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L.O.L.
The best of Caturday 2010…
Waldo!
The cats were not impressed by the dog.
I hate Waldo.
Spreadsheets. Synergy. Jargon.
HALP.
The cats turned three and four.
KITTEN PICTURES KITTEN PICTURES KITTEN PICTURES
Haters gonna hate.
We realized Ralph looks just like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon.
Aaaahahaha.
PUT ME DOWN.
AND one and two and three and four AND...
VODKA ME.
You can see every Caturday ever here.
Just try it.
Taste and texture.
These are the two most common complaints I hear regarding tofu aversion. More specifically, “It tastes like nothing” and “It feels like a mushy spongey deathblob.”
Touche. I see your valid complaints and raise you one airtight, logical retaliation.
The first thing I tell people when they tell me they don’t like the taste of tofu is that it really has no taste. At all. Much like other tasteless proteins such as chicken, turkey and egg whites, tofu will take on the taste of whatever seasonings you use.
I know what you’re thinking… “NO. I like chicken. Just chicken.” And I hope you’ve repented for that lie you just told because… you are a liar. You do not like chicken. You like salt and fat and spice and whatever else is on it. I promise you this.
So if you don’t like the taste of tofu, the blame, I’m afraid, falls on you, for you have failed to properly prepare it. It’s gonna need some salt, some fat and some flavor either in the form of spices and herbs (fresh or dried) or simply by way of prepared sauce such as a salad dressing or teriyaki sauce. You know. The same shit you’d put on chicken.
As for texture, here’s the thing… Tofu in its “raw” form a mushy blob. There is no way around it. Some weirdos (like myself) don’t mind this and will eat cold, mushy, wet, blobby tofu right out of the container. If this is not your thing, there are several modes of preparation that can make it less blobby:
OR… You can embrace tofu’s funky texture and feature it rather than fight it.
Examples:
Tah dah. There you have it. Tofu is not so bad.
Fig, pear, peanut butter.
New Year’s Eve is a lot like Valentine’s Day. It’s one of those holidays where bitter single people say they hate it, couples go out and fight and happy single people get obliterated and make out with strangers. I would consider myself a happy single person this year.
Watch out, world.
Since all my out of town friends bailed on our big NYE reunion in Charlotte (jerks) and none of my Charlotte friends want to do anything with me (jerks), my friend Adrian is going to visit and do stupid things with me (and bring me a croissant). It’ll be great.
If I’m feeling feisty, I will wear this:
Yep yep yep
And if I’m not, I will be in sweatpants with a bottle of champagne in each hand. Only time will tell…
If you have big plans to drink champagne by the bottleful (with a straw) this Saturday night, then we have much in common, you and I. We will also likely share in the cold, cruel embrace of a brutal hangover. Should you find yourself in the fetal position trying to figure out how to get Harris Teeter to deliver Hot Pockets on Sunday morning, perhaps try this quick breakfast (or lunch, depending on when you wake up) instead…
Easy.
Cure what ails ya.
| Fig Pear Skillet Toast |
You could also top this with maple syrup or honey, but I think the natural sweetness warmed fruit is enough. Whatever floats your boat, you drunkard.
Do not drunk text.
You are (a) beautiful (sandwich).
“It’s easy to convince yourself it’s too cold to go outside. But really, once you get out there and build up some heat, it feels right nice,” said my 88-year-old Granddaddy Wewo, leaf blower in hand.
We were outside clearing up the front yard under the direction of Grandmother Hedy who, it bears mentioning, was laid up in the hospital not one week prior. “I’d climb up on the roof myself if the neighbors wouldn’t make such a fuss,” she said. Despite a lifetime of US citizenship, the German native still has the slightest accent, most noticeable when she says things like “Val-mart.”
Get it, girl.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I come from a long line of feisty go-getters. Stubborn over-achievers might be a better way to describe it, depending on who you’re asking. (If you ask any of my [two] exes, they will refer you to the latter definition.)
Awesome.
Mammy and Wewo
I was recently out for a beer with some friends when one said, “Katie, when I first met you I thought you were so sweet and then…”
“And then you got to know me?”
“Well. I mean… No. You’re just kind of feisty.”
Damn right. It’s in the blood.
Other eccentricities I blame on my gene pool include:
Speaking of accumulating stray animals… This is happening:
Not my cat! Not my cat! Abort! Abort!
I’ve been feeding this stray cat (who I have named Mochi) since I moved in in June. Now it’s cold out and I can’t stand that Moch-Moch is out there in the freezing temperatures so I made him a box. Stick a fork in me. I’m done. There is no hope for me. Call off the suitors and order me a slanket (and maybe one of these). My future is set in stone.
ANYWAY. The point of this rant is that I took Wewo’s advice and got my ass bundled up and out on my bike this afternoon after a lovely lunch of tofu sandwiches with Mitch-Mitch, who is back from Christmas in Florida with her family.
Litterbox in the closet. You know it.
I pedaled around town and eventually spent the afternoon holed up with coffee and yoga lit…
AH!
Teacher training starts next week and I might be simultaneously very, very ready and very, very uncertain of what I’ve gotten myself into.
But (wouldn’t you know it?) today’s readings in Yoga Anatomy had a little answer for me…
“In spite of how it feels when you inhale, you are not pulling air into the body. On the contrary, air is pushed into the body by atmospheric pressure that always surrounds you. The actual force that gets air into the lungs is outside of the body. The energy you expend in breathing produces a shape change that lowers the pressure in your chest cavity and permits the air to be pushed into the body by the weight of the planet’s atmosphere.”
Wait. What?
Think about it this way… You know how people always say love finds you when you least expect it? Or a job offer comes when you stop looking? I think a lot of things in life are that way. I think that maybe everything we need always surrounds us. We need only expend a little energy readying ourselves and opening ourselves up to possibility in order to permit the weight of opportunity to be pushed into our lives.
So really there’s no sense in me fretting over this experience or trying to force it into something I want it to be or think it should be. I’ve already committed. I produced a slight change in shape–in the shape of my schedule and my finances and my mental stability–to permit this into my life. Now all I have to do is breathe.
Chestnuts!
… in a 400-degree oven.
I know I said I wouldn’t tolerate anymore holiday bullshit around these parts, but when I spotted Italian chestnuts at the grocery store yesterday, I couldn’t resist.
Roast me.
Aside from the song, I knew little of chestnuts prior to my trip to Europe in 2006. While there, I gallivanted about:
Munich
Vienna
Prague
Berlin
Amsterdam
Dublin
London
Apparently wearing the exact same thing every single day and caring naught about this supposed fashion violation. I had bigger concerns like not missing flights and not getting robbed and not running out of money and drinking local beers in every city.
I know a lot of people like to flit about Europe in the summer, but having done it in December I must say I recommend aiming for a similar itinerary. That continent does Christmas right–from Germany’s Christmas markets to Vienna’s light displays, the whole thing just felt so very… authentic?
Tio Pepe!
Vienna's lights. Amazing.
Maybe it’s just the old-world allure or the haughty satisfaction one gets saying, “Well when I was in… [insert European country here].” but it would appear from afar that everything is better overseas. Including the holidays.
So along with this authentic European Christmas spirit came the chestnut vendors, setting up shop with their elaborate roasting carts along the winding cobblestone streets in each city.
Nuggets.
I ate a whole lot of them. A whole lot. At first it was for the novelty of it, but eventually the warm, nutty, slightly sweet, starchy nuggets became something I craved on a cold night wandering the streets into the wee hours of the morning.
In preparing them at home, I’ve found that they never taste quite as good as they did that December. Isn’t that always the case? They’re a little harder to open, a little dryer, a little less thrilling. Which, truth be told, is a bit how I feel these days. A little closed off, a little too serious, a little boring.
At the time, I remember wondering when my European trip was going to change my life. I kept waiting and waiting to get that feeling that it was the most significant thing I’d ever done. After all, that’s how most people (and movies and books) describe such an adventure. But it never came. In the end, it was just a really good time while it lasted and then it was over.
Looking at it now from this slightly more adult angle, I guess it did have a profound impact on how I operate. Maybe it’s just that the trip itself is less powerful as an isolated event than it is when comparing it to my current state of affairs. It took time and distance to see what it really meant. And that, I think, probably applies to most life events.
| Roasted Chestnuts |
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Hello, vegetables.
