FINE DINING

Michael and I are doing pretty well on the financial side of things right now. I mean, we’re not rolling in the dough, but we are being fiscally responsible. We have a small amount of debt that continues to shrink each month. We’re paying our bills on time and we even have a safety net in savings for emergencies. That last part seems almost like the most adult thing I have ever done. I come from a paycheck to paycheck way of life. Life growing up fluctuated between poor and okay. Chris and I were poor. We were not good at managing our money in any kind of way and we were bogged down with student loan debt. We started out our career journeys already in a deep hole. Michael and I started our relationship when both of us had just barely made it out of our own financial holes and because we had not learned any lessons, we immediately fell back into a hole. I think we finally learned some lessons in finances.

Every other week, we sit down to review bills and Michael looks at the bank account to see what has processed and where we are spending our money. Really, we are starting to change our mindset about not just where we spend, but where we want to spend our money. Turns out that there aren’t too many ways we want to spend our money. One way is charity. I am all the time throwing twenty dollars at some charity and Michael is all the time asking “What’s this international charge?” This month was to help Ukrainian refugees. Planned Parenthood just automatically gets ten dollars a month. I feel like I should do more. I want to do more. But…this is where we are. We also want to spend our money traveling. Traveling has been a very solid part of this relationship. Michael and I have very different interests, but we both agree on going places and seeing stuff and we both agree on eating really good food.

We went to Farina for my birthday in January and had such a nice dinner. The food was amazing. The service was impeccable. We were not crowded or rushed. It was all just really so nice that I asked why we didn’t do this every other month. So, before we had even finished our dinner, we scrolled through a list of fancy restaurants, chose one from the list and made reservations. That reservation was for Novel and happened Saturday evening and it is going to be a very hard one to top. Michael and I ate some of the most full flavored dishes that I think we have ever eaten. Michael took one bite from his appetizer of his beef sirloin tartare and closed his eyes in bliss. He said it was so good that it almost made him mad, like he should throw his fork across the room. I had the Brussels sprouts salad that was so good that I didn’t even notice until I was almost finished that I had eaten raisins. Those of you who know me, know my feelings about raisins, but I was not at all mad about the plump golden raisins in my salad. We shared an order of butternut squash ravioli and shrimp ramen, where I basically licked my ramen bowl clean. Then we finished out our order, Michael with a pork chop and me with a perfectly cooked piece of salmon. We got dessert to go and ate it for breakfast the next day.

We had to be rolled to our car.

As per tradition, while we were in Novel, we picked the next place, Corvino Supper Club. The couple next to us heard us making our decision and the woman chimed in “Corvino’s is so good. We were just there an hour ago.” I looked at her, she and her partner were both very fit. I had noticed that they had each had an appetizer of the tartare. The had both had entrees where they had cleaned the plate; his was a giant steak. I said “You were just there tonight?” She nodded her head enthusiastically and said “Yeah! We had drinks and appetizers.” Michael asked her what appetizer she had and the woman responded “steak tartare.” Michael and I looked at each other to make sure we had both heard the same thing and he said “You had the steak tartare there and here?!?” Again, nodding enthusiastically, the woman responded “Yeah.” Michael said “Okay then…I think we’ll be happy with our next food adventure.”

I think I like being a grown up. Well…at least this part.

MY ADDICTION

Every year, Whole Foods has a Twelve Days of Cheese promotion. In previous years, they would release one cheese a day on sale for 50% off. They would release a list of the twelve cheeses and Michael and I would study the list. Then we’d make a list of our own of the cheeses we wanted from the list along with the dates they would be released. Because you couldn’t just go at any time of the day to get your cheese. These cheeses are fancy, normally expensive cheeses and they sell out fast. So instead of stopping at a coffee shop in the morning on the way to work, I was stopping in at Whole Foods for the day’s cheese.

This sounds like a hassle, but really it was kind of fun. It’s like a scavenger hunt for cheese, which has given me an idea that I might talk about later. There was a thrill to successfully purchasing the day’s cheese. It was exciting and a rush to get my hands on a cheese that I would always want to try but would never buy because of the price. And our Christmas Day cheese tray would be phenomenal! This year, Whole Foods changed the way they do their Twelve Days of Cheese and I was not prepared for the change. Michael and I made our list. I wrote the dates and cheeses down on a sticky note which I left on my desk at work. I left it there because I knew that most of the dates landed on the weekday. I knew that I would be going in Friday and Saturday for cheese. I had my plan of attack. So imagine my surprise and confusion when I walked into Whole Foods to grab a wedge of Kler Melk Truffle Gouda and find ALL the cheeses on the list already on the shelf and on sale.

“Um…Are all the cheeses on the list on sale now?” I asked the woman working the cheese counter. “Oh, yes. There is no list this year. We just released all twelve at the same time.” She gleefully replied.

I looked at the cheeses and then I said “But…I need the list. I don’t have my sticky note with me and I don’t remember what cheeses were listed for days eleven and twelve.” The woman just shook her head and again said “There is no list. But we do have this cheese gift bag that already has the four cheeses you have in your hand in the bag along with crackers and raspberry jam.” Yes, despite not having my list, I had four cheeses in my hands, the first four cheeses on our list. I had memorized the first four because those were the ones I was most interested in. One of those cheeses are eaten with a spoon. WITH A SPOON! I mumbled something to the woman about coming back later with my list and then wandered up to the cashier with my four cheeses.

The “no list” threw me off and now I don’t know if I’m going back for the cheeses I missed or for more of the cheeses I already purchased. We also gave in and opened one of those four cheeses already and I don’t remember what cheese it is. Michael and I just spent ten minutes arguing over what cheese it is in the list. So now I feel like we have to start all over again. That wouldn’t be so bad because then we’d have two wheels of the cheese you eat with a spoon, but what if we end up not liking that cheese? So maybe we need to hurry up and eat all the cheeses I bought on Friday. Then I can go back and buy other cheeses or the same ones before the sale ends this week. That’s so much cheese but is it really?

Hello. My name is Cindy Maddera and I have a serious cheese addiction.

THE HEART OF WINTER

Temperatures started dropping here on Saturday. I grabbed a laundry basket to head down to the basement and as I walked to the kitchen-garage door, I saw Marguerite walk by. I hollered to Michael “there’s a chicken in the garage!” The dog door that leads from the garage to the outside is open. I had already watched that same chicken hop down into the window well that morning only to have Josephine chase her out. I guess she was disappointed in her roosting options and finally decided to check out the garage. She’s the only one of the four that has been remotely curious about the garage. I have seen her little head through the dog door before, but she’s never ventured all the way inside. Marguerite knew what was coming. That afternoon, it started snowing and it has been snowing off on and on every since. The forecast for the rest of the week shows each day colder than the one before with snow every day.

Some archeologists believe that early humans may have survived winter by hibernating. If I could crawl into bed and not come out until the tulips start poking up through the earth without losing my job, this would be the last blog entry for a while. I am not genetically built for this kind of weather. I am not mentally built for this kind of weather.

We left a bowl of queso briefly unattended on the coffee table the other night and Josephine ate all of it. She ate a whole bowl of cheese and if she had problematic consequences from that, she took it outside. Josephine is my spirit animal. I want to eat a whole bowl of cheese and then crawl into bed without stomach cramps or diarrhea. On my not in the office days, I’ve gotten into the habit of not bothering to put on a bra. Three times now I have gotten completely dressed for going into the office only to realize that I had forgotten to put on a bra. So far, I have peeled off my layers of clothing and put on a bra, but I fear that it won’t be long before I just shrug and walk out the door without it. I was raised by a proper Southern woman who was born before the era of optional undergarments. Me not wearing a bra is a big deal. It tells you how much I have grown with being confident with this body. It also tells you how much I’ve grown in apathy.

