cooking to Nirvana, starring me

Last night I spent like an hour and a half making this recipe for a “Tunisian pepper and potato couscous.” This was another of the recipes in Deb’s book – there are 1600, so God knows if I’ll ever try them all - and while I had fun cooking since BF wasn’t home and I’m not particularly good with sock puppets, it was a difficult and unusual recipe to cook, with many stops and starts. Since I can’t just reprint the recipe here without Deb’s permission, I’ll tell you what I did in steps. I did all of this while listening to Nevermind, which put an ah-memories smile on my face. (Ironic, perhaps.) Such a great record.

• Peeled and sliced boiling potatoes into sixths, for some reason.
• Chopped up four cloves of garlic. The recipe called for six, but I automatically adjust the recipe down, always, because the garlic they sell at our Giant is for some reason more potent than that on any cooking show or in any recipe book, and I’ve finally figured out how to compensate for it.
• Gathered mint and red pepper flake.
• Chopped an onion, of course, and put olive oil in a pan, of course.
• Threw all that stuff in there with two tablespoons of tomato paste, thus FINALLY USING UP the jam jar full of tomato paste that’s been in the fridge getting used up since I stupidly bought a giant can of tomato paste thinking it was tomato sauce and we had to use it bit by bit. And you can’t keep tomato anything inside a metal can, so it migrated to the jam jar and that brings us to now.

When that started to cook, the smell was un. believable. Never had I smelled anything quite like that combination before. Mint is so awesome. It had to cook for about ten minutes, and meanwhile I

• Chopped up five bell peppers of different colors,
• Drained and rinsed a can of chickpeas,
• Attempted to seed and chop four tomatoes which I’d blanched and peeled. I am not very good at seeding tomatoes. I’ve yet to meet someone who cares about errant tomato seeds here and there, though, so I guess it’s okay for now,
• And gathered couscous and jarred harissa. Everyone says you have to make your own harissa, but the flavor in this jar of it that I got from Whole Foods is so distinctive and wonderful that I don’t know if I ever will. Also, there are preservatives in this jar; since you can’t use up a batch of harissa in a month, I’m perfectly happy for those preservatives to keep my jar fresh in the fridge for as long as it keeps not growing mold.

I added the chickpeas, peppers, and some salt, and turned up the heat to saute for a couple of minutes. I had to watch it closely to see that it didn’t stick; some of the potatoes and onions had browned and stuck to the bottom of the pan during their own private saute (which added a little bit of breakfast hash brown smell to the other flavors, slobber), and there was a little yumminess building in the bottom of the pan.

When the saute was done, I added the tomatoes and 3 cups of water. The heat went down to low (eeeeventually) and it simmered for 20 minutes, while I cleaned up and checked my email and got the couscous assembly ready. I was getting ready to toast the couscous in oil, which I’d never done with couscous.

Then, said the recipe, “remove 2 cups of the liquid for the couscous and set the vegetables aside.” Oh. Okay. Have you ever tried to “remove” two cups of liquid from a simmering pan full of vegetables without getting any little bits of onion or garlic or tomato in there? Yeah, neither have I. (It was way too much in the pan to think about straining or anything like that.)

I muddled through it, without burning myself too badly, and combined the broth with the harissa in a little pan, which simmered while I toasted the couscous, and then the broth went in the couscous and on went the lid. There was fluffing, further water-adding, and then it was READY.

You guys, it was totally worth it. Delicious, flavorful, spicy, perfectly tender peppers and nice soft potatoes, unbelievably tasty couscous, just an amazing meal.

The problem is, I have enough of it to feed all of you. Of course it’ll do for lunches, but vegetable dishes are usually best right then and there…especially those with peppers in them.

While we’re on the subject of food, have you ever tried Kombucha? It’s a kind of fermented tea, Chinese, and I learned after buying a bottle of it at the health food store the other day that it’s GODDAMNED DISGUSTING. I drank it all throughout preparing this anyway because (according to the bottle, but not Wikipedia) it’s stupidly good for you, but I will be quite glad when the bottle’s gone and I never have to drink it again.

brain not home just now

Yesterday:
–Slept, luxuriously, until 5:25 
–Worked
–Was snafued by ridiculous, reasonless traffic
–Got home, made tofu and vegetables, ate them, was reasonably satisfied
–Had a glass of wine
–Saluted another day breezing by

Today:
–Don’t have the day off, can’t honor the veterans
–WILL write back to Maleesha (does that count as honoring a veteran?)
–Hopefully, will have something to blog about and won’t be so cranky about it

Sorry. It was just one of those 24 hours when there’s nothing I can write about.

in which I fail at kindness

Thought for the day: the food guide pyramid is based on absolutely nothing at all, except the dollars of bread manufacturers. Eating healthy is not about the food groups. So set yourself free and find a healthy diet with whatever elements you want to put together!

