words like "fart", even in Spanish.

Recently, I entered a few comments on an online newspaper opinion page. I refuted arguments, tried to explain my position, remained civil, and attempted to take the opposing comments seriously as I responded. The result was that several people on the message board were actually taken aback and were admonishing people of their own party not to insult "the new liberal" because they finally had a courteous person to oppose. What does that say for regular, middle-class America?

Are we too caught up in the necessity of being right to consider another's opinion? What makes us believe that our own political beliefs are irrefutable and the other side is going to Hell? Seriously, why do we alienate hundreds of groups simply because we must be right?

It doesn't matter that we descended from immigrants--Mexican immigrants must go. It doesn't matter that there are many illegal immigrants from other countries--it's totally okay to institute a racist regime to potentially arrest every Mexican-looking human being. It doesn't matter that someone else's inborn sexuality is something they cannot help--you want your Bible to say it does, so they must be eradicated or educated out of their perversions. It doesn't matter that the glaciers and ice caps are melting and the sea level rising--the politicians who will supposedly save you the most money (!) say that's ridiculous, and you are happy to believe them. It doesn't matter that America has hundreds of thousands of people thrown into unemployment by this recent economic crash; no one who can't be bothered to get a job and help themselves should be allowed to take your tax dollars. Listen to yourselves!

The stock market crashes. Car plants close. Factories shut down. Businesses go into bankruptcy. Layoffs occur all over the country. Money has to be saved everywhere. Result--people lose their jobs. And you are telling these people that it's their fault they don't have a job? It's their fault that they can't support themselves? How do you know how hard people are trying to survive, to find a job? All you want to see is the homeless guy chugging vodka and spending his welfare check, because that is easy for you to see! That easily scorned picture means you don't have to help! YES, for God's sake, there are many people out there who find it easier to remain on welfare than to work. But there are thousands more who are trying every day to get a job, scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep their houses, there are some who are working two or three jobs to stay afloat, there are single mothers, single fathers--countless miserable situations that many people are trying to pull themselves out of! How dare you suggest that they aren't worthy of their country's help?

You are not alone. Without the well-being of this country, your life would be in the toilet. You don't know how to do anything without the success of the grocery store, the hardware store, the people who run your water, your plumbing, your electricity, who make your televisions and your clothes. Most of you can't make your own clothes and a great deal more don't know how to raise your own food. When this country tanks, so do you. When a young man with an IQ of 195 has to drop out of college because he doesn't have the money, you've lost an incredible asset to society and to your own life. It will be your fault when the potential discoverer of a cure for AIDS or cancer has to drop out of school and work three jobs because the family can't afford food or rent, or when that person has to die because her greedy insurance company doesn't want to spend the money on an experimental bone marrow treatment.

We are responsible for everyone in our society. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can quit this idiotic warring with everyone of a different opinion, religion, skin color, or origin. STOP IT. None of you have the right to condemn another human being to poverty.

Like it or not, our social structure benefits the rich, even in matters of success. Malcolm Gladwell wrote extensively about research done over a period of years on children with incredibly high IQs. The children who generally succeeded were the ones from well-to-do families. Why?

Rich kids have parents who are far more involved. They are told to do their homework, they are encouraged to speak up to authorities (this includes people like doctors), whereas poor children are generally ingrained with the idea of authority's power. They are taken to soccer practice, they can get tutors, they travel, and they're given far more opportunities. Poor kids very often have to take care of their education themselves, and they've got to battle against self-consciousness while trying to prove equality with the rich kids. This has nothing to do with skin color, nothing at all. It's simply an economic state of mind that people fall into. And this means that, when looking down on the poor, we're condemning kids for their grandparents' social positions.

We're interconnected, not just across the present world but across the past. Your ancestors made you who you are today. So open your eyes and help the struggling people who need just a leg up in order to become a person who can found a university, win your divorce case, or design your house better than anyone else could. It is everyone's fault that we have poverty. Stop pretending to be independent and claim your own responsibility.

Why Do We Have This Illegal Immigration Problem?

2010-04-22T11:59:00.002-04:00

I read the Macon Telegraph daily when I'm at home in Georgia. It's on the table--why not? I used to read it for the comics, a salad recipe here or there, and Dear Abby. Then, being a vaguely interested liberal, I wondered where Doonesbury had gone, and found it on the "Viewpoints" section, the one in which people get to send in letters about, essentially, about anything they want to, usually political, conservative, and religious.