I swear if I hear one more Christmas song I will murder a kitten. Strong words, I know, but they are for a strong emotion. I truly cannot handle one more carol or silver bell or bow or candy cane or any such nonsense. I think it’s the whole working at the mall thing that’s got me on edge this year.
You know what this means? No way in hell I’m finishing the rest of those 12 Days of Cookies. Sorry, Charlie. Maybe next year.
Nope. No baking of Christmas cookies will occur today. Today I am off with zero work or family or friend obligations. So far I have made great use of my time by doing 2.5 hours of yoga, eating lots of vegetables and sitting around in my pajamas.
WHATEVER.
One upside of Jesus’ birthday is the addition of family to my otherwise family-less routine. Though they drove me straight to the bottle (and I drove myself thousands of miles up and down I-77 to see them and then return to work) this past week, I wouldn’t have had things any other way.
Emotions were high this holiday season. My brother hosted for the first time (and decided to add a new puppy to the mix). My mom’s mom was unexpectedly hospitalized, sending her down here a full week early. My sister had to cancel her post-Christmas trip to Europe for reasons I will not explain and was in quite a state. My dad has some kind of something going on at work. And I am me. Enough said. It was like a perfect shitstorm of tension ready to snap at any minute. Were Christmas 2011 a guitar string, it would’ve been pulled taut enough to strum.
Luckily, we are a rather jolly bunch and managed to pull through with only minor (emotional) injuries. To get an idea of where I mesh in this bunch, this is what Christmas dinner looked like:
Meat Station
Yep. Yep yep yep. Because everyone needs steak and ground beef and cocktail wienies on one plate.
It’s safe to say I’m the adopted one. And I’d believe it, too, if I didn’t work just like my dad, laugh just like my mom, drink just like my brother and look just like my sister (at the right angle). Nope, I’m afraid I’m all in with this family and my genetic makeup was simply a misfire. I’m glad they keep me around anyway, what with all my liberal leanings and “weird food” and new age bullshit, because I’d be lost without them. Plus, I like to think it builds character.
Vegan salted caramel blondies
One of my goals for this year was to actively enter cooking/baking contests. Since I like to do things at the last possible second, I decided today to enter my (in)famous I Hope You Die/Salted Caramel Blondies in Saveur’s Home Cook Cookie Challenge. Voting ends, uh… tomorrow.
The back story on these bad boys is one part culinary acumen, two parts cuh-raaaaaaazypants and a dash of karmic luck. Mental instability breeds mad baking skill in my house, and I like to think a nice healthy dose of rage and heartbreak can produce impressive (albeit unexpected) results. These blondies were one such pleasant surprise.
I decided to enter the Saveur contest here in the 11th hour because the current leader has just under 300 votes. Surely we can trump that. Also the prize is a $500 Sur la Table gift card and momma needs a new oven mitt.
SO… if you’d be so kind… head over to Saveur and vote now, please. You don’t have to register or sign in or do anything (other than accurately type out the CAPTCHA code, which, let’s be honest, is sometimes kind of challenging).
I gotta say, I like the look of my recipe under the Saveur masthead.
Ooooooh
Let’s make dreams come true…
VOTE FOR MY COOKIES HERE, Y’ALL. Thanks!
PS – Please believe I’ll have a sweetass thank you giveaway if I win.
Monkey bread
“I NEED A PLUNGER.”
I woke up on my brother’s couch, dog barking and dad yelling. A very merry Christmas, indeed.
Things started off traditionally enough–monkey bread, grapefruit and the Alabama Christmas CD–and then… shit just got weird.
Looks innocent enough...
Aw, Scout.
This is the funniest Christmas of my life. The youngest one here is 24 years old and still we have piles and piles of ridiculous toys. So far, the following hilarious things have happened…
Scout (the new puppy) got me alcohol.
Thank you?
This fish is swimming around the house.
HAHAHA
My sister got me a Weaz yoga mat.
AAAAHAHAHAHAHA.
Grandmother and Granddaddy sent dad an empty picture frame. No glass or anything.
Hahaha?
Dad’s entire stocking was full of nothing but a sack of grits.
Look at this face.
Ralph and Weaz got me this.
Obviously.
I no longer have to scrape my windshield with a Trader Joe’s gift card.
Ice scraper glove. Brilliant.
I cannot even handle it.
I’m gonna go practice on my Weaz mat and torment poor Scout with the clownfish…
Feliz Navidad.
If my hair has taught me one thing, it’s that if you try to fight it, it will fight back. I’ve found that Christmas is this way, as well. So I’m applying everything I know about curly hair care to make this damn holiday bounce and shine like a frigging show horse’s mane. Mostly this involves doing absolutely nothing. Just as I do not brush or style or cut or sometimes even wash my hair, I am not planning or organizing or expecting anything out of this holiday. It’s working.
This has been hands down the least traditional Christmas of my life and I kind of love it. Ever since I decided to not care about anything that’s happening ever, things got pretty great. It’s my first Christmas away from my childhood hometown. I haven’t been to yoga in days. I still don’t have all my presents (it’s 10pm Christmas Eve). And I am drunk.
Yup.
Also, for starters I spent Christmas Eve Eve eating Mexican food and cupcakes.
Ole?
Cuuuuupcakes.
Then I spent Christmas Eve at the mall stress eating candy corn.
Whatever, Christmas.
Leave it to Mitch to bring candy corn to the store on Christmas Eve.
And then tonight my family ate Christmas Eve dinner in a restaurant (in 26 years, this has never happened) and shopped for last-minute supplies at Target at 9pm.
Really?
But at least some things never change. My brother got a dog so we’ll have a black lab to ogle on Christmas morning.
Scout!
Dad just set up the luminaries (“STOP AT TARGET! I NEED PAPER BAGS AND KITTY LITTER!”) and we’re starting our annual viewing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
“And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.”
Happy holidays from Ralph.
A very merry Catmas eve to you all. The stockings are hung by the litterbox with care and the cats have been anxiously awaiting Santa’s arrival because they know they’ve been really terrible this year and aren’t so sure he’s coming…
Is he here yet? Is he here yet? Is he here yet?
I mean, he totally knows when you’ve been bad or good and considering the cats have done nothing but drink and be hungover all year, I’d say things aren’t looking so promising on the present front.
It's not alcoholism if you pour it in a glass.
HOTPOCKET ME.
I suppose only time will tell. Well. Time and me. I’ll tell you. They’re getting a new scratching post, a can of food, treats and a new damn water fountain because I’m sick of them drinking out of the cup on my bedside table. Weaz might get a wheel of cheese.
Me? I get cats.
I wrapped myself. There's a poop in the litterbox.
Check ya later. I’m off to work…
Vegetables.
Last night I decided to leave my brother’s house at midnight to trek back home so I wouldn’t have to fight rush hour traffic on my way to work this morning. I considered this an excellent idea until I hit standstill traffic not two exits from his house. I still have no idea what happened but I sat there in park for a good bit plotting out how I could maneuver myself into the fetal position in the driver’s seat when suddenly everything just started moving again.
This is one of countless irrational things I’ve done in the last 72 hours. Watching the news this morning, I was reminded of some of my irrational fears, as well…
AH!
The list goes on and on.
I’m off to work. Take pity on my pant-folding soul this holiday season. Do the retail employees of the world a huge favor and be nice to us. While you’re giving us attitude and destroying our perfectly folded piles and shopping for your families, we wish we could be with ours.
So many cookies.
Here’s the thing… I am crazy.
I like to think I’m pretty laid back and easygoing but really I am type A to a fault and maybe a little bit OCD. I need everything in my life in order and on a schedule or I go completely batshit crazy. If I make a plan (and I always make a plan) for things to go one way and they go another, I shut down. This is perhaps how I end up losing it so frequently. My brother says I manufacture stress, just pull it out of thin air. This is true. My sister says I’m dramatic like Kim Kardashian. (My ass is too small for this to be true.) I think I just like to know what’s going on and when. Also I am controlling.
Can you tell the holidays are going well?
The thing about my family is that they refuse to tell me what’s going on when. When I asked my dad for a holiday itinerary he said, “You know me better than that.”
So here I am buzzing around like a lunatic trying to figure out how to spend time with my family but still (selfishly) do everything I want to do on a normal day off. These two plans are not meshing well.