Last night I went to a yoga class at a studio that was new to me, only a few blocks away from where I work. All in all it was a lot more time-efficient than going to class at my regular studios in Annapolis, because I walked right to it for the 4:30 class and was home around 7:00.

(Although, sidebar: I feel the need to rant about the front desk person. She explained (and the very obvious flyers posted on the front desk made it unnecessary for her to do so) that they had a special for beginners, $40 for unlimited classes for a month. Since you never know what you’re getting when you go to a new studio, I like to pay for a single class only, unless they’re having a 3 for $25 session or something, because that’s not very much more than what I’d pay for a single class and I can go back and get the other 2 anytime. But $40 is, and November is already a week gone and another week is out for me because I’m out of town, and it just wasn’t much of a deal for me. I said no, I’d just take the single $15 class. She clicked a few times on the computer and said “Okay, that’s $40.” I said “Fifteen dollars. I said I’d just take the single class.” She said she was sorry and must have misheard me. Thinking back on my words (“I’ll just take the one class”), I’m not sure how she could have misheard me. I think everybody goes with the upsell, and she’d just forgotten what it was like for someone to say no to it, but it was anyway pretty annoying.)

It was a hot vinyasa class, and interesting in a number of ways. I’d forgotten how much I LOVE hot classes, the sweat beading and rolling and beading and rolling just with the ambient temperature, and how cleansing it feels to allow that to happen. The teacher put together a sequence of vinyasas that was interesting, and her style was unusual.

The thing that really surprised me was that this was a class that would have totally exhausted me six months ago, and I would have been collapsing and gasping for breath halfway through. Not no more. Apparently I leveled up and doubled my endurance somewhere along the line, because I just felt great when I left and my breathing was never out of control. Yay for me!

Something happened at work that has made me quite ashamed. We got a new employee at the end of September, and for many reasons, she did not work out and Friday turned out to be her last day. Not only did she never really get the hang of the job, dragging the rest of the team down, but she was also kind of lame and boring and very unfortunate to look at. Our team lead tried to help her understand that she needed to be working about five times faster than she was, and that her apparent eight years of experience were not showing themselves, and she decided to just not come back.

She said that she felt that there was resentment from some of the other people on the team and that was part of why she didn’t return. I am so incredibly sorry for my part in making her feel unwelcome and as if she didn’t fit in, whatever part I played. The plain fact is that she didn’t fit in, and I didn’t have any interest in talking to her other than to help her with what she needed help with (which was everything). She was slow, she blamed her problems learning on everybody but herself, she was always late, and her attempts at conversation were extremely pathetic. But I should have at least tried to be nicer to her, to be the one person who made her feel okay at this job. I didn’t, I went along with the others (although I was not nearly as unkind as my other coworkers), and I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself.

It’s over, and I will try to do better the next time this kind of situation comes along, and anyway I think this woman will have a better time at home with her young kids than trying to pay for day care and handle a difficult commute. So I’m trying not to beat myself up too much about it.

just a little touch of evil

I didn’t end up doing half of what was on my list for yesterday, but I did finish watching Touch of Evil. I’m tempted to write a review of it, like I used to, but I’m a little ashamed of myself for waiting this long to watch it, so I’m not sure I can bring any new insight to it. Good Christ, what a film. Decades ahead of its time, shot so brilliantly that I wonder if all the other directors in 1957 knew what a camera was even for, just utterly masterful. Anyone out there who feels like they’ve missed a crucial piece of American cinema because they haven’t seen Citizen Kane, I advise them to see this instead. It’s much better.

Honestly, I have now run out of things to say. So here’s another picture from Santa Barbara for you and fare thee well.

“Yurt in the Mist”

so much to do, so little motivation

I just woke up about a half-hour ago, and my head is crowded with all the things I should spend my Sunday doing: fiddling with my author website (IT REALLY NEEDS IT), creating a little newsletter about my trip for the people who donated to me (it’s been two weeks, after all), making jam, working on my book, doing like three hours of yoga, reading, cooking for next week, making a list of actions to take to promote myself as a teacher, looking for a new job, the ever-present cleaning and laundry, spider hunting, and so on. But at this second it feels like Sunday and I want to sit on the couch and watch Humphrey Bogart movies. Those of you who would kindly tell me to go on and indulge myself are sweet, but I don’t have time to do any of those other things during the week and they need to get done sometime. So I’m taking the third option and blogging about it, which of course helps everyone.