This weather has me craving warm bowls of food. Except I am not craving bowls of chili or potato soup. I want bowls of Ethiopian food with a plate of injera. I have been thinking a lot about how to celebrate this month of Black History. In fact, I have deleted several posts on the subject. I will never not be mad about how my public education failed to teach me so many things and provide diversified history classes. I will never not be disgruntled about having Black History month in the shortest month of the year. To fill in the gaps of my knowledge, I have incorporated Black authors into my every day reading. I want to be a better citizen and I believe that diversifying my knowledge will help me actually be a better citizen. I don’t limit myself to the month of February for this, but I do feel the need to acknowledge this month in some way. I think I might do that with food.

So that’s my plan on warming my soul through the next few weeks of winter, while at the same time honoring Black History month. I am going to learn how to make misir wat and injera while learning about the culture. I am going to fill my belly with warm spicy lentils and tangy injera.

WHERE'S THE BEEF

Road trip food for a vegetarian. Thank you @whitecastle .

We hit the road as soon as we got home from work for our last camping trip of the year. Usually, one of us stops by Planet Sub and picks up sandwiches for the road, but our Planet Sub was closed or not answering their phone on Friday. We left the house with chips and just planned to get something on the road. We ended up stopping at Loves/Hardee’s. Michael took the dog and handed me some money, telling me to go find something for myself to eat. Then we would trade places. I looked all over that Hardee’s menu and saw nothing I could eat. The young man at the counter asked me if he could help. I asked him if they had something like the Impossible burger. He said “No Mam, but we do have the Beyond Meat patty that is all plant based.” I said “Yes! Give me one of those with cheese and curly fries.”

I grabbed my order and then traded places with Michael. I was about three bites into my sandwich when Michael walked back out to the truck. He threw open his door and incredulously asked “Are you eating a hamburger?!?!?” He’d looked at the menu too and had not seen anything vegetarian. When he saw me eating my Beyond meat burger, he assumed that I had resorted to just eating a regular hamburger. I explained to him that I was not eating a hamburger and he nodded his head, but still looked skeptical. I might have been a little excited about being able to eat a fast food burger, but this is something I have not been really able to do since I became a vegetarian/pescitarian. There have been many a road trip where Michael’s most common question is “but what are you going to eat?”

I have never been concerned about this. I know I can walk into a convenient store and grab some nuts and a bag of chips and be just fine. My diet is my choice and I have no expectations that places will be accommodating. Growing up in a state where beef is what’s for dinner and there are college meat judging teams means that choosing a vegetarian lifestyle is going to be a challenge. Salads have bacon on them. That’s just how it is. I have learned to adapt and get creative while traveling. I have also learned to not be picky or snobby or have any expectation of not having to ask for them to leave the bacon off the salad. Also, when you are on a road trip, you don’t expect to be eating anything all that good for you anyway. The junk food is part of the fun of a road trip. In spite of my low expectations, I am really happy that more fast food chains are embracing plant based options like the Beyond Meat patty and the Impossible Burger.

Michael talks about White Castle burgers at least once a week. They do not exist west of Columbia MO. There had been some questions about whether we should stop in at the one in Columbia on our way home from our camping trip. Michael did not want to take the camper through the drive-thru and then he thought there would be nothing for me to eat. I forced him to stop. I walked up to the drive-thru window and the woman inside said “Mam, you cannot walk up to the drive-thru.” She then sent someone outside to take our order. Michael finally got to eat some White Castle burgers and I got to eat some Impossible White Castle burgers. Josephine got to eat a lot of french fries. We were all winners.

Now I kind of see the point of Michael’s obsession with White Castle.

THE LOBSTER

Frowny face

This is not a story of finding a soul mate or being turned into a lobster. This is a story our quest to make lobster rolls. Not just any lobster roll either. We wanted the lobster rolls that we ate while visiting Boston last summer. I read a news article about how lobsters are really cheap right now because Maine didn’t have any tourists. So, Michael and I went to Whole Paycheck and bought three lobster tails. We took them home and made very disappointing lobster rolls. There just wasn’t enough lobster meat and the flavors in the dressing from an online recipe I used just wasn’t quite right.

The next week we found ourselves watching the Bon Appetit channel on Ruku. The young chef on the screen said “Today, we’re making lobster rolls starting with live lobsters.” Michael and I sat riveted to the TV as we watched this guy cleanly and efficiently dispatch two lobsters, steam them, remove the cooked meat from the shells and mix up the perfect dressing for traditional Boston lobster rolls. We looked at each other, both of us realizing at the same time that our first attempt at making lobster rolls was all wrong. We had to start with live lobsters. That weekend, we traveled to the Asian food market and purchased two very large, live lobsters. They wrapped them up in a brown paper bag and we took them home, placing them into the fridge until it was time for dinner.

Let me start by saying that preparing dinner that night involved a lot of screaming. It started when I pulled the bag from the fridge. The bottom of the paper bag split open and the lobsters fell to the kitchen floor, legs wiggling and tails flapping. The two of us managed to pick the lobsters up and get them into the sink. Then I placed the first one on a cutting board. The chef had made it look so simple. Stab the knife into the base of the lobster head and the draw the knife down, splitting the head. Easy peasy. I watched a video for a quick refresher while my lobster slowly scooted backwards off the cutting board. I grabbed the lobster, placing him back on the cutting board, and while holding it still with my right hand and I pressed the tip of the knife to base of its head and pressed down. The knife didn’t go in. Lobster shells are really hard. I looked at Michael and said “I’m not sure I have the physical strength to do this.”

Now, it is important to say here that Michael’s arm is broken. We thought that it wasn’t, but the swelling and pain did not subside a week after his accident. He went to a bone and joint specialist who told Michael that he has three broken fingers and an elbow fractured in two places. He has splints on the fingers, but no cast on his arm. The doctor told Michael to not lift anything heavier than a toothbrush, pencil or fork. If he does everything right, he will not have to have surgery to repair the elbow. So, Michael with his broken arm, takes my place at the counter. He takes the knife and stabs into the lobster’s head. A black liquid then starts shooting out of the head and we started screaming. Michael picked up the lobster, its tail twitching, and threw it into our steamer pot. We stood there in the kitchen, both of us shaken and a little traumatized and then we looked at the second lobster still in the sink. Without saying a word, Michael picked it up, repeated the stabbing technique which went a little bit more smoothly and dumped the lobster into the pot. It was only after the deed was done that Michael said “You should have been recording all of that.” I didn’t even take pictures. Michael had just committed murder and I was an accomplice. Did we need video evidence of our crime?

We did manage to recreate the lobster rolls we had eaten in Boston. Actually, they turned out perfectly. Prior to this event, Michael and I had had a conversation about food. I said that I didn’t think I should eat anything I am not willing to kill on my own. Like, I could not kill a pig or a cow. I could kill and have killed a fish. I could not kill an octopus. They have nine brains and are smarter than humans. I said “I bet I could kill a lobster. They’re just giant bugs.” That turns out to not be true. Now that I think about it, I’m not all that good at killing regular land bugs. When met with a large spider in my house, I just look at it and say “I leave you alone and you leave me alone.” We come to understanding and just keep our distance from each other.

I guess this means that I can’t eat lobsters now.

MEATLOAF

Proper Sunday dinner. Beyond meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. Michael made the mushroom gravy. #beyondmeat

I wanted to make a proper Sunday dinner. In our house, growing up, lunch on Sundays was a big deal. We would all gather around the family dinning room table and Mom would cook a pot roast or a ham or something like that. There would be side dishes and rolls. There would be more effort put into the making of the Sunday meal than what was usually spent during the week. I have attempted to implement a Sunday meal in my adult life a number of times, but Sundays usually end up being chore days. Michael is rarely up before noon on a Sunday. By the time he gets up, I’ve already had a decent breakfast and I am not interested in a lunch. Dinner rolls around and I’m starving because I ended up eating a handful of tortilla chips at 2:00. I am also unenthusiastic about cooking anything elaborate because I scrubbed the house from top to bottom.