Anyway, I had decided before this holiday season got under way that I would be the calm one, the positive one, the happy one. Instead I’ve been the craaaaaazy one.
Cookies cookies cookies
So. Here we go. I will calm my ass down and just go with the flow like I set out to do from the beginning so my family doesn’t try to have me committed.
Mitch said she’d get me a hot pink straight jacket.
I hope there are cookies in the psych ward…
These cookies come from Angela at Oh She Glows except I used sweet potato puree instead of pumpkin. Of course I did.
Yeah.
Day 1: Gingerbread cookies
Day 2: Mint chocolate-dipped shortbread
Day 3: Toasted coconut biscotti
Day 4: 11th hour PB apple cookies
Day 5: Apple sugar cookies
Day 6: Lemon blueberry cookies
Vegan lemon blueberry cookies
I realize it’s the opposite of Christmas comfort food but… the lemon-blueberry taste combo just never gets old. (You may recall I made blueberry lemon cupcakes for my birthday back in the summer.)
Oh summer, how I miss you and your heat and lack of holidays and abundance of free time…
Happy birthday to me.
That was the week of my breakup and I was a hotass mess. I tend to create the very best baked goods at such moments. It’s kind of like how the physical stress of yoga drives you into this state of mental clarity. The mental stress of life in general seems to drive me into a state of culinary clarity. I can see it now…
How One Girl Lost Her Mind and Found Herself in the Kitchen: The Katie Levans Story
You’d all read it, right? I suppose you already are… Done. Find me an agent.
WHAT am I talking about?
Cookies.
So lemon-blueberry anything is the shit. Period. (Mitch says “period” almost any time she speaks a sentence with a period at the end. She’s like a telegram.) So when I decided to make lemon cookies as part of the 12 Days and I also had freeze-dried blueberries on hand, I knew exactly how that story would end.
Yes, please.
I used a basic vegan lemon sugar cookie recipe and added my blueberries. A note about that damn recipe: I don’t know who decided to call for 1/3 CUP lemon zest, but it is not possible to get that much. I used as much was available from the four lemons I used to get the required 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. It would take approximately one million lemons to make 1/3 cup lemon zest, give or take.
I have big plans to make a lemon cream cheese frosting and turn these babies into little sandwiches. No I will not save you any.
Don’t EVEN steal my book idea, you jerks. I’ll write the proposal. One day. Maybe. In my “free” time. When I’m not busy self medicating with cookies.
Day 1: Gingerbread cookies
Day 2: Mint chocolate-dipped shortbread
Day 3: Toasted coconut biscotti
Day 4: 11th hour PB apple cookies
Day 5: Apple sugar cookies
Vegan apple sugar cookies
Since I don’t have a baby or even a baby bump (thank god), I feel the need to update you guys on the status of my boots with the fur (with the fur)…
Cost: $30
Days worn since purchase: all of them
Days paired with Apple Bottom jeans: none of them
Manly professionals I look like while wearing them: construction worker, lumberjack, rapper
Number of handstands done in them: at least 20
Number of dogs walked in them: three
Number of compliments received while wearing them: countless.
Distance jaws drop when complimenters hear they came form Forever 21: to the floor
In honor of my boots, Apple Bottom jeans and a rare successful shopping purchase, I made these apple sugar cookies.
Cuties
I used Katie’s classic healthy sugar cookie recipe, but I added:
Simply follow Katie’s recipe as is but stir spices into the dry mix. I rolled out my dough and cut circles with a drinking glass (who needs cookie cutters?) and then pressed apple rings filled with brown sugar on top.
Now turn around and give that big booty a slap.
Day 1: Gingerbread cookies
Day 2: Mint chocolate-dipped shortbread
Day 3: Toasted coconut biscotti
Day 4: 11th hour PB apple cookies
Cookie cookie cookie
If you’re thinking, “Ain’t no way Katie’s gonna bake those 12 days of cookies…” then you know absolutely nothing about my stress baking habit.
Yesterday I:
All I know is, “it’s Christmas and we’re all in misery.”
I'm gonna start smoking. (No I'm not.)
So please believe I got up this morning and baked the shit out of some cookies. Not 90 minutes after I awoke, this had happened…
Yep.
Apple cookies, blueberry lemon cookies and banana bread cookies comin’ at ya…
But first I’m gonna go do yoga for, like, three hours. WHATEVER.
Stop. Do not inhale me.
Remember back in October when I was going to stop inhaling my food without chewing?
No? It went something like this…
“For the most part, I’m still eating the foods that I know are right for my body, but I know I’m not eating them in a way that honors the immensity of even having access to food at all. Eating is a big deal. Having food is a big deal… Food should be celebrated. I think a lot of the degradation of my eating habits was going from having someone to cook for… and cook with… and eat with every single night, to… living alone without a kitchen table. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
I’ve mentioned before in passing that I am an emotional binge eater. I first identified it in college but it started way back in childhood. I remember standing in a dark kitchen after dinner while the rest of my family watched TV methodically moving hand to mouth, hand to mouth, hand to mouth shuttling Teddy Grahams or pretzels or whatever I could find straight into my face. It is always triggered by stress for me.
Technically, binge eating is classified as an eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS), as in: an eating disorder that is not anorexia nervosa or bulimia. More specifically, binge eating involves recurrent episodes of overeating in the absence of inappropriate compensatory behaviors. This means you binge on an outrageous amount of food (usually eaten rapidly, alone and at night) and do not follow up with self-induced vomiting, over-exercising or intentional starvation.
Quinoa, white beans, spinach, brussels
So you’re probably thinking, “Uh. Everyone binge eats.” Absolutely. Most people do. It is the most common “eating disorder” in the United States. But I’m not talking eating a burrito with your friends after a night of drinking. There is a marked feeling of complete loss of control followed by shame and guilt.
SO… Personally, I’ve identified that I will binge when:
I got my binge episodes under wraps a few years ago when I started officially studying nutrition but in the last four months of madness have noticed myself moving back down that path. (It probably comes as no surprise that dietitians have some of the highest rates of eating disorders when compared to other professions.) It’s funny to be exhibiting behaviors for something you’re studying in class, but it also makes it easy to squash them.
How Can I Stop Binge Eating?
More important than tricking yourself into stopping a binge habit is to identify what is really triggering it. Odds are it has nothing to do with food at all. Keeping a journal of when you binge, what you eat, how you feel when you start and how you feel afterwards (especially the next morning) is a good way to pinpoint what is setting you off.
So… the reason I’m revisiting my post on intentional eating is that I find it closely linked to my successful control of binge eating. If I rush through my meals during the day and don’t appreciate the food I’m so lucky to have, I’ve found that I am more likely to lose control late at night. In an effort to prevent this before it becomes a problem, I’m making sure that I am intentional about what I eat and when. This means that I sit down at a table, eat mindfully, drink water and express gratitude for what’s in front of me. I think everyone should do this regardless of your relationship with food.
There are a whole slew of disordered eating patterns that are not anorexia or bulimia that I don’t think people even identify as being abnormal, such as exercising to compensate for a large meal, constantly being on a diet, an obsession with only eating “clean,” “pure” foods and, of course, binge eating. It’s totally common to exhibit these behaviors and most are easily remedied if only you are able to identify the problem. Hopefully this post will shed some light for people who don’t even recognize what they’re doing.
Smoothie bowl w/PB, oats and soymilk creamer
I forgot to make cookies yesterday.
This is a lie. I consciously chose not to make cookies yesterday because I wanted to go out with my friends instead.
Right?
So. School ended. I have “free” time, but really I’m working and freelancing writing and pretty much haven’t really had a day off yet. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to get into the following shenanigans I’ve been since Wednesday:
Dream It, Do It bar crawl
All mine.
Dogsitting
80s cover band at Amos' South End
Mitch defended her thesis on Wednesday (rockstar) so that night we went on a bar crawl to celebrate. I made us matching DREAM IT DO IT tshirts because every day during our semester from hell we’d be running around in a frenzy in the morning and she’d yell on her way out the door, “Katie, if you can dream it, you can do it.” We did it.
That night I also turned in my second piece for Charlotte Magazine and on Thursday I filmed my second segment for A Healthier Charlotte. Dream it, done.
Coming to a food channel near you hopefully one day maybe.
Now I’m late for work again because I am blogging. The Internet will be just fine without me, but I love it so much.