I'm horrified at America. I'm absolutely horrified. How can such a huge percentage of the population believe that forcibly Christianizing everyone is a good thing? How can people believe that we just need to shunt illegal immigrants back over the border to end the problem! How can people live with themselves while decrying their independence and spewing dislike for the poor, all the while forgetting that their very pledge of allegiance to America includes the words "one nation"?

My point for the day--because it was under discussion in the Macon Telegraph Letters comment section--is illegal immigration. Most people hear about the problem of people crossing the border without official papers and inveigling themselves into American, money-earning society, taking the jobs that out-of-work Americans should have and taking American tax dollars for welfare checks, food stamps, and medical bills. On the face of it, this seems a bit ridiculous. Only someone so blindly compassionate towards all human beings that he or she wouldn't let their little carnivore of a cat eat meat wouldn't have a problem with this scenario.

But here's the thing--it's much, much too simple. Unless you really want to see things this way, you can't buy this story just on that last paragraph.

First of all, why are these immigrants here? Well, why would you want to leave your country? Leave your family, your surroundings, your home, your familiar, native language, your customs, traditions, and way of life?

It could be because you just feel like traveling and leaving all those things behind doesn't really matter to you. Or it's because you're dirt poor. You cannot afford to live this lifestyle anymore. You're destitute. Your family is sick. You're earning 42 cents an hour working in, say, a maquiladora. Your wages have gone down at least 70% since December 1994. You live in a shack in Tijuana, the television-making capital of the world. 42 cents an hour covers 60% of daily necessities. You work in a toxic environment. It's the only place you can get a job. Around you, American tourists are enjoying duty-free shopping, amazing restaurants, music, gambling, and golf. Wouldn't you want to leave? More specifically, wouldn't you want to leave so that you can have that lifestyle in America?

Of course you would. But why on earth are you so poor in the first place? Why in heaven's name are they so rich?

Check out Border Assembly San Diego. This is just one example of a company employing Mexican workers. According to their website, geared towards American manufacturing companies, if you are spending 15% of profits on labor, you are spending too much, and if you want to turn your product manufacturing over to them, they will cut labor by half. You will not have to pay tariffs. They will ship your products cheaply. Your products will not be shoddy: they will be made by "a young, dynamic, and highly skilled workforce", who are also conscientious line workers. Your employees will be treated excellently. Their employees are paid well, get really good benefit packages and are just spectacular at their work. It isn't fair, they say, to assume that just because sweatshops get a bad reputation, their workshops are also run poorly. So come down and visit; you'll have a great time.

Sounds fabulous.

Check out the Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers: Background Information website. The story is slightly different. In order to get all this American business and to enrich those at the top, the government eliminated Article 27 of its constitution which stated that each worker owns a part of the land he or she works on, and, immediately, American rice and corn flooded the Mexican market. The workers--the few who could still get work--had to work for much less--they couldn't accumulate land to pass down through generations and raise self-sufficient families and communities--and they got dirt poor. Many were thrown into unemployment, because Americans had really high-tech machines to do their work. People rushed to the border to try to get across, to escape this hell of a poverty-stricken life.

So American companies rushed to the border. It wasn't a hard concept: it was a blockade. Put up companies, offer jobs, and keep them in Mexico, where the minimum wage is far below $6.25 (or whatever it is in your state of choice). So began the maquiladoras.

The workers, as stated before, work at ludicrous, ever-dropping wages (including monetary inflation in the calculation). They have no or barely any hazard and safety standards, so they deal with toxic waste dumps and toxic, dangerous working conditions. They work 48-60 hours a week without proper safety precautions. They are, naturally, forced into repression by workers who attempt to negotiate an improvement in conditions--and unions are far more dangerous. Maquiladora workers, with the aid of the committee, tried to organize a union, but they called off voting in fear that the elected leaders would be harmed. One woman, one of the candidates, was threatened and her 10-year-old son disappeared.

All of this, naturally, leads to bigger and bigger profits for American companies.

My God. You wonder why we have so many illegal immigrants!