This has changed slightly since Michael and the Cabbage are home all the time. Chores happen during the week. I don’t have to spend a lot of time on Sundays getting ready for Mondays because there just isn’t that much to prepare. I have more time to spend on prepping food and testing out some experimental recipes, like potato and cactus enchiladas. That was a recipe I found online and it was a bust. The cactus part was good, but the recipe was more potato than cactus. I think I will try a mushroom and cactus filling next time. This is not the first time I have followed a recipe found online that has left me disappointed. The first time I made a meatloaf with Beyond Meat patties, I used their very own recipe from their website. It wasn’t that the meatloaf turned out badly. It was that it was lacking flavor and a bit boring. I have been hesitant to make another attempt because Beyond Meat is not cheap.

When we sat down to plan the menu for the week, I decided that maybe I needed to try again with the meatloaf. We would have a traditional Sunday dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes with brown (mushroom) gravy and green beans. A few people have asked me what is in a Beyond Meatloaf. I couldn’t tell if they were asking me how I made me meatloaf or what is in Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat is a plant based fake meat product that I think tastes like ground beef. I’m not really a good judge of that because I haven’t had ground beef in so long that I do not remember what it tastes like. Michael says that Beyond Meat doesn’t taste like ground beef, but he thinks it is pretty darn tasty. I don’t rely too much on fake meat products. I use them in recipes more now because that is the easiest way to get Michael to eat a vegetarian meal. What I like about Beyond Meat is that it is made of beans and brown rice and is not filled with tofu or gluten.

But what’s in my meatloaf?

That’s a very good question. I used a mixture of garlic butter croutons and saltines for my bread crumb mixture. I think it was a cup. I chopped some mushrooms and two shallots in the food processor. I sautéed this just to soften up the shallots. Then I mixed one package of Beyond Meat ‘ground meat’ with the mushroom/shallot mixture, bread crumbs, some garlic powder, some pepper, some basil, some tarragon, some tomato paste, maybe half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and some Worcestershire sauce. I smooshed it into a loaf shape and baked it in a bread loaf pan at 375 for thirty minutes, covered. After thirty minutes, I removed the aluminum foil and poured a mixture of BBQ sauce, ketchup, Tamari and a fancy mustard all over the top. Then the meatloaf cooked for another thirty minutes, uncovered.

I think this was the tastiest meatloaf I have ever made, real meat included, but I am an inventive chef. I make a better meal without a recipe. Some is my form of measurement. That is probably why I am not that great of a baker. Exact measurements are boring. I mean, I can do it if I have to, but luckily for me this is not a baked goods kind of household. There is quite a bit of creativity happening when I start cooking without a recipe. I like to imagine that I am Remy from Ratatouille. I cook from the heart.

It is incredibly frustrating for anyone who wants to repeat something I have made.

DIET

We bought both

12 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "We bought both"

Michael sent me a text early last week asking me how I felt about the Keto diet. I was glad this was coming at me through text instead of face to face so he couldn’t see me roll my eyes and gag myself with my finger. This is my reaction to any fad diet or even to the word ‘diet’. So I replied by asking why he wanted to talk about this Keto diet. Things have gotten a little off the rails for him since his summer vacation started. He and the Cabbage often have fast-food lunches while they’re out and about during the day. Then there’s the snacks and the booze and he was feeling it. I suggested that we do a week long reset where we basically eat a vegan gluten-free diet without caffeine and alcohol. Surprisingly enough, he was completely on board. So we came up with a meal plan for the week and I carefully picked out recipes that are big on flavor so he wouldn’t miss stuff like cheese. And meat.

The first time I did this kind of reset, Chris and I were living in Oklahoma and I was in yoga teacher training. I did it for a week and it was the most difficult food week I have ever experienced. I did not know what I was doing. I was not a creative cook. Ingredients where hard to come by without spending a whole paycheck. Shopping took hours and hours because of all the label reading and the traveling to three different grocery stores. All of that combined with the sudden loss of the refined sugars and caffeine that I was used to made me want to punch people in their faces. This week has not been at all like that first week. There’s a few reasons for that. One is that I already mostly eat this way. When I do the grocery shopping for the week, most of groceries have to be refrigerated. Very few cans or packaged goods have to be put into the pantry. Our grocery gathering is split between two grocery stores: Trader Joe’s and Aldi. Both of these places make it really easy for me to buy unprocessed and healthy foods without breaking the bank. I ended up reading labels on a few items like enchilada sauce (contains sugar, made my own) and salsa (the Aldi Simply Nature line salsa contains sugar…don’t be fooled by branding), but most of the list consisted of fresh vegetables. You don’t have to really read those labels.

The meal plan for the week doesn’t look too different from another week except minus the cheese and maybe fish. We had quinoa stuffed portobello mushrooms with a kale salad one night and enchiladas the next. Buddha bowls are planned for one night and lintel sweet potato masala for another. Michael gets up in the morning and eats breakfast with me before he has to get the Cabbage up for summer camp. This morning we talked about making this a regular thing for at least the summer. Sunday through Thursday we’ll have vegan dinners and lunches. That gives us Friday and Saturday night to be more flexible with the meal. Maybe eat a pizza or cook a whole fish on Saturday. Try out a new restaurant. When I think about it, this is exactly how I was eating in my single times. I’d treat myself to a nice lunch out somewhere on Saturdays but mostly I was cooking at home and leaned towards the foods that made me feel good after eating them. Most of those meals were vegan.

I am surprised at how well Michael has taken to this food change. He’s missing his tea and maybe cheese right about now, but all in all he’s fine. It was even his idea to extend this change through the whole summer. I guess if I had to choose a word for this summer, a theme word, it would be ‘change’. There’s a lot of change happening around here. We’ve seen friends head off to new adventures in a new city. We’ll be seeing another friend off to a new adventure and restart to his life at the end of summer. I’ve been working really hard at believing in myself and making changes in my life to reflect that belief. It only makes sense to make some minor changes with our food. In this case, I’m making a change back to a way of life that had become normal for me at one time. It feels like slowely settling back into a beanbag chair and that doesn’t at all sound like a bad place to be.

SALAD DAYS

Mators

9 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Mators"

Last weekend, Michael and I stumbled upon the Lee’s Summit Farmer’s market by total accident. I yelled “STOP THE CAR!” and Michael found us a parking space. The first booth we went up to was selling mushrooms. They had a variety of ‘shrooms called Lion’s Mane that Michael and I had never seen before. We bought them for our camp dinner that night along with some asparagus and some heirloom tomatoes. We sautéed the mushrooms with the asparagus and sliced the tomatoes before sprinkling them with salt and pepper. The mushrooms were good, but it was after taking a bite of tomato where I thought “THIS! This is what I want to eat for the rest of the summer.” For years, I have watched my parents eat tomatoes this way and I never really got it. As a child, I found it down right disgusting. Then, it just became tolerable. Now, I want it every day.

There was a summer where I felt the same way about sliced jicama tossed with lime juice and cayenne pepper. The summer after Chris died, I lived on a shredded beet and carrot salad. Yes…everything was red. For weeks.

It just got warm around here. Or at least it has been for the last two or three weeks. It’s been the kind of warm muggy weather that makes you believe that it is Summer time. Today, not so much. A cold front moved through yesterday and the air has that feeling that it gets just when Summer starts thinking about Fall. But for a few days there, we had real summer days where I planned salads for almost every day of our meal plan. I pulled a salad recipe from our most recent Bon Appetit to go with our tuna steaks last night. Thinly sliced snap peas, cubed cantaloup, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, ancho chilly powder and sliced ricotta salata cheese. I threw in some arugula to stretch out the salad so I could have some for lunch the next day. We also could not find ricotta salata cheese, but the cheese person at Whole Foods pointed us to a good substitute that was not too pricey. I don’t even really like cantaloup, but toss it with greens, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and ancho and a good cheese and holy goats! That stuff’s delicious. We’ve also grown attached to an arugula, cherry tomato, avocado and red onion salad. The dressing is a simple homemade vinaigrette. Toss all that together and eat it straight out of the salad bowl.