(Speaking of… Do you have the new Facebook timeline yet? It’s awesome.)
"My body just needs yoga," says Weaz.
Happy third-to-last Caturday of 2011, beefaronis.
I trust you are all diligently making your Christmas lists and checking them twice by this stage in the holiday game. Not us. Nope, the cats and I have yet to purchase or request a single Christmas gift. Nothing like a little last-minute frenzy to get us in the holiday spirit.
Know why we haven’t done anything Christmas-y? Because we hate Christmas. Because we’re too busy. Because we’re on the Internet all the damn time.
Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.
This blog’s not gonna run itself, you know?
We decided that all we really want for Christmas is money, which is not Christmas-y at all. But seriously. Seriously… it’s all we need. I told my mom she could present it to us in a dramatic Publisher’s Clearinghouse-esque ceremony with balloons and a giant check if she must.
If I get gifts that are not money, please believe I will sell them for money so that Ralph and Weaz and I don’t end up on the streets in January.
Hobo Ralph
You better believe it.
This is in the bathroom. (Lighting.)
Bet you thought I didn’t have a cookie for today, didn’t you? I hope you bet a lot of money because I got billz to pay, ya heard?
Of course I have a cookie for today. It was just cranked out in the last 30 minutes of the day because I was too busy working and hanging out with my mom and dogsitting these nuggets:
Not cats.
I’d love to take the time to rant on about hilarious entertaining things but I’m really busy watching TV and loading the dishwasher and microwaving things just for fun and fully extending my arms in the shower without hitting a wall. It’s a beautiful thing.
This is a play on traditional peanut butter chocolate no-bake cookies that my mom used to make all the time when I was little…
| 11th Hour PB Apple Cookies |
And with that, I’m going to watch TV until my eyes bleed. If you would like me to watch your pets (and you have cable, internet, a shower that doesn’t suck, a washer/dryer and a well-equipped kitchen), you just let me know… I’ll pay you.
Day 1: Gingerbread cookies
Day 2: Mint chocolate-dipped shortbread
Day 3: Toasted coconut biscotti
Lupie's vegetarian chili
At surface level, Charlotte is a little lame on the vegetarian food front. You can count our meat-free restaurants on one hand, after all. Luckily, vegetarian restaurants aren’t the only places that can serve vegetarian food (imagine that), and a number of Queen City eateries offer up traditionally meat-centric entrees that are surprisingly devoid of dead animals.
In fact, I just wrote a blurb for Charlotte Magazine on three surprising vegetarian dishes served at non-vegetarian restaurants. I won’t give away all my goods (it’ll be in the February issue) but… I’ll tell you I ate lunch yesterday at Lupie’s Cafe.
Questionable.
This place is in my hood (keyword: hood) and I’ve been wanting to drop in since June but I couldn’t decide if I’d get a great meal or get shot. So… I took a man with me. Good thing, too, because I did get accosted by a drunk (it was 3 o’clock on a Wednesday) gay hairstylist by the name of Arthur who insisted on cutting my hair. Don’t worry, I totally got his digits.
Anyway, word on the street is the vegetarian chili at Lupie’s is kind of a big deal, and since it’s only one of two vegetarian items on the menu, I had a pretty easy decision to make. I was a little nervous about the five (count ‘em !!!!!) exclamation points following the word “HOT” on the menu, but I was on a mission so I threw caution to the wind and went with it.
Verdict? I like it. It’s like… legit chili. The vegetarian chili I make at home is all peppers and corn and, you know, vegetables. But this is all soy crumbles and beans served with cheese and raw onions. I’m pretty sure you could feed it to a carnivore and they would be none the wiser.
Also, not so spicy. Trust me, I’m weak.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make an appointment to get my hair did by my new friend Arthur.
Vegan spiced biscotti with coconut glaze & toasted coconut
Have you had coffee yet today? (Yes, obviously.) Good. Get some more.
You’re gonna need it to soften up this biscotti because if you try to eat it on its own you will shatter a tooth. Promise.
I know I’m making these sound really unappealing but I’m pretty sure the whole point of biscotti is that it’s purposely too hard to eat as a cookie, which is why it pairs perfectly with a hot cup of coffee for dunking. (I almost said “hot cup of joe” and now I want to hit myself.)
If, for some reason, you do not have coffee readily available (where are you that this is even possible?), you can use the biscotti as a self defense weapon. A weapon of minimal destruction, if you will. I don’t think you could kill anyone with it (a ninja could, though… a ninja would make nunchucks out of them) but you could cause some significant swelling and bruising. I’m just saying.
Little weapons.
ANYWAY. I wish I could tell you how I made these but it was one of those three-hour ordeals with lots of substitutions and slip ups and eyeballing and all that good stuff. So I owe you one coconut biscotti recipe. I’ll work on that.
In the meantime, I used this recipe as a starting point and launched into a cloud of frenzy and flour from there. So, unfortunately, there is no way for me to possibly recap it.
I owe you one biscotti recipe.
If you’d like to try one, though, you can come on over any time between now and when I die because I’m pretty sure the biscotti won’t get any staler than it is this very moment. Just give me a heads up when you’re on your way over so I can let my ninja know I need them back.
Day 1: Gingerbread cookies
My current favorite breakfast
Let me clarify: I hate (most) breakfast foods. Breakfast itself–the act of breaking the fast–I love/need/crave/etc.
When people invite me to breakfast (I say this like I get lots of breakfast invites; I do not), I try to convince them to push it back to the brunching hour so I can be assured the restaurant will be serving the lunch menu by the time we arrive.
Can you blame me? I mean, consider the cast of breakfast characters…
Despite hating breakfast foods, I’m not the kind of person who can run on coffee alone. Speaking of… what is wrong with you people? Do you not wake up every day feeling as if you ran three days ago and haven’t eaten anything since? I certainly do.
So what do I like for breakfast? My morning meal must fit the following criteria:
This yogurt oat bowl thing.
Vegan mint chocolate dipped shortbread
This is for your own good, guys.
Buried under emails and magazine covers and infomercials telling you to:
“Melt Fat INSTANTLY!”
“Avoid Winter Weight Gain!”
“Don’t Look Like Santa this Holiday Season!”
Don’t you kind of just want someone to tell you to eat a cookie? Let me be that person…
Look, it’s not as if I’m over here laying on the couch with a tray balanced precariously on a newly formed potbelly eating cookies a dozen at a time. But I’m also not skipping meals and doubling up workouts to build up a cookie calorie allowance. That is crazy talk.
I’m eating like I always do, working out like I always do and eating cookies when I damn well please. I’m studying to be a dietitian, yes. I consider the consumption of holiday cookies to be an integral part of a diet that is both healthy and sane. And delicious.
Hello, lovelies.
For these cookies, I used a recipe from Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen, which, interestingly enough, uses oil instead of butter. Traditional shortbread is one part sugar, two parts butter and three parts oat flour. I wish I’d known that going into this because there are no oats to be found in my shortbread. Nevertheless, these mild, buttery, crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth delights serve as a perfect vessel for shuttling mint chocolate straight to your face.
Dunk us in coffee! Dunk us in coffee!
Of course I neglected to measure anything when I made my mint chocolate dip. It went something like:
Heat chocolate chips and peppermint extract over a double boiler. As the chips start to melt, add milk 1 tablespoon at a time until a desired smooth consistency is achieved. Dip cookies in. Leave to set in fridge (or eat immediately, no one’s looking).
Now. If you’ll excuse me, my four outdoor strays and two indoor idiots are attempting to host a battle to the death… on opposite sides of the window…
Day 1: Gingerbread cookies
Vegan gingerbread cookies. Yes yes, y'all.
In honor of the holiday season and the 12 pounds I usually gain eating all the cookies I want… I’m going to eat all the cookies I want. Just in case you would also like to eat all the cookies you want, I’ll be presenting 12 Days of (Vegan) Cookies for your food gawking pleasure from now until Christmas Eve.
Why no cookies on Christmas day? Because Jesus hates cookies. He told me so. Plus, Santa eats them all the night before. Duh. Jerk.
SO. Let’s kick things off with an oldie but goodie that you probably don’t even realize is delicious…
Gingerbread cookies.