So, essentially, we have three options that I can see. We can do what many Americans want, particularly conservative Americans, and just shove them back over the border where they belong. We can raise taxes to build a really impossible wall around our country, leaving room to only allow tariff-free merchandise through, we can forcibly stop and interrogate or examine any Hispanic-looking person about their right to be here, and we can forcibly deport people back over the border into poverty. By engaging in this essentially racist regime that bears a slight resemblance to Nazi Germany, we can also create hundreds of furious, militant terrorists bent on revenge for their ruined, trapped lives and their poverty. We can spend a really huge amount of money doing this. But how wise is it?

Another option would be to legalize every illegal immigrant and welcome all of Mexico and surrounding areas into America and just turn the abandoned countries into agriculture land. So, for the small taxes they pay (if they do, since American citizens do try to get away without paying taxes), we give them welfare, food stamps, and medical aid until they get on their feet. Without education, this may not happen for years. This will also cost millions of dollars.

Or we could fix things in the country the immigrants are coming from, giving them less of an incentive to come to America.

Think about it. Destroy the illness, and the symptom will subside.

Stop outsourcing, for God's sake. The enormous flat-screen TVs that we can buy at really laughable prices have illegal immigration and exploitation written all over them. So does everything else that comes from a country outside of the one in which you're buying your products. Our insistence on buying cheap products is one of the factors (besides profit and greet) that is making companies use and abuse cheap labor in other countries. If we stop abusing Mexico, our borders will become less attractive. This solution is not cheap, either, but none of them are. This has the potential to fix more than violence or knuckling under.

Stop exploiting people in their own countries for our profits, and they will stop coming to this country to seek those profits.

Independence Day

2009-07-05T15:23:00.000-04:00

The Fourth of July.

American turned 233 yesterday to the crashing sound of fireworks and the spit and sizzle of the grill. People gathered in parking lots to watch the shows, waved American flags, jumped in the pool, shared potato and pasta salads, and spent time with families. Some did, at least.

I felt very much like an outsider last night. I took the boyfriend out to a Japanese sushi and hibachi restaurant, gave several forced laughs at our very bored hibachi chef and had patience with our newly hired, apologetic server. Notwithstanding, we had a lovely time, especially watching one of the restaurant employees run through the place with a motorcycle helmet on and watching the hibachi chef lose control of the fire show and send an eight-inch tongue of flame licking towards my wine glass.

We left the restaurant as the fireworks began. The parking lots everywhere were crammed with people watching and oohing, with children sitting cross-legged on top of vans, the Sonny's Bar-B-Que sign blazing light, the McDonald's vying for attention with an inflatable sign, and nothing but a fleet of cars, concrete, and occasional waving flags to be seen for miles.

Looking around at this dead landscape, I could not help thinking that America has a lot to learn.

What is patriotism? What do people love when they say that they love their country? What do they support more than anything? What separates America from Orwell's Oceanea, in which the proletariat have a dull kind of patriotism that can be summoned and used whenever Big Brother finds it useful?

What is a country?

It cannot just be land. Laws, government, cultures, and other trappings are also useless without the people for whom they exist. A country without its people is nothing, which means that if there is anything worth fighting for, it is the population of your country. The mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, annoying cousins, irritating coworkers, incompetent bosses, homeless people, alcoholics, drug addicts, the poor and the excruciatingly poor, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus, the agnostics, the atheists, the Wiccans, the Native Americans, the rich socialites, the murderers, the robbers, the uneducated, the highly educated, the ignorant, and the brilliant: those people are your country. All of them and more.

Are you proud of them? Would you fight for them? Do you think about them, all of them, when you wave your flag and sing for America the Beautiful? Would you do your best to help your fellow man before lining your own pockets? Would you rather have money in the bank or live in a country in which every single person has the right to excellent health? Do you know all your country's flaws, and do you ignore them or do you want to fix them? Do you listen to other human beings or do you just believe that if everyone thought like you, the whole world would be better off? Do you think that people in other, poorer, more ignorant walks of life have the right to your help so that they can be the best people they can be?

Are you truly patriotic or do you only love what this system in which you live can do for you?

Looking around that night, I saw people who were convinced of their self-importance. I saw pride in a hollow shell, hastily covered over by a flag. I saw people who cared about nothing more than to eke out their own lives without wanting to venture outside their horizons or to make their own marks on the world. I felt utter detachment and incredible pity for those people that night.