Check out this post I wrote on No Butts for my mental state about food. Any thoughts are welcome, aside from chastising me for the dessert I went on and ate anyway last night. I’m doing enough of that on my own, thanks.

Yesterday morning we went to the aquarium in Baltimore. I don’t know how nice aquariums get, but I think I remember that this is one of the better ones on this coast, and we had such a wonderful time. They had a jellyfish exhibit that was quite a lot smaller than I expected but still pretty goddamn amazing. Neither of us had been to it since we were young, and BF remembered a lot of the exhibits well. For my part I went squealing from tank to tank, making a fool of myself for how fascinated I was by the brightly colored fish and the tiny frogs and the shy, ominous snakes. I love the ocean, and the fact that we know less about it than we know about space, even though we live here, and the sharks were so creepy and the dolphins were so quick and I just had a terrific time. Despite the EIGHT THOUSAND children milling around. 99% of the people at the aquarium were there with their kids. Some of them were adorable, some of them were pushy, but none of them really annoyed me because we were having so much fun.

My car is acting up again with the not starting. We had to wait for a half hour before we could get home last night, and we almost walked (we were only a few blocks away). I wish there was a solution to this. I’m tempted to ask my dad about it over Thanksgiving, but then he’ll get obsessed with it and start hunting for the answer and not spend any time with me, which would suck. Maybe there are some, uh, car specialists in Baltimore who know how to disable the anti-theft device. Can I put that on craigslist without getting arrested?

A final note: If your grocer’s freezer contains bialys, which are sort of like bagels except thinner, softer, and with a savory onion center, buy yourself a box the next time you’re at the grocery store. Trust me on this.

this really is it

After work yesterday I decided to do something spontaneous and went to the movies to see This Is It. I had wanted to see it when I first heard about it, but my understanding was that it was one night only, and the, er, demographics of the area where I live meant that I would never, ever, ever, ever get tickets. Ever. So I shrugged and hoped it would come out on DVD. But I guess the makers of the movie decided they liked money after all and now it’s showing like a regular film, with showings about every half hour in my neighborhood theater.

One of my coworkers went to London for a week with one of her friends about a month ago. She explained to me that the reason for this trip was that her friend had bought tickets for the Michael Jackson concert that was going to open his tour in London that week, and she didn’t want to travel alone. Because I have read about the kind of devotion that he inspires in his fans, it didn’t surprise me, exactly, that this woman had decided to spend a week in another country just so she could see this one concert. But I wondered if the one concert would have been worth all that trouble and expense.

I am here to tell you, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN. This Is It is a documentary of the final tour Jackson was going to launch in the month after his death – he said it was going to be his curtain call during a press conference, and it’s sad how right he was - and Holy. Fucking. Shit. It was going to be an astonishing show. I wound up with a lot of questions – what was going through his mind when he sang “I Want You Back” in front of the Jackson 5 rainbow-heart-70’s logo? How could he have been so fragile, and how did he conceal it behind this dynamo of performance? How did the dancers and musicians come to rehearsal every day with Michael Jackson without freaking the hell out?

Many of these performers looked like they were about my age or even younger. I was actually too young for Jackson to inform my teen years; my parents weren’t fans of his so I didn’t really hear his music until I was nine or ten. Potentially these people could have actually grown up listening to him, learning his songs as their first ones on the guitar or the piano. One singer actually said that the first song she sang on stage, in third grade, was “Man in the Mirror.” And she sang “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” in duet with the King of Pop himself! Right there on film! What the hell would that feel like?

The dancers were incredible. They were so talented, so pliable. And when they watched him do “Billie Jean”, they were beside themselves, on their feet, clapping and woohoo-ing and screaming for more. If you’re a professional dancer, this has got to be the pinnacle of your life: principal dancers for Michael Jackson’s last tour. I feel sort of sorry that they didn’t get to actually do any of what they rehearsed in front of millions as they expected. Hopefully it’ll be able to go on their resumes anyway – they were picked out of hundreds who auditioned.

The man himself? I was stunned. He looked just as he always has – free of gravity, not bound by the rules of anatomy and bone structure, with so much energy from the power of his own music that he shook his hands constantly to free himself of it. His voice was satiny and perfect. He did not seem frail, or anywhere near fifty. I think he’s spent all the time between his last trial and when this was shot just…resting. Preparing for this last hurrah.