Who likes gingerbread cookies? No one. Seriously. I’m not talking gingerbread, here. I’m talking gingerbread cookies. Big difference. Gingerbread is what you enjoy slathered in frosting while you whisper sweet nothings to your Starbucks peppermint mocha latte (extra hot, ya jerks). Gingerbread cookies, on the other hand, rank right up there with fruitcake for most people. I mean, people bake gingerbread cookies and then shellac them and hang them on their Christmas tree for decades. No? Just our family? Ok then.
Not these cookies, though. No, sirs and madams. These cookies are the shit. Trust me. Mitch and I just ate four of them.
Do not shellac us!
As I tend to do around Christmas cookie time, I defaulted to Martha for this recipe and then veganized it for my dear cow- and chicken-loving coworkers.
Tater’s Substitutions for Martha’s Giant Gingerbread Cookies:
They came out perfectly. This is why I bake vegan. Because, yes, you can get great results with minimal substitutions and, no, eggs are not that important. Plus, I like for everyone to be able to eat my goods. If I were surrounded by Celiacs, I’d bake gluten-free, too. I just hate that feeling of not being able to eat something I’m offered (because it has meat in it) so I try to avoid putting others in that situation when I’m baking for a big group.
So when people ask, “Why bake vegan if you’re not vegan?” My response is: “Why not?”
I hope my coworkers are ready to eat some damn cookies.
Day one... check.
Let food be thy medicine.
Welcome to my first day “off” of the holiday season. It was filled with bad choices and butter. Allow me to explain…
5am – Wake up. Ignore sore throat and go to Hilliard Studio with nine other lulus anyway. (We roll deep.) Have ass beaten into the ground. Proceed to team breakfast at Caribou and team meeting at the store. We’re a team, you see.
9am – Return home. Fret about what to do with all this free time… Immediately start cleaning the house.
11am – First bad decision: Go to the mall.
11:30am – Second bad decision: Enter Forever 21. You are 26 years old. Get over it.
2pm – Walk out of Forever 21 with 13 items. NOT including…
This. But I wanted it.
But definitely including THESE:
Boots with the fur. (With the fur.)
3pm – Commence baking frenzy.
Gingerbread cookies and shortbread.
6pm – Try on Forever 21 goods for Ashley and receive prompt feedback that just about everything needs to go back. Sigh. I’m keeping the boots.
Of course I spent my free day:
Can’t win ‘em all, folks.
One of my very best decisions of the day, however, was kicking off my 12 Days of Cookies feature to run from now until Christmas Eve. Gingerbread cookies and mint chocolate-dipped shortbread cookies comin’ at ya… You’re welcome.
I’m keeping the boots. Kiss my ass.
Photo: Wanda Koch
Money and time.
Those are the excuses I give when asked why I won’t commit to yoga teacher training.
I was actually enrolled in a program two years ago. But then I uprooted my life and moved. I thought I’d just commute back to do it, but then I went back to school and got really busy. I found a new studio and a better program here and thought I’d do that instead, but then I blew through my life savings to pay for school. So I thought more jobs might make things better, but then everything just got worse and I got crazier and my whole life fell apart and now I’m even busier trying to pick the pieces (and myself) up off the floor. And the whole time I’m thinking maybe next year… maybe next year… maybe next year.
So last week when I tossed my “money and time” excuse at one of my teachers, without hesitating she shot back with: “That will always be your excuse. What else you got?”
To be perfectly honest… I got nothin’. I’ve got a broken heart that will not heal. I’ve got regrets about the past and a paralyzing fear of the future. I’ve got an empty bank account and a surplus of neurotic cats. I’ve got a whole lot of anxiety and, consequently, a newly acquired wine habit. I’ve got an impossible schedule, unrelenting guilt and incapacitating doubt.
And all of that, I think, makes this the perfect time to throw myself into something that makes me feel so challenged and so powerful and so vulnerable and so alive as yoga.
So it’s on. It is so on.
Oh you got a fire and it’s burning in the rain
Hoped that it went out but it’s burning just the same
And you don’t look back, not for anything.
You can read my yoga rants from over the years in my yoga archive. There will be plenty more where that came from… Training starts January 6. Mitch is doing it, too. Of course.
Whatever, Shamrock Shake.
What do Shamrock Shakes even taste like? Mint? Who knows.
Hang on. Let me Google that for you…
Yes, mint.
Here’s a thought… How about a mint chocolate shake that’s green from spinach, not dye and that comes around more than once a year? Done and done.
Mint chocolate green smoothie
I made this using my standard green smoothie recipe minus nut butter and cinnamon and plus 1 capful of peppermint extract.
Refreshing and not from McDonald’s. Win win.
Hers and hers coffee and green smoothies
Mitch and I are officially in a committed relationship. Since we live together, work together and enjoy each other’s company when drunk (and drink frequently), we spend an outrageous amount of time together. We decided to go ahead and legitimize it with a Facebook relationship status. It had to happen.
I mean, this is how the weekend has gone…
Friday 9pm: Mitch returns from Florida. We immediately go to the bar to celebrate the Beards BeCAUSE finale… I won MVG (Most Valuable Grower).
And I didn't even grow a beard.
Friday 1am: Swear up and down that we are going to yoga at 7:30 in the morning.
Saturday 8:30am: I stumble into Mitch’s room to announce we’ve missed our class. “Let’s walk to Starbucks!” she exclaims with far too much enthusiasm. Braless but bundled, we wander over to our friendly neighborhood Starbucks.
Saturday 9:45am: Hyped up on caffeine and a cold-weather walk, we dive straight into a living room workout. Yep. Side by side. In pajamas. Doing Physique 57.
Saturday 10:15am: “Oh shit! We have to be at work in 45 minutes!” Commence mad dash to shower, dress, pack lunches and make smoothies.
Saturday 11am: Stroll into work, matching coffees and green smoothies in hand. Promptly ridiculed by coworkers.
Saturday 11am-5pm: Work. Together.
Saturday 5pm: Impromptu trip to Marshalls where we wasted 30 minutes of our lives trying on clothes that we ended up abandoning on a rack where they don’t belong (for shame, we work in retail…) when we saw how long the line was.
Saturday 7pm: Supposed to be studying. Mitch walks into my room, pours two GIANT glasses of wine, declares “Whoops! More in there than I thought…” And then we practice our mirror dancing. She dances. I mimic. Truth.
Saturday 9pm: Head to a neighbor’s housewarming party. Together.
Sunday: Work. Together.
It’s a little ridiculous, really. Good thing we don’t hate each other.
Ralph loves setting goals.
Happy TOOMUCHCOFFEE Caturday.
Holy canoli. I am seriously tweekin’ over here.
Guess what happened to the cats this week? Dun dun DUNNNNNN…
GROO
MER
Ralph came back looking significantly worse than she did when she went in and not at all like a lion.
Mangyass cat.
Who did this? An intern?
Stop. I'm embarrassed.
I should’ve known something was up when I picked them up and they were all, “Oh, uhhhh… we were supposed to charge you $XXX but instead we’re just charging you $XXX (less). Why? Uhhhhh, just because.”
UM. IS IT PERHAPS BECAUSE YOU MUTILATED RALPH RALPH?
Je.sus.
At least they both came home in stupid bandanas. A snowman for Weaz and a present for Ralph.
So dumb.
I’m off to buy Ralphie a full-body wig…
Pecans from Levans Farm
My granddaddy grew up on a farm in west Georgia. Though he spent most of his adult life away–first overseas in the Air Force and later working for Sears in the Tower in Chicago–he always knew he’d come back and build a house on his family’s land. Over time, a lot of the acres were sold, but the spot he’d staked out as a kid remained in the family’s name. So once he’d retired (and after a few years living down the street from us in Illinois) he and grandmother packed up and headed back down to Georgia to build the house they’d always wanted, where they’d always wanted. They were well into their 70s.
We had this kitchen table. I think it dates back to someone like my great-great-great grandfather. It’s the table my dad grew up eating on. It’s the table I grew up eating on. And now it’s at my brother’s house. Covered in pecans he picked off the ground (you guessed it) at Levans Farm.
When my parents were around my age, they bought a black lab. Cowboy was their first child, and eventually their real children would learn to stand using him as support. We always had black labs. First Cowboy (who we called Bo), then Gunnar (who died young due to cancer) and finally Clancy (who my parents just put down last month). In my 26 years, I think I’ve only had one Christmas without a black lab present.
My brother decided the holiday just wouldn’t be the same so… He bought a puppy.