As good as these salads have been, I still only want the salt and pepper tomatoes. But they have to be good tomatoes. Not those mealy flavorless things sold out of season in grocery stores. I want those bright red almost lumpy looking tomatoes that came from grandpa’s backyard. I am surprised by this new flavor attachment. My parents brought their southern Mississippi palates and tastes with them when they moved to Oklahoma and thats what I grew up eating. We didn’t fry our okra. We boiled it with tomatoes or pickled it. Nobody I know likes boiled okra except for me. Grits could either be sweet or savory, but usually sweet and creamy for breakfast. Michael and I were in a local diner for breakfast a long time ago. He ordered the cheesy grits. The waitress brought him a bowl of white instant grits topped with a slice of American cheese. I had to restrain myself from picking up the whole bowl and throwing it across the room. I ordered cheesy grits at a local hipster BBQ place once and they were crunchy because they didn’t cook them long enough. Michael politely told our waitress the grits were crunchy and we wanted to send them back. She replied “that’s just how we make them.” And I swear I felt all of my southern grandmas summersault in their graves.

Cornbread. Cornbread is not sweet like a cake. It’s made in a cast-iron skillet and should be eaten with every thing, but most definitely it should be crumbled into a glass of milk and then eaten with a spoon.

That first bite of that salt and pepper tomato triggered memories and smells of memories. Every hot Oklahoma Summer swirled into my head. All the summer days of bare feet and bicycles. Swimming in the galvanized stock tank my dad rolled into out back yard and filled up with the water hose. Sinking up to our knees in the mud as we played hide and seek in the corn. County fairs. Then there were the years where I’d only eat raw tomatoes if they were in salsa. The first time we took Chris to Colorado for a camping trip, we bought a giant tomato at the Boulder Farmer’s Market. When Mom sliced that tomato up to go with our dinner that night and then sprinkled it with salt and pepper, I was unenthusiastic, but I ate it. It hurts my heart a little to think about how much I under-appreciated that tomato.

Now I’m thinking about all the other things I may have under-appreciated.

I AM NOT A VEGETARIAN

Today's pizza

14 Likes, 2 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Today's pizza"

My chiropractor recommended that I start taking collagen every day for joint support. She said “it’s great! You can’t even taste it when you mix it with water or almond milk.” After she said this, I started seeing collagen supplements every where and I got curious. Translation: I fell for the hype of collagen supplements. I could not find any vegetarian collagen at the health food store. The marine based collage (from fish) was super expensive. So, I ended up with straight up collagen made from cows. Every morning, Monday through Friday, I dump a scoop and half of bovine collagen in to my almond milk.

And I hate it.

It makes my almond milk taste weird and if it’s not stirred well enough you end up swallowing goopy clumps of collagen. I have been drinking it for a month and I do not feel a difference in my old lady achy joints. I feel guilty for drinking crushed up cow cartilage. I feel guilty for buying crushed up cow cartilage. You are probably wondering why I don’t just stop drinking the collagen and throw it out. Well, bovine collagen is only slight less expensive than marine collagen. Since both of my parents taught me to value a dollar, I cannot just throw out a $40 tub of bovine collagen powder. So I will continue to drink my collagen laced almond milk every morning while grimacing and crying on the inside as I think about the process of grinding up cows. Then I will never buy another container of it again, so help me God.

Sometimes I fall for the next big health craze. I’ve done lemon water first thing in the morning and have mixed apple cider vinegar with honey in water. I didn’t really see or feel any different after a few weeks of either of those routines. I did the Cleansing Diet once. That’s the one where you give up sugar, gluten, animal products, alcohol and caffeine. I did this for a week and it ultimately lead to me becoming mostly vegetarian. It turned me into a label reader and it’s why most of the food on our grocery list is fresh produce. There might be one or two canned items on the list, but mostly everything goes in the fridge. Chris and I did a juice diet once. I lost five pounds which I quickly gained back and had a roller coaster mood. I could hug you and then turn right around and punch you in the throat. The only thing gained from that health craze was the thrill I got from pulverizing stuff in the juicer. I’ve been drinking kombucha with my lunch for months now. I have seen a slight reduction in my belly, but that could also be from the forearm plank challenge I’ve corralled half the guys in my office into doing everyday. Sometimes I end up doing the challenge twice, once on my own and again with the group. That means this week, I’ve done two minute forearm planks twice a day.

I can become so neurotic about my food.

I’m trying to be less neurotic and more obsessive about really good ingredients. I am going to the Asian Market this weekend to buy miso that has been aged no less than three years and smoked bonito. I am trying to find a way to purchase fresh (not frozen or canned) snails. I am in the early stages of trying to convince Michael to buy me an Italian Red Cow so that I can start making my own parmesan cheese. We were talking about turnip greens at work the other day and my boss said “I can get you turnips. My Dad plants them as a cover crop.” I told him to bring me all of the turnips and greens he could shove into a bag. I’ve had visions of steaming bowls of seasoned turnip greens ever since. I put smoked oysters on my half of the pizza I made on Sunday and marveled at the smokey rich flavor the oysters added to the pizza. I want to make hearty rich sauces that requires quality butter and wine.

I am not in search of exotic flavors, but true authentic flavors. This country is a melting pot of cultures, yet I find that so often the flavors of those cultures are diluted in order to not overwhelm someone not used to those flavors. I’ve been to Chinese restaurants that have an ‘American’ menu and a ‘Chinese’ menu. The items between those two menus differ greatly. My favorite Vietnamese restaurant is the one that is crowded and a little dirty. We always end up sharing our table with another couple. The egg rolls remind me of the ones Chris’s mom makes. The best Mexican place is the taquiera that has there menu written out daily on a chalkboard. The taco fillings are determined by what ever the butcher or fishmonger had available that day.

I want to fall for the fad of undiluted.

EAT

Dinner

8 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Dinner"

I finally got around to reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential a couple of months ago. The book has been on my reading list forever and I am almost positive Chris had a copy of it laying around his office at some point. I just never got around to it, but I was finally between books and not to sure what I wanted to read next. I cashed in some Amazon rewards and bought a copy of it for my Kindle app. This was the book I read on the airplane to Portland and I have to admit that at times, it was not an easy read.

I could not read the book without hearing Anthony Bourdain’s voice. It was as clear as if he was reading his words out loud. His voice is so familiar because Chris and I would sit down to watch No Reservations with rapt attention and with the kind of reverence used for listening to the gospel. Anthony Bourdain traveled the globe in a way that Chris and I dreamed of doing ourselves. The destination was not so much about seeing the sights as it was about immersing yourself into the local culture. This baptism came in the form of food in an all senses dunking. You felt the texture of the food as you pinched a bite together between your thumb and forefinger. Your eyes were blinded by the colors of spices filling bowls in a market. You could almost smell the pungent smells of the fish markets. Whenever Chris and I traveled, our adventures centered around food. The question was not “what did we do?” but “what did we eat?” We sought out the obscure. We followed the locals and we avoided the chain commercial places like the plague. Now, I’ve converted Michael to this food travel cult. I think this is why on this last trip to Portland, I found myself falling in love with the city all over again. Michael is notorious for having unsatisfying restaurant experiences. There is always something, from the service, to the atmosphere, to the quality of the food, but in Portland, Michael didn’t have one complaint. On our last breakfast in Portland before heading out to the coast, we ate at Pine State Biscuits. On taking his first bite, Michael pretended to pick up his plate and smash it on the floor in anger. The food was that good.