I never pledged my allegiance to the German flag, not once in four different kindergartens and four years of Grundschule--elementary school. I barely knew the national anthem. Yet we were proud of our culture--our history, our music, our writers, our operas, our art, our architecture, our food, our mistakes, our parks, our mountains, our forests, our folktales, our discoveries, and our scientists. I never had to recite a pledge every morning to restate, again and again and again and again, that I promised to devote myself to my country. Yet I loved it so much I cried nightly for weeks when I was brought to America. I missed it deeply, every part of it.

My sister left America again to live in Germany with my father. She misses very, very different things about this country.

Germany, she says, has no Taco Bell, no Victoria's Secret, no Doritos, no Kraft macaroni and cheese, and no Ramen noodles. Every time we go over there, we have to bring her some Taco Bell taco mix, cheese sauce powder, Ramen noodle seasoning, chips, and a bra or two.

Every time I come back from Germany, I step off the plane bearing opera tickets, train tickets, photographs, and restaurant cards to paste into a diary. I bring circles of wooden tracery I carved at my grandfather's for my mother, I bring countless German books, and I stow several bottles of Riesling into my checked luggage.

I know very well which country has the more beautiful, seasoned culture.

Yet America has the advantage of being a new country. It has not existed to make mistakes and learn for a thousand years. It has had two hundred and thirty-three. America is growing every which way; it's like a little runt of a kitten with a head too big for its body. And, in its own stumbling way, it is still very, very lovable.

I should just like to see America admit that it has much to learn and much to gain from other countries; that we are not the best--that no one is--that our worth is measured in the worth of our people, and that we have an exceptional amount of potential.

Think of it as a new translation of "independence".

Veganism

2009-07-02T13:49:00.002-04:00

I have to post about this because, honestly, the more I read the angrier I get, and people everywhere react so hatefully to what is simply a lifestyle choice! I figure that if only one person reads this and leaves more informed, this post will have been worth something.

So! Veganism!

Vegans are generally labeled as crazy hippie health nuts and mocked. They are also told that they are starving themselves, unhealthy, welcoming osteoporosis, B-12 deficiencies, and protein deficiencies. They are told that they are shunning the perfect food for humans and embracing poison (okay, that judgment generally comes from Atkins converts). They are assumed to be scrawny, pale, and sickly-looking. Added to that, they are also seen as, essentially, terrorists. They are lumped together with all violent vegan animal rights fighters the way Muslims were lumped into the "terrorist" category right after 9/11 . And, when they are not fighting these labels, they are perceived as snotty, holier-than-thou, annoying, stupid, and malnourished. What's a vegan girl to do?

First of all, she's going to delve into explanations.

I made my choice primarily because of health reasons. Fruits and vegetables are the best food a human being can possibly ingest; combined, they contain all essential nutrients, minerals, vitamins, protein, and amino acids. Some typical deficiencies we are accused of include:

Vitamin B-12, necessary for the proper functioning of the nervous system and brain, was available from plants before we began washing and cleaning them so thoroughly. Now, we can get all we need from nutritional yeast, spirulina, and fortified foods like soymilk; we don't need supplements at all.

Protein, among other things, transports substances throughout the body, produces enzymes, and helps cell growth, repair, and replacement. Contrary to the "normal" conception, widely available sources of protein exist in vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, whole grains, and soy. However, too much protein is seriously dangerous. It leaches calcium and other minerals from our bodies, leading to osteoporosis, impairs the kidneys, and accelerates aging! The longest-lived people are widely acknowledged to be the traditional Japanese. They do not overdose on animal protein. They eat fruits, vegetables, sea vegetables, rice, fish, and tofu. Traditionally, they do not eat massive amounts of animal flesh. Yet they live longer. Coincidence? Nope.

Calcium keeps bones, nails, and teeth strong; the loss of calcium is linked to osteoporosis, which is a horrific condition. Dairy is the most widely acknowledged source of calcium. However, dairy also has a huge amount of protein in it, because it is specifically designed to grow a 40-pound calf into a 2,000-pound cow. It has so much protein in it that it truly does leach calcium from your bones. Vegans get their calcium from foods with a normal, low amount of protein in them like broccoli, leafy green vegetables, sprouts, garbanzo beans, molasses, soy, kale, collard greens, and nuts. Unless we do not plan our diets well, we do not suffer from calcium deficiencies.