Nameless puppy. Loves doughnuts.
My first nephew. Yes.
EEEEEEEEE
It’s funny how things go full circle.
I can't stand it.
Lovely.
The Internet is a big place. It’s kind of like… ice cream with stuff in it. Ice cream on its own is not so bad, but you know your spoon is in there just digging around for the cookie dough chunks and brownie bits and chocolate chips and shit. You’re in there like a damn archaeologist trying to unearth the good stuff, all: “Why… WHY did I not just order a large cup of cookie dough chunks?” Am I right or am I right?
But then if you did order a large cup of cookie dough chunks you’d be like, “Ugh. I’m gonna vomit. I wish I had some ice cream to dilute this dough…”
And that, my friends, is what the Internet is. It’s a whole lotta plain ol’ vanilla and precious few cookie dough chunks. But you need that sea of ice cream to make it all the more exciting when you happen up on a chunk.
The following are some of my favorite chunks:
And the five blogs I read every single day:
You can find a lot more chunks on my blogroll. What are some of your favorite blogs?
Smoothie with coconut cake. Yep.
What a day. What a day. My grandmother is in the hospital. She will be just fine, no doubt. I come from a long line of of very tough women. You know my amazing great grandmother (and middle namesake) Granny Ruth once fell and broke her hip and forgot she had her Life Alert necklace on so she dragged herself across the yard and into the house so she could call for help? Yep. That’s where I get it.
I had a very surreal moment when my mom told me the problem and it was exactly what I studied in medical nutrition therapy this semester… cholecystitis. With much authority, I rattled off symptoms and surgeries and diet therapies. I pulled out my reference book and read more. It made me suddenly feel very adult and very with it, like maybe, just maybe, I have learned something in this program I hate so much. It was weird but welcome.
This is how I feel about school.
Yes, I really do have a WTF? stamp. Doesn’t everyone?
It’s finals week and I didn’t have a test today so I spent the day… studying. Duh. I also did two hours of yoga (mmmm), ran a bunch of errands and delivered thank yous…
Coooooookies
[If ever you thought about doing something nice for me, do it. I seriously deliver on thank yous. They usually involve baked goods.]
Now I’m fretting about taking the cats to the groomer tomorrow.
Yep. It’s happening… Ralph and Weaz are both getting lion cuts tomorrow. I’m hyperventilating–partly because it’s going to be so so so so so so so so so so so so so funny to see Weaz’s stupid face balancing atop her naked little body but mostly because transporting them in the car is very traumatizing for me. I’ve never had to move these beasts by myself and I am fuh-reaking out. Seeing them in even the slightest bit of distress sends me into a tailspin of crazy. It’ll be quite a spectacle. If you’re anywhere near my house tomorrow morning, which you shouldn’t be because that is creepy, you should stand in the street and watch it all unfold. Tears will be shed. Human tears.
Charlotte is little.
I wrote this back in July, two days after my breakup. I posted it and quickly pulled it down. Not because it’s out of line or even about my personal life, but because it originated from a source of such raw pain. My motivation in reposting it now is not about what I said (even now it doesn’t make much sense) but how I said it. The roundabout wording and disjointed thought process came from a girl who was lost, confused, afraid and very much alone.
I wish I could tell this girl she is going to be just fine. That it will be hard… so hard. That each day will feel worse than the one before until finally, finally one night she’ll lay down to go to bed and realize she didn’t cry that day. That she’ll make brownies and friends and big plans for the future. That there will be other men and they will be wonderful. That she’ll build a desk and a table and a life by herself and for herself. That in just five short months she will feel what she so meekly asked (who? God?) to become… That she is radiant and rare and precious. And that come hell or high water (or both), she is more capable than she realizes.
7/6/11
Today I am a sad little pile of blah. I’m stronger than this, I know, but even I’m succumbing to emo songs like this one that opened up my yoga class this morning. Good and miserable. That’s how I like to start my day.
Then there’s this one that I don’t even think played today but resonates in my head anyway. Don’t listen to it. It’s straight miserable, I’m telling you.
This one’s not doing me any favors.
What am I talking about?
Right. So…
In my moping, I was thinking about what people do when they’re sad and I think that usually they ask god (or the universe or their parents or whoever they look to for guidance) to make it right.
There’s too much violence here… make me a peaceful world.
There’s too much hurt here… make me a compassionate world.
There’s too much hate here… make me a loving world.
But it seems to me we might get a whole lot further making the same demand in a different way.
Make me peace. Make me compassion. Make me love. Maybe start with ourselves and the world will follow. You know, what Michael said.
What am I talking about? No one knows. More importantly, where’s the food? I appear to have listened to a lot of music today. I’m supposed to be studying for a final.
Anyway, let’s grow ever more tangential…
I didn’t follow that Casey Anthony case. It was too much of a spectacle to me. I think people got caught up in the thrill of it like it was some kind of sporting event and forgot the life lost and lives involved. At any rate, I heard what happened. Everyone in the world did. So people are mad, right?
There’s too much injustice… make me a just world.
We could try to fix the whole world, which seems like a big ol’ job to me. We could complain and condemn and demand justice. Or we could start with ourselves. You’re mad about that verdict? Good. If you have kids, love them more. Take care of them and make them safe and teach them to do the same one day. If you don’t have kids, find some who need you. Give them your time and your energy. Take care of them and make them feel safe and teach them to do the same one day. If violence begets violence then surely love will beget love.
I guess my point is that you (I) can’t control the world or what happens to you (me), only how you (I) react to it. So instead of asking for something to make it right, ask to be something instead.
Right. Make me radiant and rare and precious, a bringer of joy. Make me a rainbow. (Name that song?)
Spicy black bean spinach tacos in baked shells
For my final project in my nutrition education class, we had to identify a barrier to health and create an instructional video to incite behavior change in spite of that barrier. People tell me all the time that eating healthy is too expensive and too time consuming. As one who is both broke and busy, I get it. I really, really get it.
But I also know that with a little creativity (and education), healthy eating can be affordable and accessible to anyone.
So I decided to address this issue by creating a healthy meal using ingredients purchased exclusively at my friendly neighborhood Dollar General.
Cheap and easy. Just like Ralphie.
I ended up making spicy black bean and spinach tacos with roasted sunflower seeds in baked corn tortilla shells.
I’d never made anything remotely resembling this, and I think you can tell in the video that I was legitimately surprised by how good it was. I hope it shows that you can find healthy food in unlikely places and that it doesn’t take a lot of culinary skill to turn it into an impressive meal.
I’m really proud of this project. Check it out:
Vegan sweet potato raisin biscuits
If I had to pick one food to define my childhood, it would be biscuits. Biscuits were our weekend tradition. At the holidays, beaten biscuits are still the star of the show. Hell, I even ate dog biscuits. I’m serious. My mom had to lock the cabinet so I’d stop. Another story for another time…
Saturday mornings started slow and steady with a sizzle of bacon and the scent of coffee wafting up to my room. Some weekends we had pancakes, other times waffles or even cinnamon buns. But most of the time mom made biscuits. I remember dad ate his with sausage and jelly. I found this an odd combination. Me? Butter and cheddar. Have I mentioned I had a fat kid phase?
Biscuit time.
I’d scurry downstairs in an oversized t-shirt, always the first kid up and never wearing pants. (My distaste for pants dates back to infancy, I swear.) I’d snag the comic section from dad’s pile of papers and assemble a plate of biscuits, butter and cheese. I’ve told you I was a chunk up until freshman year of high school, right? Right.
I miss those Saturday mornings. These days I wake up early, rush to yoga and head straight to work. So last Sunday when I made the coconut chai cake, I decided to take advantage of a few free weekend hours and make biscuits. A throwback to the good ol’ days.
Biscuit cutting is so satisfying. Just me? Ok.
These biscuits are not the biscuits of my childhood. First of all, they’re fat free. Second of all, they contain fruit and a vegetable. Who does that?
I used Susan’s pumpkin raisin biscuit recipe but subbed in sweet potato puree because, you know, my name is Tater.
They turned out really nicely, especially when topped with peanut butter and pears.
Pears, peanut butter, sweet potato biscuits.
I put a bunch in the freezer so I can whip up a Saturday morning biscuit feast any time a craving hits. But, as it turns out, what I’m craving on Saturday mornings isn’t biscuits at all. It’s dad reading the paper. Mom in the kitchen. The sound of Saturday morning cartoons and kids in the background. It’s that feeling of having nothing to do, having everything you need and knowing everyone you love is right there with you.