No Reservations was more than just a travel show though. It was a gritty, real and beautiful example of how we are all connected to each other through food. Food is the thing that binds us together. It is the reason we all gather in kitchens during social events. Every single one of us can recall a dish that when you smell it, you smell your childhood memories. Every family has their own taco salad (Michael says it is not taco salad and every member of the Graham family tell him that he is wrong). Food brings joy and comfort and this was an emphasis in Kitchen Confidential. Reading Anthony Bourdain’s words describing simple and fresh ingredients made me want to cook. I don’t mean that it made me want to quit my job and become a chef. I mean that it inspired me to want to cook something more elaborate than the easy meals we put together during the week. Saturday evenings have become our night for experimenting in the kitchen. I browse through issues of Bon Apetit and the New York Times food section for ideas, but a lot of times we let what ever happens to be cheap and interesting behind the fish counter inspire that evening’s meal. The meal itself doesn’t even have to be complicated. The goal is to use fresh and unique ingredients and to try something new. It can just as easily be a good stinky chunk of blue cheese crumbled in the salad paired with simple baked fish seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh lemons.

The joy of the experience is all inclusive. It begins with Michael and I browsing through the grocery store and hashing out ideas. We debate about pairing monkfish with roasted potatoes or clams with a linguini in a butter/ white wine sauce. We either take turns cooking or work together in the kitchen, dancing around each other as one chops and the other one sautes. We make huge messes in the kitchen and I love it. The meals are not all hits. It was decided that whole baked red snapper wasn’t good enough to deal with picking out all the bones (I’m pretty sure I swallowed a fish bone). Yet we are still more satisfied with our meals than if we’d gone out.

And no reservations are required.

THE FARM LIFE

Calvin #bonnieviewfarm

12 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Calvin #bonnieviewfarm"

Michael's been reading a book about food and how he should eat this instead of that. A lot of the information he's getting is about the dangers of processed foods and industry farming. He tells me things and I just kind of nod my head. He's learning about all the things Chris and I learned about food years ago when we watched all of the documentaries and read all of the books. We fell down a rabbit hole of organic, responsibly sustainable food and how to get them on our tight, almost nothing food budget. Those were the days when Saturdays were devoted to grocery shopping and it took us all day to do it because we had to travel to at least three, sometimes four, different places spread out across the OKC metro to get all of our groceries for the week. The breaking point came when Chris and I went on a road trip and stopped at a convenient store for a snack. I walked out in tears because I couldn't find anything to eat. That's when Chris realized I might have gotten a little out of control and that we needed to find a better balance. 

And we did. I did. 

So, I'm listening to Michael tell me why we should only eat grass fed beef and how sugar is the enemy as if it's all new information and I am clueless about all of it because we all need to discover things on our time, in our own way. I know the rabbit hole he's about to fall down. I told him about how I'd been using "Do what you can with what you have, where you are." as a meditation mantra and how it is not a bad mantra to apply towards food. He agreed. We still ended up visiting a farm Saturday morning to look into buying some pork chops. Bonnie View Farm is seriously eight miles from our house, which sounds surprising because we are in such an urban city area. Just a few minutes south and suddenly you're in rolling hills and pasture. Bonnie View looks like any other midwest farm house, painted a buttercream yellow with a wrap around porch. The farm itself is tucked down the hill behind the house. You wouldn't even suspect that there was a working farm there if they didn't have a sign posted out front. 

We got out of the car and stepped into the cold, just as Justine, one of the owners, stepped out of the small barn that acts as their store and houses their giant freezer. She greeted us warmly and beckoned us all to come inside where it was a little bit warmer. Two of her older children where in the process of moving chickens from the coops to the pasture. She said that the chicks should have been moved out there weeks ago, but with weather being so cold they had had to leave them in the coops to keep them warm. Then she got down to business and talked pork and bacon with Michael. She said that she does have some greens that she grows in her hoop house and she'd have them on her list whenever they are available. We talked about vegetable gardens. She agreed with me about the work. Her two oldest daughters where the gardeners of the family and when they got married and moved out, Justine let the garden go. We chatted about seeds and piglets and then I asked if I could take pictures. Justine said "let me go get one of the girls to take you down to the barn." Her daughter Emma came out and took us down to the barn to see the baby goats and a calf.

They were all so nice. 

And relaxed. 

Even when we noticed that one of the chickens had escaped. Justine and Emma slowely circled around the chicken, which led to a chase into some fencing before Justine calmly scooped up the bird. They all shrugged their shoulders as if to say "this is life on a farm." For just a tiny half minute, I thought I could get used to life on a farm. Then it snowed on Sunday and I started looking at retirement villages in Mexico. The thought quickly shifted to 'I could get used to visiting this farm'. Hopefully, the next time we do visit, we will be able to go on our scooters.

FLUBBER

Snack pack

2 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Snack pack"

Recently, I found myself clicking on a link for an add selling weight loss to millennials. I am not a millennial, more like the teenager who babysat your millennial child, but here I was clicking on the link that promised a weight loss program better than Weight Watchers and specifically geared to the tech savvy, glued into their phones, young millennials. The program itself was basically Weight Watchers. You just take all the personal one-on-one support and the meetings and put them on your phone. That is what "weight loss for millennials" looks like. I was tempted to click on the add partly out of curiosity, but mostly out the need to torture myself. My Google searches of late have been the weight loss version of "is this spot on my arm cancer or a corn flake?". 

It started with the second skirt debacle (that may or may not be the fault of the manufacturer). I've been silently stewing about my weight that seems to be increasing despite my usual activities. I'm the only one who notices it right now or at least that is what Michael tells me, but I stepped on the scale with my boots on a few weeks ago and the number was 185. Taking the boots off dropped that number to 180. I find it really hard to believe that the combination of my leggings, long sleeve T-shirt, tank top, socks and underwear weigh five pounds, which would put me down to my so-called normal weight, which I suppose I could live with. So I have taken to asking Google if my weight gain has anything to do with the following: eating too many calories, not eating enough calories, perimenopause, being forty one, my love of cheese. Of course, Google tells me that "yes; all of those things are true. Also, that spot is totally cancer." 

The internet searching has been my only action taken to combat the whole weight loss thing until last week. Last week, I had to use a different treadmill than the one I usually use at the gym. I entered my usual settings into the new treadmill and started walking. My hands instinctively rested on the heart rate monitor and I soon discovered that my usual pace does not get my heart pumping fast enough to lose weight. So, I picked up the pace and even moved over to the elliptical machine for a couple of days. Then I decided that we eat too many starchy carbs. We tend to rely on potatoes for a lot of side dishes and pasta dishes when we're too lazy to think up another option. Spaghetti is easy and the Cabbage will eat it. I designed this week's meal plan to contain as few of those starchy carbs as possible. We had roasted cauliflower steaks and green beans with roasted tempeh or chicken for dinner last night. This meal was a hit, which is encouraging because I think Michael was worried that we'd be eating weird foods this week. We are not completely eliminating carbs from our diet, but we are restricting them.

I've also introduced snacks into my day. I am not a snacker. I eat three meals a day and usually this is enough, but sometimes I get hungry between meals. I ignore it and when dinner roles around, I end up eating enough tacos for two. I took some snacks to work to have on hand for those moments when my stomach feels growly. Today I ate a handful of nuts, a few pieces of cheese and a couple of strawberries before heading to the gym at 11:00. This way I was able to do my cardio and spend time on my mat without thinking about lunch and hearing my stomach remind me that it was time for lunch. Of course, it is way too early to tell if any of this is working. I expect it will be weeks before I notice a difference. It would be totally great if when I go to the doctor in a couple of weeks for my yearly (torture) check-up, and I stepped on the scale, that scale would read out a number that would make me jump for joy. 

I'll let you know how it goes for me. 

A LISA SIMPSON STORY

Bread making

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 1 like

Sunday morning I woke up wedged between a dog and a cat. From my view point, I could see through a crack in the blinds that it was still overcast and dreary outside. We had an odd unseasonably cool Fourth of July weekend with lots of rain. Any way, I'm laying there trying to decide which animal to shove over first, knowing that disturbing the cat will incite Josephine to chew on the cat, when I think "I should bake a loaf of bread!" I know. Just wait until I reach about seventy four when the gaps in my brain are even bigger. I managed to shimmy out of bed without disturbing the animals, slid into a house dress and made my way to the kitchen.