I think it’s a shame to his personal life, and to all the people who didn’t get to see him in concert, that he died before this gilded feather came to rest in his cap. I think if he had died on tour it would have been so much worse. I think if he had died after, it would have been all right. But we have this movie, to know what it would have been like, and we have such a wealth of him as it is, so I felt sad looking at him approximately the way I feel sad looking at Marilyn. She is preserved forever, youthful and beautiful and fascinating, and even though she missed so much of the life she could have had, she was born to belong to the world. People like her and Michael don’t get to choose when they come and when they go. Only how many of us they touch.

Go see this movie! Watching it on the big screen was wonderfully worth it – the details of Michael dancing are that much more impressive when he’s on a nine-foot screen. And it’s got just about any song you could want to hear. Plus new “Thriller” zombie dancing! Very, very awesome. For the sake of Paris and Prince Michael and Blanket, and the health of their wee baby stock portfolios, go see it!

In other news, I’m going to the Baltimore Aquarium today to see their jellyfish exhibit. This is a crazy fun weekend for me!

miskeylaneyoos

(written yesterday afternoon)

Ah, a few precious minutes of down time. The administrative offices of Prince George’s County are only open until 4:30, so I left work at 2:30 to get there before they closed (I am now a notary in Maryland as well as Virginny), and then headed home…and I don’t have to leave for yoga for another 45 minutes. So, time to waste, for the first time in a long time.

I’m working my way through the Foreigner collection on BF’s iTunes, and I find Foreigner a really weird band. A lot of their songs seem to have parts that are SO AWESOME YOU CAN’T SEE STRAIGHT, like the “he heard one guitar (BAM)” part in “Jukebox Hero”, and then the rest of the song is, well, I guess this is pretty kickass. Sort of. “Double Vision” is like this, too, with the very cool chorus and the yeah-whatever verses.

I occasionally listen to music made after 1987, I swear.

In my brain I’m putting together a long post to go in No Butts about my body during and after teacher training, and how conflicted I feel about it. It’s taking up a lot of mental space. Thing is, in order to explain everything I have to say properly, thousands of words will be vomited out there. Thousands. I started thinking about how I can organize everything I have to say into a single post and I got lost. Inside my head. Which does not bode well for a coherent post.

I dreamed about zombies this morning, but it was sort of like being in Shaun of the Dead, funny rather than scary. Note to filmmakers: a small college with no basements is a pretty perfect place to get fucked up by zombies. Which building are you going to choose that has everything you need to barricade yourself in with? In any given dorm, how many different doors can zombies shamble out of just when you think you’re safe? Yeah, that’s right, my subconscious is totally brilliant.

My cough still lingers, a houseguest with no return ticket. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve had bronchitis this whole time. I’m pretty sure that whatever I had was accompanied by laryngitis, because it was just so horribly painful to talk and talking made things so much worse, but the lingering cough has that hollow, thick-chested feeling that I remember from bronchitis when I was a kid. I sucked down the honey and hot water and echinacea and salt-water gargles and other natural remedies while I was at White Lotus, but the moment I got home I dug into our medicine cabinet for good old Robitussin. And oh, the relief it gave me. My cough finally went the hell away. For some things – even if it is just treating the symptom rather than the cause – toxic modern innovations really can’t be beat.

I just typed the tags for this post so far, and really, I am a strange person with a totally disorganized blog. A lot of people at teacher training asked me if my blog was about yoga, and I said no, although I wrote about yoga a lot, it was about everything. They tried to get me to be more specific, and I said it was just about my life. The question that usually followed was whether I got very many visitors. I think this means that people think non-specialized blogs are just you jerking off on the internet. (And okay, there might be some truth to that in my case.) I guess I could be marketing for more visitors, but I really want to preserve my anonymity and the little community of people who read me and whom I read. It’s a little bit of an ego boost if I have a good stats day, but what I’d get out of more visitors isn’t worth the energy I’d put into it.

That’s all for now. Happy Friday, by the time you read this. I get to go bowling with my co-workers. Sadly, I am not kidding.

take a look ahead

Just a little vignette today; I am honestly getting a little tired of blogging every day.

Headed home early rather than late. Lucky me, I worked so hard in the last two weeks that mandatory overtime is tentatively cancelled. Tomorrow I lose two hours to go pick up my notary commission, and I hope I have mostly made them up this week anyway with coming in early-early.

I am starting to lose the spaciousness that White Lotus brought me, I can feel it. I’m starting to get settled back into my little life, the mundanity crashing over what I gained. I am trying to hang on to it, trying to sit up straight in my office chair, but sitting up too straight is a backbend when I’m not warmed up and it’s hurting me.