Vitamin D, which kicks calcium into action, is easily available from the sun--which is easily said, but the sun is not comfortable to bask in all year-round, and we also tend to protect ourselves with sunscreen to avoid skin cancer. If I had a private garden or balcony, I would lie nude in the sun in mid-morning, before the rays get too hot and damaging, for about fifteen minutes. I don't have a private outside area, so I take morning walks in the spring, summer, and fall wearing shorts and tank tops. Milk is not a good natural source of vitamin D, because it has to be fortified. You can buy supplemented vegan foods if you absolutely need to; you don't need fortified milk.

Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids: found in nuts and seeds and their unrefined oils, along with borage oil and evening primrose oil. Fatty salmon is by no means necessary to the human diet.

The argument I always come across and absolutely hate is this one: that humans are omnivores/carnivores and are designed to eat meat, that we evolved to eat meat. NEWSFLASH: NO, WE'RE NOT!

Why not? Let's look at the most common arguments:

1. We have sharp canines! They are there to chew meat!

Compare your canines to those of, say, a cat or a lion. Do you really think that your puny, flat teeth qualify as canines? Please! Carnivores' teeth are there to tear off meat and swallow it. They don't spent time chewing. Their jaws function like a pair of scissors: they literally shear the flesh off with their teeth and swallow it. Like herbivores, humans chew their food in a side-to-side circular motion so they can break it down before they swallow to release the digestive enzymes. Carnivores don't need to. Our canines are pathetic but excellent for eating fruits and vegetables.

2. We evolved to eat meat. We're omnivores. Our systems can clearly handle it! We're meant to eat meat!

I cannot believe the ignorance of this argument. In order to digest meat, our stomachs use hydrochloric acid, which is indeed present in our stomachs. However, carnivores and omnivores have up to 10 times as much acid. The pH of their stomachs is generally 1 or less than 1 without food. If ours drops below 4 or 5 without food, it's time for medical intervention. We can technically digest meat, but it takes a whole lot longer. Additionally, carnivores and omnivores have a comparatively small digestive system; their small intestines are 3-5 times the length of their bodies. Their stomachs are large, which allows them to kill about once a week and then spend the rest of that time processing the food. Herbivores' and humans' small intestines are 10-12 times the length of our bodies. We are told to eat at least twice to three times a day. Some people, especially elderly people, eat five times. We have to have intestines that long because of the difficulty of breaking down fiber and to allow for adequate nutrient absorption.
Omnivores, across the board, are more similar to carnivores than to herbivores. Bears and raccoons can accurately be described as carnivores with a primitive digestive system who have adapted to a herbivorous diet. Many scientists believe that bears hibernate because their primary source of food (they are 70-80% herbivorous) is not available in the winter. In support of this theory of hibernation because of food unavailability, polar bears (who have no access to plants) hibernate in the summer, when seals cannot be hunted.

The Comparative Anatomy of Eating, by Milton R. Mills, M.D., explains all this at length and in detail, and this chart summarizes individual points excellently:

Jaw Type
Carnivore: Angle not expanded
Herbivore: Expanded angle
Omnivore: Angle not expanded
Human: Expanded angle

Jaw Motion
Carnivore: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
Herbivore: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
Omnivore: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
Human: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Teeth (Canines)
Carnivore: Long, sharp, and curved
Herbivore: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
Omnivore: Long, sharp and curved
Human: Short and blunted

Stomach Capacity
Carnivore: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
Herbivore: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
Omnivore: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
Human: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Stomach Acidity
Carnivore: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
Herbivore: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
Omnivore: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
Human: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Length of Small Intestine
Carnivore: 3 to 6 times body length
Herbivore: 10 to more than 12 times body length
Omnivore: 4 to 6 times body length
Human: 10 to 11 times body length

In conclusion, our systems are not formulated to eat meat!

Seriously.

3. There is too much suffering in the world to worry about animal cruelty! Let's deal with world hunger first, or war, and then we can tweak the little things. Animal rights are a waste of time when you could be joining the Peace Corps!