I first made sure that I had all of the ingredients before heading over to the cookbook stack to retrieve my bread recipe. My bread recipe is written on an old scrap of paper that is worn and brown around the edges. It is the recipe I have always used to make bread ever since I started making bread and I made A LOT of bread. I'm going to tell you why I made loads of bread. It's a full confession of my absolute nerdery. Are you ready? Back in my early teens, I was a member of the Food and Fiber Group. It was a 4-H program designed to promote and educate people about Oklahoma agriculture. I think there was like six of us or something and we each had a table. Someone told the story of cotton. There was a table on pecans. Jessica Worstell had a table on dairy because her grandparents owned the local dairy. I don't remember all of the tables, but my table was all about wheat. I grew wheat. I milled wheat. I turned wheat into flour and I made whole wheat bread to hand out as samples. It worked really well when Jessica would make butter with my mom's little butter churn. Then we'd have bread and butter. We all wore matching denim dresses with green bandanas. Our tablecloths matched our dresses. 

Yes. I recognize that this was full on dorkery. Say what you want. I learned the value of getting a loaf of bread to the table and a little bit of scholarship money. In those days, I pimped myself out for scholarship money. So yeah, I'd wear that awful denim dress and do my whole song and dance about wheat a million times if I had to. I also became very adept at bread making, but for some reason, mostly because I got lazy, I stopped making bread. It just seemed like it was an unnecessary task, which is why I was a little surprised I woke up wanting to do it. In retrospect, I should have made an apple pie, because of America, but no. I wanted bread with flaxseeds and sunflower seeds. I am pretty sure that I had tucked that scrap of paper containing my tried and true bread recipe into one of the cookbooks in my collection. At least I was pretty sure. Turns out I may have stuck that recipe into a three ring binder that contained recipes torn from magazines; the very three ring binder that I threw away during one of my cleaning fits. 

That's right people. I've lost or thrown away the National Treasure of a bread recipe. I even called Mom to see if she had a copy and she said "nope!" There's no copy! I guess it's not really that big of a deal, because a bread recipe is a bread recipe. They all contain flour, yeast and maybe honey. Except that this was the bread recipe that I learned on. This was the recipe that I knew. When I was being taught to kneed dough, I was told to think of the dough as a punching bag. My Mom had just been fired from her job. Her supervisor, who was a real jerk, came up with some cockamamie reason to fire my mom. I used to imagine that dough was Mom's supervisor. Later that dough would become other mean hateful people that would skirt on the edges of my life, but the point is that I could take out all my frustrations on this lump of flour, yeast and water. Then I could bake it and turn it into something delicious. 

I ended up using some random bread recipe that I found online that seemed pretty close to the one I used to use. I'm out of practice. The bread turned out good, but dense and not as fluffy as it should be. It still makes great toast though and maybe this will become a regular Sunday thing. Baking bread could go on the list with CBS Sunday Morning, laundry and waiting until late afternoon to brush my teeth. Maybe I had some frustrations that needed to be turned into something delicious and that's why I got all obsessed about baking bread. Maybe it is just a good idea to practice releasing frustrations every week by pounding a lump of dough with my fists.  

SAUERKRAUT IN MY OATMEAL

Buddha bowl. #prasad #yogapearl

"Buddha bowl. #prasad #yogapearl"

Have you guys heard about this new food craze of eating fermented foods? I feel like my yoga and veggie magazines have had something to say about fermented foods in every issue for the past three months. They talk a lot about incorporating kimchi and sauerkraut into your diet, but I usually stop reading anything that has the word "kimchi" in it. Chris loved kimchi. He was half Thai and it was a staple in his house growing up. I, on the other hand, was never able to get past the smell of kimchi in order to eat it. It smells like hot boiled garbage vomit. There was a late night snack incident that happened once when we lived in a rent house in OKC. Chris was in the kitchen and I was sound asleep in the back bedroom with the door closed. Chris quickly opened the lid of a jar of kimchi, stabbed some onto a fork and then into his mouth before closing the lid of the jar. The whole process took seconds. The smell from the jar being open for those seconds was enough to wake me from a deep sleep rooms away. 

I do like sauerkraut though. I'll eat it on a hotdog or a sandwich. There's a brand called Bubbies sauerkraut that is my favorite. It is crisp and fresh and delicious; probably because it only has three ingredients: cabbage, water and salt. That seems too easy. I might try making my own this summer. Any hoo...fermented foods in your diet. All the articles are saying that naturally fermented foods like sauerkraut are a really good source of Omega-3s, vitamin D and probiotics. Probiotics has become a buzz word all of it's very own, but there's some solid research out there that these microbes are beneficial to gut health. Then I found this article that says probiotics can change brain functions. Probiotics probably need to be a buzz word. You can take a pill form of probiotics, but I already have to swallow two fish oil pills, a multivitamin, an iron pill and my birth control pill every day. Sometimes I add in a vitamin D, but still, that's a lot of pill swallowing. I don't eat much yogurt either or much dairy at all. Every once in a while, I get a Noosa yogurt because it is the most delicious. Even the raspberry flavor that makes my lip swell (food allergy). 

I like to diagnose myself and I've recently decided that my bloated belly is due to the fact that I don't get enough probiotics in my diet. I remember reading about ways to incorporate fermented foods and one way is to mix it in your oatmeal. I know. Sauerkraut and oatmeal just don't really sound like two things that go together.  Well, the other morning, I was scraping my steel cut oats out of the rice cooker and decided to throw in a fork full of sauerkraut. I also added some honey and a banana. Sauerkraut and oatmeal should totally not go together, but some how they kind of do. No really! It's good. It's weird, but it's good. I've been a little put off with my steel cut oats because they're boring and then I'd be hungry two hours later. Now, I don't finish my bowl of oats and I'm not starving at ten o'clock and I like my steel cut oats again. I will not, however, try to mix kimchi into my oatmeal. Because I'm nutty, but I'm not crazy stupid nutty. 

I've only been doing this for a couple of days, so I don't really know if it is making a difference in my bloated belly. I also can't tell you if it has made my brain happier. It has changed the way I think about mixing salty cabbage with honey and oats. That's got to be saying something about my brain function (good or bad). 

WE ARE VERY PROGRESSIVE

Appetizer of Snails #westportcafeandbar #LifeList #birthdaydinner

"Appetizer of Snails #westportcafeandbar #LifeList #birthdaydinner"

Several weeks back, Michael and I were discussing my birthday and what I might want to do for my big forty. I'm not one for making a big deal out of my birthday no matter what the age. That day has some heavy heavy baggage and I figure if I lay low, the Gods won't notice me. So, better keep it simple is my thinking. Any way, week nights are not good going out nights for either of us. We couldn't do anything until Sunday because we had the Cabbage this weekend. So we were talking about what to do and where to go when I remembered that trying escargot was on my life list. I said "I want to try escargot!" and Michael looked at me with a squinty eye. "Well...OK." and he started looking up French restaurants. We have a number of reputable French restaurants and most of them all have escargot on the menu, but nothing else about their menus seemed all that appealing. I was unwilling to waste a whole birthday meal at one of these places. Then Michael saw that the Westport Cafe and Bar had escargot on their appetizer menu and a light bulb went off above my head. 

The Westport Cafe is in the Westport area that includes a whole bunch of great places to eat, all within walking distance of each other. I suggested that we do a progressive dinner. We'd have appetizers at one place, soup and salad at another place, an entree at yet another place and then dessert at some place else. I remember doing progressive dinners with the youth group in church when I was a teen and I remembered that I thought they were great fun. I don't know why I haven't done one or two since then. Michael agreed that a progressive dinner sounded like great fun. My job was to make a list of places I wanted and he would make sure we'd get there. So, I made my list. We'd start out at the Westport Cafe for escargot. Next, we'd move on to the Beer Kitchen for soup and salad. Our entree would of course come from Char Bar who has the most delicious jackfruit sandwich. Then we'd finish off our evening at the new Doughnut Lounge. Michael's rule was that I had to have a cocktail at each place. 