I am driving. Driving, driving, driving a lot. The sun departs completely on my journey, and it spits rain a little against my windshield. Having listened to my iPod all day at work (I bought a cheapie little set of speakers that I can plug my iPod into, and it mostly drowns out the football discussions), I am tired of being my own DJ, so I flip back and forth between two classic rock stations, hoping for as little Tom Petty and Stones as possible. I get lucky a few times: “The Joker”, “Hotel California”, ”Evil Ways”, etc. I hear “Don’t Look Back”, and really, I am a shameless Boston fan. I know they’re considered wuss rock by some (some idiots), but I just love the harmony and the rousing guitar and the soaring vocals. “Don’t Look Back” is okay, but what it reminds me of is “Peace of Mind”, probably my favorite Boston song and one of my favorite guitar songs ever. I just love how, before that long circular end solo, he takes “look ahead” way up, so high, and it sounds crazy high but perfectly right for the end of the vocals on the song. Oh well, I think, “Don’t Look Back” is a totally decent song and at least I got a little bit o’ Boston on the ride home.

Then I flip away from the Stones and hear that the radio gods have smiled on me again: “I understand about indecision/I don’t care if I get behind/People livin’ in competition…” I sing along with a gigantic grin on my face, and actually listen to the lyrics. They apply. (All song lyrics apply to your life when you’re looking for a lift.) I have trouble not singing the guitar part as well as the vocals.

“Look aheaaaaaaaad…”

And just like that, there is my space, there is my joy, there is my tolerance. Redelivered to me on the wings of Brad Delp’s spectacular voice.

nearly wordless wednesday

This is a natural rock formation at the top of a VERY steep hike near White Lotus. Can you see the elephant?

Tomorrow’s post will suck even more, as I’m probably going to be at work for 11.5 hours today and will have no time for blogging in the evening before I collapse into bed. Plus 2+ hours of commuting. This situation is quite the yick, in case that wasn’t clear. BUT LIFE IS STILL GOOD: I’ve got many more pictures of my trip to dole out to y’all. Happy Wednesday.

oh no let’s go

So, I’ve had some Great News under my hat for a little while because I wasn’t sure it was going to come together. But it has, and now I can announce that TB and me are going to hang out LIVE AND IN PERSON around Thanksgiving time. He lives somewhat near my father’s new house, so I’m making a detour to go meet and spend a couple of days with him and Dyskinesia. BF is coming along too. How cool is that? I know it’s not as cool as the MotoGP extravaganza that Laura’s put together for next year, but I’m pretty darn excited about it. Problem is that we won’t be able to post any pictures of us hanging out together since we all have anonymous blogs. Ain’t that a hoot?

I went to yoga class with Paul last night and was totally disappointed. I think I may have grown out of him, as arrogant as that sounds. He just talked a lot, a lot, a lot, and the kind of yoga he teaches is really not the kind I like to do, and he kept saying things that made me wince, and there was just SO much upper body stuff and I wasn’t digging it at all. I’m not sure I’ll go back. I feel really bad, I’ve been going to his classes for over a year and I’ve learned so much from him, and there were all those one-on-ones that he did with me by accident when I was the only person who showed up at his 5:00 class for like a month and a half, but I think I’ve gotten everything I can from him and it’s time to move on. I don’t think he likes me much so it’s probably for the best.

I also nudged my business card into the hands of one of the other students. She was very uncomfortable in the class and had lots of injury issues, and I told her I knew it was hard to find a class that was right for you and told her I’d do a one-on-one with her anytime she wanted. She asked me how much I charged and I told her a first session would be $20. This is obscenely cheap for a one-on-one, but my plan was to do half-off the first session and then go up to $40 for an hour or an hour and a half. (Which is still pretty damn cheap.) Plus I’m so new that I don’t think it’d be right to charge a full going rate, you know.

This whole interaction felt weird and sleazy to me, selling my services to someone who might or might not care at all, but I told myself I had to get used to it and soldiered ahead with the nudging. I’m sort of proud of myself, it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever done something like that.

In the last week or so I’ve watched Purple Rain and The Notorious Bettie Page. I thought the first was unbelievably weird, yet with toe-tappin’ stuff (although Prince’s music has somehow dated itself a lot more cringingly than MJ’s has). Hard to believe it was such a big hit, what with the puppet ventriloquism and the how-did-they-even-DO-that-and-why-God-why hairstyles. The second was pretty good; more of a biosketch than a biopic, enjoyably, and as this review promised, Gretchen Mol is so lovely and comfortable and full of sunshine that it’s a real pleasure to watch her. There were a couple of tidy intelligent jabs here and there but mostly just a good movie about a terrific woman.

So what are YOU doing for Thanksgiving?