Animals raised for their dairy and meat require so much food that, were the entire world to adopt a vegan diet and subsist entirely independent of meat, eggs, and milk, we would produce enough food to feed every single person in the world. Not eating meat means that approximately 90 animals every year don't go into your stomach. That is a lot of meat and, therefore, a lot of grain that could be used for better purposes--feeding the hungry instead of stuffing our faces with food that is bad for us and makes us sick. And which comes to our mouths contaminated with horrific antibiotics, steroids, hormones, pesticides, and waste matter. Ew.

4. I have a farm/know someone who has a farm and our animals are raised humanely and wonderfully before they are slaughtered!

Yeah? They're still slaughtered. What percentage of this nation's meat comes from independent farmers and what percentage comes from factory farms? Our schools and military are supplied with billions of dollars of meat from factory farms. It's cheaper, because the conditions are so revolting. Undercover videos of kosher slaughterhouses revealed the same inhumane treatment as regular slaughterhouses. Proof of animal cruelty is everywhere on the Internet. Do you want to eat a chicken that lived in the same battery cage (with less personal space than a sheet of paper) as a dead, decaying chicken that nobody cleaned? That had disgusting infections? That had bird flu? That was picked out of a drain filled with vomit, feces, and cockroaches? I'm sorry, but I value my health more than factory farms and inhumane slaughterhouses do.

5. If we don't kill these animals, there are so many cows that we'll be overrun with them! They will eat all of our grains and invade our houses and eat crops meant for humans! And then they'll eventually die anyway, and some will be murdered by predators! So why try to get them released from slaughterhouses if they'll just die anyway? They're safe in their farms!

Safe to look forward to death. Would you put yourself through that? Would you be okay with living imprisoned, with no free will whatsoever, with your children torn away from you, to face slaughtered death? Or would you rather live on your own, eking out your living however you want to, but free to look at your own child, stretch your limbs, walk in whichever direction you choose, or actually look at the sun?
And we would not be overrun with cows, pigs, chickens, etc. Why do you think there are so many? They are forced to reproduce! If they weren't forced to, their population would decrease drastically. Don't pretend that we have as many cows to slaughter as we do because they freely reproduce that much. They're injected with hormones, steroids, etc. to make them as fertile as possible. Stop making them reproduce, and the large animal population won't be a problem. Plus, the methane gas production that is drastically cutting into the ozone hole will decrease dramatically.

6. Cows' udders would explode if we didn't milk them. They need to be milked. We're doing cows a favor and benefiting at the same time. It's a symbiotic relationship.
When women have babies and feed them with formula, do their breasts explode? Do they produce milk when they do not have newborns? No! Neither do cows. If we didn't tear calves away from their mothers, they would drink their mothers' milk until they are full-grown, and all the milk would be used as it is supposed to be.

7. Vegans are annoying and militant. They are crazy.

The most vocal vegans are no more annoying or militant than Christians who believe that they must convert others and bring them to Christ. I cannot count the number of times people have knocked on my door, interrupted me, and refused to believe me when I say that I am very confident in my own thoroughly thought-through and researched beliefs and do not want to be converted. There are terrifying fundamentalist Christians who shoot abortion doctors and there are wonderful, peaceful, kind, intelligent people. It's the same with vegans, although to my knowledge no one has committed murder for animal rights. We're just people with our own beliefs. We truly are.

8. If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat? Yummy!

You know this answer to this incredibly idiotic question. You're made out of meat. May I eat you?

9. But it tastes so good! And we can eat it, so why shouldn't we?

We can smoke. We can do drugs. We can sexually abuse children. It feels good, so why shouldn't we?

10. Vegans are stupid. Don't they know that, in their zeal to protect life, they are killing plants? Oh, the poor carrots! Veganism is a waste of time. They should just kill themselves and save the plants and everything else.

One: plants do not have nervous systems and do not feel pain. Two: we are biologically created for plant ingestion. Three: isn't it better to do everything you can for a better world than to give up and just promote world destruction in the form of pollution, cruelty, and murder? Isn't it better to promote understanding and compassion wherever we can than to self-destruct? I think so. Don't you?

Any comments, questions, or criticisms--I'm happy to answer them!

Keeping Men In Love

2009-07-01T20:10:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things in the world is to do sweet things for the boyfriend. Hold off on labeling me a 1950s housewife, because, I promise, I have excellent reasons.