Of course the highlight of the evening was the escargot. It was a new experience for both of us and it was a little scary and a lot exciting. When our waitress brought them out, I was slightly disappointed that they were not in shells. I had all these previous visions of people digging snails out a shell with a dainty fork. We've all seen Pretty Woman, but our snails came out with out shells, individually resting in a well covered with herbed butter sauce. I quickly squelched my disappointment and scooped one up with my fork and popped it in my mouth. They were delicious! We loved them. The rest of the evening one of us would exclaim "We ate snails!" and the other would reply with "and we liked them!" This is not to say that we did not enjoy the rest of our progressive dinner. I had the Boulevard Tank 7 cheddar soup and Rocket Greens salad at the Beer Kitchen. The salad had beets and arugula and you can't go wrong with cheese soup and I was really full by the time we left Beer Kitchen.

We got to Char Bar and we were not hungry at all, but we were in this thing. So we each ordered a sandwich and cut them in half as soon as they brought them out and asked for to-go boxes. I love the Jackknife sandwich at Char Bar. It has smoked jackfruit and cheese on it, topped with fried jalapenos and avocado, but there was no way I was going to be able to eat all of  that after everything else. I was grateful that the Doughnut Lounge was at the opposite end of the street from Char Bar so we'd have a longer walk for dessert. When we got to the Doughnut Lounge, we sat at the bar to order our drinks. Michael told the guys working that we were in celebrating my fortieth and a young man, who I assume was the manager, said "Lovely! Let me get you a doughnut on the house!" The drink I had there was called the Last Word, which we found appropriate for our last stop. It was made with gin and chartreuse and some other stuff and it smelled like I was sticking my face into an herb garden every time I lifted my glass to take a sip.

Everything was delicious and each restaurant was very gracious. They were all interested in where we were going next and where we had been before. We had never been to the Westport Cafe before and after seeing their menu we both agreed that we needed to go back  and eat dinner there some time. Things I would do different next time would be to split more things. We ordered two appetizers at Westport Cafe in case the snails where not our thing. We totally didn't need that delicious cheese plate. But I'm glad we did it. I think we should have progressive dinners all the time.  

THE SKINNY

My new everything journal

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

We were naked in bed. I looked down at my doughy white belly and mumbled something about being fat. Michael told me that this was untrue. I said "next year, I'm going to be skinny." Michael replied with "a healthy skinny." I said "No. I want to be so skinny you can see my bones." Michael said "No. You mean a healthy skinny." I didn't argue with him, but in my head I was still stuck on the idea of being that kind of skinny where my bones poked out of my skin and you could count my ribs. There's a part of me that really considers this, wonders how to achieve this. I would eat one Jelly Belly a day, a piece of fruit and a peanut. I have never been skinny let alone bag of bones skinny, but I now wanted desperately to be skeleton thin. I've never been an extreme anything before.

My whole life has been one of practicality and moderation. I rarely snack between meals. There's never a cookie a day. My dessert at lunch is fruit (with the exception of the other day when I ate what was left of Mom's sweet potato pie/casserole/deliciousness). I may accept the offer for candy one out of the ten times asked. That's not to say that I will not eat the occasional cupcake or bagel that is brought into this office. I will devour that shit, but the cupcakes and bagels are maybe a bi-monthly event around here. I am a moderate drinker with three beers being my usual limit. I walk thirty minutes a day at the moderate speed of 3.6 miles per hour. My tattoos are even moderate. If I were to have a tombstone "everything in moderation" would be my epitaph. 

My entire life I have sat on the fence line straddling mediocre and advanced. I was one point away from being put in with the "gifted and talented" kids in third grade. Too smart for my class and too dumb for the advanced class. My talent is average with a singing voice that was good enough for a scholarship but lacked the ambition and drive for much more than that. I don't really care about the number of publications I have (not really that many) and I am mildly proud of myself for that journal cover I got once. Actually, I think I was just as impressed with the Christmas wreath I made for the door.

I am not one to over indulge or deprive myself. In fact, I have a thing about being hungry. Fear of hunger may be a good way to put it. I don't want to get caught between meals with a gnawing stomach and no snack. If faced with this situation I will either suffer and feel woozy and anxious or I will go to the cafeteria and buy all of the food. All of it. The hardest part of that juice cleanse I did once was making all the juice to take with me to work, because the anxiety of not having enough was crippling. I have no idea where this anxiety and fear comes from. We were poor at times growing up, but never so poor that we didn't have food. 

I know that saying I want to be skeleton thin sounds dangerous. It puts to mind eating disorders and illness. I'm not looking to give myself an eating disorder or poor health. But maybe a little deprivation is in order. Maybe I need to go hungry for a bit, work through that anxiety. Maybe I need to do what I am afraid to do. How shameful and ridiculous is it for someone like me to be afraid of going hungry when millions of people in this country go to bed at night with gnawing stomachs and uncertainty of where their next meal will come from. At least I know I can have more than a Jelly Belly and a peanut for lunch. I have the means and then some. In fact I will be delivering my box of canned goods to Harvesters this weekend. I have collected fifteen cans or so of food for the 15 Can Challenge. You can help too by making a donation to Harvesters. All you need to do is click on the word Harvesters in this sentence.

So don't fret. You will not be counting my ribs by this time next year. I'm too lazy to be extreme. 

APRIL FOOO...WAIT, WHAT DAY IS IT?

I honestly thought that tomorrow was April 1st and had ideas of writing all about how Michael probably wished I was playing an April Fools joke on him with the meal plan for this week. You see, I've put us on a cleansing diet this week. Last week every pair of pants I put on made me feel awful. Then I bought a pair of pants (in my usual size) through an online sale for a place I've always wanted to buy pants from but haven't ever because they are EXPENSIVE. Those pants arrived Friday and I was really sad when I tried them on. They fit, but it ain't pretty. They're too tight but if I'd gone up a size those would be too big. So I threw my hands up and yelled "THAT'S IT!". The food in this house is out of control. It's not that it's so bad for us as much as I have been eating so much of it. I told Michael that I was going on a cleansing diet for this week and he said "sign me up!". No gluten, no sugar, no caffeine, no animal products and no alcohol for a week. Then Michael said "wait a minute. no cheese?".Hey, I gave him an out. I told him he didn't have to do this if he didn't want to. I probably shouldn't have started our first meal of the cleanse with something like kelp noodles. I felt like my ass was telling me it was just time to lighten up and thought what a great way to start out the first week of April. Except it is not April. But who cares. No gluten, no sugar, no caffeine, no animal products and no alcohol for a week. This sounds like it would be so dang easy for me, but I will tell you that I have been tempted. There was a bunch of food left over from an event at work and they invited the employees down to eat it. There were three kinds of cookies. I ate strawberries and grapes. Same thing. But I was really surprised by my reaction to the sight of all that food. The craving train hit hard. Besides the cookies, they had lots of vegetarian friendly items, all of which were wrapped around some sort of bread. I was slightly appalled at myself because of how badly I wanted to eat that stuff wrapped in bread. I have grown an addiction to bread products. I don't even know how I did that. I eat corn tortillas at the house and have a bagel on Sundays. But if you set a basket of fresh bread any where near my face, I will eat it. My office at work has had a constant supply of cookies, candy, and muffins since Christmas. I have said yes to every cookie, cupcake and sweettart. I used to those soft fluffy foods to comfort me through the winter. Actually, I think I just now realized that's what I've been doing. Breakthrough!