Also… butter and cheese. I’m craving that, too.
TLT salad - tempeh, lettuce, tomato, BBQ hummus dressing
Sometimes I have these really stupid ideas.
I don’t mean the kind I write in my idea book… which exists.
Yep.
I use that mostly for drawing pictures of Weaz and writing down song lyrics I like.
Mumford & Sons, "Winter Winds"
I mean the kind of stupid ideas that I don’t even realize are stupid until I’m up to my eyeballs in some kind of disaster that never needed to happen. The other night, for example, my brother and sister were tailgating the ACC championship here in Charlotte. I only live two miles from Uptown so I decided it’d be an excellent idea to avoid gameday traffic and parking and just ride my bike. Looking like this, mind you:
Alright, Katie.
I left around dusk, which was my first mistake (of many), with a candy cane tea in my hand, which was my second (of many more).
The ride really isn’t bad, but about halfway there I realized that the ride back in the dark would be a problem. A big one. I convinced myself I’d just put the bike in my brother’s car and ride back with him. But that would mean having to stay the whole time. If you know me, you know I don’t like the feeling of being trapped somewhere without an exit strategy. This was no good. No good at all.
I got myself to the heart of the gameday hullabaloo and promptly turned around to go back home, texting my brother to fill him in on the situation. To which he responded simply, “Idiot.”
I made it home just in time for the sun to set in the dusty wake kicked up by the fastest orange beach cruiser you’ve ever seen. I lived to tell the tale and will not do it again.
So to counter that stupid idea, here’s a great one:
GOOD IDEA.
| Deconstructed Vegan BLT |
I love you.
You know the best part about this brilliant idea of mine? It turns out it wasn’t even my idea. Of course not. Nope. After I thought about it for a bit, I remembered quite vividly seeing a BLT salad on Jessica’s blog (only my favorite blog on the Internet). So consider this a vegan adaptation of someone else’s brilliant idea. I can live with that.
Stock it.
Since perishable fridge and freezer foods are not really my area of expertise right now, let’s talk pantry staples…
A friend of mine emailed me over the weekend with the following conundrum:
Picture this: I trek all the way across DC to Trader Joe’s to go
grocery shopping. I meddle through the aisles picking up the
necessities, a few things I really want (usually nuts). You know, the
usual…
Imagine my dismay when I return home with not a single fucking meal. I
picked up apples, avocados, tangerines, lemons, almonds, trail mix,
pizza dough (not frozen), mozzarella [OK SO THAT'S ONE MEAL], and on I
go.
I need cooking suggestions. I am contemplating building a Weekly Menu
of sorts. This is where you come in.
If you can and/or want to be involved, I am TERRIBLE at building a
meal and even worse at making sure it’s nutritionally non-deficient.
Since I love my friend and don’t want him to die (and I also love his boyfriend and don’t want him to die at the hands of my friend in the kitchen trying to make a meal out of tangerines and trail mix), I sent him the following:
How to Stock a Vegetarian Kitchen
A stocked vegetarian pantry
And that’s that. To see the rest of my kitchen, you can watch my Tiny Kitchen Tour:
And juuuust in case anyone is keeping score, my mom was right again. Regarding yesterday’s power outage… My mom told me to just push the little red reset button on the outlet and I laughed at her on my way to buy ice for the cooler (because that’s a smarter idea?) and said my apartment is too old and doesn’t even have those buttons. This morning after discovering my breaker box behind a picture I hung myself (yep) and flipping every single switch in the boxes outside too (sorry, neighbors) to no avail, I came back inside to discover that, yes, there is a little red button on an outlet in the kitchen. I pushed it. It worked.
That puts us at lifetime tally of about Mom: 1,003,548,279,000, Katie: 0.
You were lovely while you lasted.
“Good thing I went grocery shopping today,” I grumbled, throwing perishables into a cooler filled with ice. “Good.fucking.thing.”
This is what happens when you blow a fuse in the kitchen and it takes you a solid 12 hours to figure out where your fuse box is (outside? really?) at which point it is entirely too dark and scary to venture behind the presumably spider-filled bush that’s blocking it so instead you drive to the 24-hour Harris Teeter and buy three bags of ice so you can load all the crap you insisted on buying today (even though you definitely didn’t need to go grocery shopping at all) into a cooler that, thank god, you didn’t give to your brother three days ago like you said you would.
Good work, Weaz.
At least I ate the world’s biggest, most glorious salad ever today. Romaine, walnuts, feta, olives, yellow pepper, carrots, tomato, homemade honey mustard, homemade baked tortilla chips. Because tomorrow it will all be destroyed.
RIP
Not only did I buy a bunch of groceries today, oh no, I also prepared a bunch of food for the week. Lentil soup. Rice. Roasted broccoli. Sweet potatoes.
So prepared. So futile.
If you need me I’ll be eating one dozen Trader Joe’s mini ice cream cones before they melt.
And these cookie dough balls.
Everyone stores emergency cookie dough balls in the freezer, right? This, my friends, is an emergency.
Ikea timer... not helping.
Ah, coffee. I can’t think of a food more powerfully unifying and aggressively divisive as this humble bean.
It’s a reassuring constant that no matter where you go in the world, coffee will be there, intricately woven into the social, agricultural and political fabric that defines a country and its people. Coffee is universal in its presence in cups across the globe but unique in its preparation from country to country, household to household and person to person.
Even in my short and sheltered life, I have somehow managed to carelessly flit about at least a dozen countries, and in each one coffee was a big deal but in very different ways.
I sipped cafe con leche during merienda at tiny streetside tables in Spain. Espresso in cramped cafes crowded with businessmen in Italy. Instant Nespresso in a hammock in Nicaragua. Cappuccinos on my way to class in Chile. And, uh, tea in the United Kingdom.
Coffeeeeee
Here in the States, our coffee culture has gotten straight up out of hand. It’s all triple-venti-sugar-free-skinny-soy-caramel-macchiato-no-whip-extra-hot, and it is ridiculous. When I hear someone order coffee extra hot, I want to smack them. I’m sorry if this is you but… seriously? What does that even mean?
Me? I like espresso with one cube of sugar. Black coffee with a splash of soy milk (iced or hot… and a standard degree of heat will suffice, thank you). And if I’m feeling feisty… a soy latte.
The point of this rant about coffee is that I’ve been using a French press at home for the last couple years and I have never felt like I’ve really perfected the art.
I know what you’re thinking, “What the hell? The title of this post implied that she had the secret to perfect French press coffee. I cry foul!”
I know. I’m sorry. I don’t have the answer. I mean, I know that the grounds should be coarse. That the water should be poured just before boiling. That it should steep for about five minutes for a nice, robust brew. That the coffee should be poured into the milk and not the other way around. Nevertheless, I’ve never been impressed by my coffee brewing skills.
So. Whose got the insider scoop on what it takes to make a perfect cup of French press coffee?
Again, I know what you’re thinking. “Google it, you idiot.” But I did. And everyone says to do it differently. So if you’ve got a method you swear by, do tell.
In the meantime, I’m gonna take down my third cup of mediocre coffee this morning. Onward and upward.
Coconut chai cake with spiced glaze
I had the weirdest dream last night. It involved two men (who I’m very much interested in in real life) fighting over me. (And no, not these two. But yes. I’ll have one of each.) If this is what happens when one goes to bed at 9pm, I’ll do it every night. Except I woke up spooning Ralph and being spooned by Weaz. It was all very depressing.
So since I had a granny night, woke up in the middle of a catwich and skipped yoga, I figured I’d round out the trifecta of lame with a morning of nonstop baking. It’s what I do.
To understand why I made this coconut chai cake today, you have to understand that once a month every month I am convinced I’ve gained 10 pounds. As it turns out, I am just female. Anyway, the shifting size and shape of my body coupled with a nice big dose of hormonal cuh-raaaaazy pills is enough to make even a pro-intuitive eater, anti-dieter, and lover of all things deep fried, bake a fat-free cake. It happens to the best of us.
Hello, lovelies.
Avoiding fat is illogical for a whole lot of reasons, including the fact that vitamins A, D, E and K require it for absorption. But once a month every month there is simply no room for logic in my life, what with my expanding body and all taking up extra space and all… Logic be damned; I just want my pants to fit.