At this point, he and I are still in our idealistic state of the relationship. We've been dating for almost a year: he calls me "Hey, pretty" and takes out my trash; I wear short skirts and wash his dishes. I love this state of things and truly believe that the best relationship will live on as well as it begins. I try to do everything I can to make him think I'm wonderful, because--let's face it!--life is so much better when your significant other adores you! With that in mind, I have a few pointers!

Lingerie is an absolute must. What man doesn't want to know that you look gorgeous under your clothes, and that he's lucky enough to get to peel them off of you? Besides, you get to wear the sexiest underwear possible all day long and feel as luxurious as a million pairs of Manolo Blahniks. Personally, I'm a Victoria's Secret addict, although they do need to work on branching out so that every lady can wear their underclothing. Little ladies like me can take much comfort in the new Victoria's Secret Miracle Bra. It looks rather strange to start with--the cups attach at the center with a rough, zigzagged edge and not so much as a bow--but once that thing is on, oh, boy. I wear mine whenever I want to upgrade from a 34B to a 34C, which is...often. Very often. Last season's rose pink is a stunning color and the fall colors are magical--bronze (as pictured), rosy lavender, plum, a dusty rose, and a clear blue-teal! So much more colorful than last year's dove-gray color spectrum! I just hope the horrid "retro" waist-high lace starlet panties have died. Really. I could not understand that design choice. Unattractive on every size, from Gisele Bündchen to Mother Earth.)

Dress like the knockout you are and that he loves! Your body is wasted if you let it sit around in T-shirts and baggy jersey knit. Take a style tip from French women and realize that style may be expensive, but your life is too good to waste on trash! Make sure every single thing you buy looks gorgeous on you, accentuates your good points, has an eye-catching style twist, and is something you are willing to clean and care for properly, otherwise it's a waste of your time, money, and closet space. I go shopping about four times a year: right after Christmas/early January, June (Victoria's Secret semiannual sale!), the end of summer, and after Thanksgiving. I barely ever buy anything full-price. My favorite sweaters (see picture above) are a silky merino wool; they began as $65 apiece and I bought them for $19.99 during an intense January sale. They're the sexiest sweaters I own, and yet they have an enormous but high cowlneck, huge sleeves that gather into tight, four-inch-high cuffs, and a slim, fitted waist that naturally ends just below my hipbones. They are provocative, sexy, gorgeous, elegant, and yet conservative enough to wear to a small Christmas dinner hosted by my city's mayor. Knockouts know their good points and the styles the love and they rock them! Ladies, you're too good to waste your bodies on trashy or cheap clothing. You've heard this countless times, but I promise you that you will be so much happier if you spring for less of the expensive clothing instead of more of the cheap stuff--in which you don't feel like your full potential anyway.

On that note, know your body. Know what looks good on you and what doesn't. I realize that many, many women love this style, but the ballooning babydoll shirts really do make you look like you're trying to cover up either fat or a pregnancy belly. They don't hide anything unsightly--they accentuate it and make it look worse. Please, please, please drop them! They are hideous, no matter how many celebrities wear them or how many famous designers insist on adding them to the runway or style racks. They are hideous. If you must wear something with an empire waist, at least make sure the bottom of the shirt is at least somewhat fitted. Unless you desperately want to look like a pregnant avocado, in which case--well, fine, go for it. I wouldn't.

Speaking about loving your body...I highly advocate putting a little effort into making your body something he appreciates. I'm not talking about the gym--heavens, no; I wouldn't set foot in one of those boredom chambers!--but about very simple things. Shaved legs and underarms. Moisturized arms, legs, and definitely your face and neck. Make the best of yourself. I don't advocate Botox, but neither do I advocate ruining what you've been blessed with. Lotioning up a little every day now saves your skin later. Brush your teeth or gargle some mouthwash if you wake up first. Manicures and pedicures are too expensive for many of us to do regularly, but at-home cleaning, filing, and a regular coat of clear, strengthening fingernail polish is beyond no-one's reach. I regularly wax my own bikini line because it seems much more attractive to me and I feel more hygienic; this doesn't go for every woman. My senior year college roommate thought waxing or shaving that area was unnatural and was a babylike denial of a beautiful, flourishing woman's body. To each her own. Just trim and keep in check.