I've done this cleansing diet before. It's a great re-set button. I've learned a few things about doing one of these re-sets. Right off the bat you're hit with all the things you can't eat. This diet is so easy if you can flip that mindset around to see all the things you can eat. Also, flavor is important. Spices, spices, spices. I had to plan meals that I thought Michael would eat. He likes curries and tacos. We'll have butternut squash and chickpea curry on night and black bean quinoa sweet potato tacos another night. There's a potato and broccoli skillet meal planned and a stir fry with corn noodles. Somewhere in the middle of all this I hope to regain some control over my eating habits. Well really it's more about regaining some constraint in eating the foods I just don't need to be eating.

Except I just sent a check to Stephanie for three boxes of Thin Mints.

THE ITCHY AND SCRATCHY SHOW

I share an office space with five guys. It started with Jay. He was the first to fall victim to the sinus infection. In fact he carried his around for almost a month. Next was Zulin. He fared better than all of us, only struggling a couple of days with the sniffles. The next to fall was Jeff, except his got diagnosed as bronchitis. Sean fell victim soon after Jeff. I thought I was doing well, like I'd make it despite all the hacking, snorting, and coughing going on all around me. I am delusional, but after six days of antibiotics I feel like I am on the mend with the exception of wanting to claw my skin off. The antibiotic makes my skin itchy. Unfortunately I have passed my illness on to Michael. His birthday is tomorrow and we decided not to do gifts for each other's birthdays. I cheated and gave him some new house slippers, a book and a cold. I'm the best girlfriend ever. But I feel fine. Maybe fine isn't quite the word. I feel motivated. You see, they had to weigh me at the doctor's office last week and I cringed at the eight pounds that I've added to my body. I already had an inkling that I've put on a few pounds since Michael moved in. He's not a good food influence. Also, for the last month, there have been some sort of basket of candy, cookies and bagels sitting on the windowsill right behind my desk. I'm a sucker for anything bread. I've noticed this pattern emerging where I start off the week with good intentions. I eat good clean food, no snacking between meals and a smaller portion at dinner. By the middle of the week, I'm still doing OK except for the four pumpkin cookies I consumed, but I made sure to space them out through the day. A cookie here. A cookie there. It just gets worse. By Friday, my brain stops functioning and looses the ability to process the little things, like what to eat for dinner. This means I am easily talked into things like Chinese buffets and fried cheese. I'm not going to lie. Saturday night, a tipsy Michael said he was hungry as we neared the end of his birthday barhop. When I asked him what he wanted, he looked sheepishly at me and said "Taco Bell". We were barhopping in my neighborhood, close to the house, but I had no idea where Taco Bell was. Turns out, it's right down the street. Michael was amazed that I let him eat Taco Bell and more than shocked that I ate a bean burrito. I have regrets. And Michael is still talking about how I let him eat Taco Bell.

When I went a little crazy after seeing Food Inc., Chris would remind me that we eat 80% clean so we can give ourselves that 20% of leeway. That way of thinking curbed my neurotic panic attacks when forced to make a food decision in a convenient store. It has also helped me to stop beating myself up every time I put something in my mouth (I'm talking about food, you filthy minded). My 80/20 these days is starting to look more like 60/40. Holiday season is upon us which that 60/40 could easily go 40/60. Over the weekend I thought a lot about making a holiday resolution. I know we usually save up the resolutioning for the New Year. But what if I made some preventative resolutions? I'm even considering making the usual resolutions that people make every year: eat less, exercise more, yada yada yada. Make better choices. Worry less (I've been a bit of a worry wort the last couple of months. I'm imbalanced). All I know is that it sure would be a lot easier dropping those eight pounds now than eight plus who knows what after the holidays. So...once again I'm beginning the work week with good intentions, but this time I plan to see them through.

FOOD DIARIES

I've had several questions about recipes for things I've posted pictures of lately. I know we have this whole group on FB for menu ideas and recipe exchange and I hardly ever post to it. It's just that I feel that by the time I type everything up, I've used too much space. No one wants to read that much about ghee and mung beans on that little forum. So I thought I'd post some stuff over here. Also..I wanted to address a comment left by Melissa on my picture for quinoa tacos. She mentioned something about how time didn't allow her to make meals like that one. I think a lot of people feel this way. Eating clean and healthy just seems like it takes so much time and effort. I've got two words for you: rice cooker. If you don't have one of these things, get one. And if you're just now going out to get one, go ahead and invest in a nice one with a timer that let's you set it to when you want to start cooking. The rice cooker has become my go-to gadget. It's not just for rice. Put your steel cut oats and water in before you go to bed and when you get up the next morning start the rice cooker. Breakfast is served. One meal I tend to make at least once a week in kitchari. There are dozens of recipes out there for kitchari. I use a variation of this one. I've modified it because I like more mung beans and less rice. The night before, I put 1/2 cup of mung beans in a bowl to soak. The next day I rinse the beans and then put them in the rice cooker along with 1/3 cup of rice (this makes enough for my super and lunch the next day with lunch being the bigger portion). I add enough water for both beans and rice (1 and 2/3 cup). When it's done, I stir in a tablespoon of ghee, some coriander, some cumin and some fennel. I top my serving with steamed kale, dulse flakes (my alternative to salt) and toasted coconut. But you can top kitchari with anything you want. That's the beauty of this dish. The rice and beans make up the base of the dish and then you flavor it to your taste. The rice cooker does all the cooking except for the five minutes it took me to steam my kale.

The quinoa sweet potato tacos were my invention. I chopped up a sweet potato, dumped it in the rice cooker along with quinoa and water. I mixed in some taco seasoning and ghee and then started the cooker. Near the end of the cook time, I opened the rice cooker and stirred everything. When most of the liquid was gone, I turned off the rice cooker. I wanted the quinoa to be mushy and not too dry. I don't think it would hurt to set the rice cooker and forget it, but quinoa tends to stick to the bottom of the rice cooker more than rice does. I filled taco shells with the quinoa sweet potato mixture and then topped with avocado and shredded spinach. You can, of course, top this with whatever you like to top tacos with. Again...the rice cooker does all the work. It took five minutes to chop up the sweet potato, spinach and avocado.

I know many of you out there are probably thinking that this all sounds nice but there's no way you'd be able to get your kids to eat this. Maybe and maybe not. A kid has to be exposed to a flavor twenty times before they can make a decision about it. Tacos are generally an easy sell with kids. Especially if they get to make their own. Same goes for kitchari. Remember, the rice and beans are the base. You add the flavors. Coconut oil is a great alternative to ghee. I say let the kid choose the spices and steamed veggies. This way they'll learn what flavors they like or don't like on their own. These are really simple meals, but they are tasty and satisfying. And it's what I've been eating lately.

BOUNTY

I mentioned earlier in the weekend that the Farmer's Market was a trap. This time of year it truly is for me. I go in with a list and an intention and then pass the booth of fresh corn and all that intention and list making is tossed out with that silly baby and the bath water. I've been buying tomatoes from this one booth now every weekend for the last three weeks. It's run by a young Pentecostal family. They have boxes of what they call seconds that are half the price of the others. This means that the tomatoes aren't pretty and have some bruises. The woman and I swap tomato stories. She's up to her eyeballs in canning. Her husband always tries to get me to buy a whole box load of tomatoes, but I just can't commit to that kind of commitment. My freezer is only ye big.

The market is full of beautiful bright colors right now. Cantaloupes and watermelons. Tomatoes and peaches. Every kind of squash and eggplants. The find this Saturday was bright orangey red Turkish eggplants. They were not on the list, but they were too enticing to turn down. The corn was not on the list either, but it's so cheap right now and I've become addicted to that moc-polenta. I also ended up with a bag of okra. I think that just jumped in all on it's own because I honestly don't remember buying it.

I chopped up the eggplant and okra, tossed it with garlic and olive oil. Threw in some basil and oregano from the garden and roasted them in the oven along with my tomatoes. The Turkish eggplants remind me of a pulpier tomato. It has almost a bitter earthy taste and mixes well with the sweet corn of the polenta.

Yes, the market is a huge trap, but it's a trap I don't mind getting caught up in again and again and again. And who knows? Maybe next week I will buy that box of tomatoes.