So against my better judgement, I made this damn cake.
I actually love Susan and her Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen despite my vehement opposition to a diet completely devoid of fat. I find that her recipes are easy to follow, always turn out great and the “light” nature of them nicely complements the far denser foods I usually eat. Plus, they don’t taste fat-free. That’s what really counts.
Pear, peanut butter and coconut cake.
Since high school my eating habits have ranged from extreme restriction to excessive night binges to an obsession with only the “purest” of ingredients to where I am now, which I like to think is a nice healthy balance of eating for pleasure, eating for health and eating ethically without being a complete asshole about it.
Sometimes this means pizza and wine at 3am and sometimes it means fat-free cake at breakfast. Balance, y’all. Balance.
Burrito bowl
Let me paint you a picture…
It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday night. I’m in bed. With what would best be described as a “self-help” book. I spent the evening at Starbucks with my roommate who waxed on poetically about the ideal study environment the same way I can only assume a 90-year-old woman would react, saying, “Isn’t this just great on a Saturday night? Quiet. Nice lighting…” We sipped on decaf tea while she wrote a paper and I worked on not checking Facebook. We have big plans to go to yoga ass early in the morning.
We are not cool. Not at all.
Yesterday I was driving home and squealed (really) at the sight of a Chipotle under construction not one mile from our house. I don’t know what came over me at that moment, the last time I ate at a Chipotle or why I was so elated, but I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since, so that’s where we went for dinner.
I got the salad bowl and Mitch got the burrito bowl, which, as it turns out, are the exact.same.thing:
Only she had more rice and I had more lettuce.
The highlight of the night was definitely watching Mitch awkwardly approach a table of innocent diners and offer them our leftover (unopened) guacamole because she didn’t want to throw it away. They didn’t want it. She had to throw it away.
Then she got belligerent and threw our food on the floor.
RAAAAAAAWR
Now we’re just eating salted caramels and watching this. Over and over and over again.
Pretty standard.
We forgot to make the bed.
Well. I’ve been bustin’ my ass all day since 6:30 this morning to get in enough hours to finance the cats’ organic food habit only to come home and find them passed out in my bed. Actually, Weaz was on top of my pillow.
Bring me a grape.
Seriously though? You jerks can’t even make the bed for me?
I will do no such thing, says Ralph.
HAAAAA
This week Weaz and I built a table. She then proceeded to sit on top of it.
I do what I want.
After “assisting” me by actually doing nothing but staring at me like this:
Hey.
She demanded vodka for her efforts.
Please, may I have some vodka, please?
Please?
No, Weaz. Just… no.
Muesli and coffee.
Ikea is where dreams go to die.
You’ll find them huddled in the corner with a plate of Swedish meatballs hyperventilating under a pile of brilliantly designed but cheaply made imports and mumbling, “Where is the exit? Where is the exit? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHERE IS THE EXIT?”
I went to Ikea today.
It was a poor life choice.
All I wanted was a slipcover for the little couch my cats have destroyed, but knowing myself better than to assume I could get in and out of that labyrinth with just one item, I recited the following pep talk in the car before entering:
“Don’t be stupid, Katie.”
It (kind of) worked and I decided against buying this broccoli.
Someone buy me this.
Surely someone will buy me that.
I did manage to find what I was looking for in the discount pile. A mere $10 for the slipcover I sought. This is the closest I’ve ever come to being successful in Ikea. Of course, when I got it home I realized it was for a different couch and was also (you guessed it) final sale.
So. If anyone has a Karlstad and would like my $10 slipcover, it’s in the trash outside my house.
At least I also got my car washed today, which felt very productive indeed.
Best.carwash.ever.
Now–GUESS WHAT–both my siblings (count em… one, two) are in town tonight and we’re going out.
Hold on to your butts.
VEGETABLES.
“Do you guys know what a cooter is?”
This is how my medical nutrition therapy professor started class tonight. She went on to say…
“I had this patient who had half of his face shot off trying to eat one.”
Uhhhhhh.
“He was driving along and saw one dead on the road so he took some of the meat and took it home and ate it.”
UHHHHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMM.
“He came back later to get more but another man was there and they got into a fight over the cooter meat and he got shot in the face over it.”
I CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP.
As it turns out, this is a cooter in North Carolina:
COOTER.
I’ll have you guys know that I braved a Google image search of “cooter turtle” for that photo. Don’t worry, it’s TSFW (totally safe for work).
According to Wikipedia (where I source all my information, thank you): “Pseudemys is a genus of large, herbivorous, freshwater turtles of the eastern United States. They are often referred to as cooters, which stems from kuta, the word for turtle in the Bambara and Malinké languages, brought to America by African slaves”
This is absolutely the most valuable thing I have learned in the last three years.
Tonight I turned in my last big project of the semester.
BAM.
It was a case study for a 29-year-old patient suffering a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He was probably trying to eat cooter.
It was a most glorious occasion that I celebrated by splitting a bottle of wine at my new favorite neighborhood bar. I feel like once you know the name of the bartender, you’re totally in (and an alcoholic). Unfortunately, this particular bartender does not give a shit about my existence unless I am with a certain friend of mine who happens to look just like Zooey Deschanel. It’s a tough life she has. At least I get free drinks when I’m with her.
Because this keeps popping up every month…
Boooooo.
Chickpeas, broccoli slaw, marinara, feta
Hello, world. Did you miss me Twitterbitching about traffic on my way to work this morning? [Me neither.]
I feel saner already. And just so we’re clear: there is nothing wrong with social media. Lord knows I love me some Facebook. Nope, unfortunately, as it turns out, social media is in the clear and there is just something wrong with me. (Lovely.) It’s just that I feel completely unstable and anxious and strangely isolated to be in constant contact like that. Not healthy. I have enough instability in my life as is at present, thank you.
I think what I’ve realized is that I’m at this point in my life where I’m trying to figure out who I am and what I’m doing and it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re busy telling everyone else who you are and what you’re doing. At the end of the day, these forms of social media aren’t really there as a tool for two-way communication. It’s more like a megaphone than a walkie-talkie, more for scrutinizing others than improving ourselves. Even when you’re “talking” to someone else, at some level you’re motivation for doing it in a public arena is so everyone else will see it. That’s the point, right? Otherwise, you would’ve just called.
So anyway, there is a serious Katie-to-Katie conversation that needs to take place, if that makes any sense, and I’m not making any great strides in personal growth and development if I’m publicly putting my shit on blast.
That’s what the blog is for. Winky face.
So I’ve discovered bagged broccoli slaw and my life will never be the same. I use it for everything. Last night I sauteed it with artichokes and chickpeas and topped it with a cheese-like nooch sauce. Amazing. Today for lunch it’s playing the role of pasta with a mix of artichoke hearts, chickpeas, marinara sauce and feta. (Some tempeh or nuts would also be lovely.)
I’m talking bagged broccoli slaw, canned artichokes and chickpeas, jarred marinara sauce. It took me all of 30 seconds to throw it all in a container and another two minutes to microwave at work. Oh yes you do have time to eat vegetables. Give it up.
In December??
SEVERAL THINGS.
Did you know you can grow strawberries in the Carolinas in December?
ME NEITHER. A guy from a nearby farm showed up in my office with a whole truckload of these beauties, and you better believe I bought a whole bucket just for me and no one else.
NOPE. All mine.
It’s like a little bite of summer. Except… I’m actually still walking around in a t-shirt most of the time so summer isn’t too sorely missed… yet. It will come. I am a walking sack of miserable depression in the winter. Just you wait.
Ehhhh
Now that I have my hipster camera phone app, I look edgy and mysterious, right? Not like I’m standing in the bathroom at work taking pictures of myself? And don’t you like how the fade totally washes out any imperfections? This is why people use these things, you realize.
Lame ugly picture of pizza?
Yep.
No! It’s my-life-is-so-much-cooler-than-yours pizza.
Duh.
So I’m 1.5 hours into my no Facebook/Twitter deal and, as you can probably tell, it’s going very well… These are the things I would have shared had I been able to:
Right now I’m supposed to be working on a case study for a 29-year-old patient with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, but all I can think is: “WHAT am I doing with my life?”
It’s at moments like this that I threaten to quit everything in my life and go on The Bachelor. Don’t even test me.