For those of you interested in waxing, it lasts longer than shaving and is much, much less painful than laser hair removal (see this month's Marie Claire for testimony: ow!). It does hurt for the first few times, so never, ever, ever do it in a cold room and do pop a Tylenol a half-hour or so beforehand if you want to. I use GiGi salon wax, readily available at Sally's Beauty Supply stores across the country. They sell a very cheap, small wax warmer for $20--not listed online--and I've had success with the Coarse formula. I intend to try the Az ulene wax next, as I don't like pain and "soothing for your sensitive areas" sounds marvellous. I do not recommend any of the Créme waxes. The one I'm stuck with spreads with intense difficulty and I stared at it for about an hour before realizing that this was as liquid as it was going to get. It's like a combination of melted sugar and butter, which is not ideal at all for waxing. On the other hand, it smells nice. :) By the way, I've always paid between $12 and $15 for a can of wax. I've been waxing for two and a half years and had to get a new can of wax three months ago. These are definitely worth the money. And, let me assure you, the smooth feeling and sparser regrowth are fantastic!

On another topic entirely, I tend to make the bed in the mornings so we can tumble into a luxuriously clean room in the evening. Being in a clean room, house, and apartments immediately makes you feel a lot better about yourself, and you also end up looking like you have more money. One half-day of cleaning makes for a huuuuuuuge upgrade in your attitude. So I make the bed. It's an easy way to make the whole bedroom look nice, and it seems to warm his heart.

I recognize that he hates doing dishes, so I do his dishes, even though we haven't been living together yet. The awesome payoff is that will I never, ever have to take out the trash again for as long as I am with him and that he thinks I'm a magically sexy saint. He's a keeper!

I never, ever, ever show that I'm seriously jealous of any girl he talks about, any girl who has a crush on him, or anyone he dated in the past. Ever. (Unless he knows I'm joking.) There is nothing as unattractive as an insecure girlfriend. Swallow the jealousy. It is a sick little emotion that will turn you inside out with hurt feelings and rage, but you have got to control it. If you keep being jealous, he will eventually react, and he'll give you a reason to be. So stop it!

If I know he's busy, I'll stop by his office with something for him to drink and a kiss. Every little bit helps.

The girls who have crushes on the man you're interested in are best dealt with one way: you need to befriend them. Not best-friends--good God, no, not unless they're actually worth your time!--but you have got to be nice to them, because you have got to give them the impression that they don't want to ruin your relationship. I'm not saying that best friends won't steal your man--one of mine did once--but, and this is so important--you cannot show them insecurity. He will notice, as will she, and that will be a clear go-ahead for her. Why would anyone want to date someone who is so insecure in her boyfriend's or husband's affections that she'll cringe or get up in arms the second another woman starts flirting? It's cute maybe once, when he thinks you're protective. After that--stop it!

Try your hardest to make friends with his mother. It always helps to have her on your side. Rarely will mothers take your side against his, but their support is a valuable and loving thing.

Remembering all of this, the most important point ever is to be a fascinating, passionate, motivated person in your own right. He cannot be your entire world. If he is, he will get bored. If you are not an amazing person without him, and if he is your raison d'être, neither of you will be happy in the long run. The miserable, alcoholic, domineering, sex-crazed, pill-popping housewives of 1945-1963 are excellent examples. They denied themselves everything but husband, house, and children, and they suffered miserably. The happiest women were those with careers and even just interests of their own, like painting or writing. They were terribly unhappy. This isn't the kind of relationship you ever, ever, ever want to find yourself in! Good Lord, we have a very short time on this earth, so make the most of it! Do things you really want to do! Kick your dead-end job to the curb (after snagging a better one--unplanned months out of work suck and companies are more likely to hire you if you can show them that other people also think you are worth employing)! Go on vacation to someplace you know you'll love and remember for years! Do lunch with the girls and talk about what you really, really want in life. Vote in your local elections--officials do affect your life once they're in office! Get into yoga or belly-dancing or salsa; they're excellent exercise, and the latter two do wonders for your sex appeal! Yoga, on the other hand, fixes practically everything from stress to physical pain. Expand your horizons all the time. Go to plays, to art gallery openings, to baseball games, and tune in to City Council meetings if the issues promise to be interesting.

Make your own life fun and other people will want to share it!