Wherein I Officially End An Important Relationship

Crunchy Chicken made my fifteen minutes of armchair activism fairly easy this morning, with her most recent campaign to fix the farm bill. I urge you all to write your representative about this. The farm bill doesn't get much attention, which is weird considering how it almost single-handedly directs how agriculture is conducted in this country. Crunchy makes it super-easy for you too providing a template and everything. I took her template, and tweaked it a little to talk about how modifying the farm bill is good for California as well as the rest of the country.

Speaking of food, I gotta tell you, I never, ever thought of myself as someone who could cook before. Oh, I could follow a recipe, but to me there's a keen distinction between following a recipe (which anyone who can read can do) and cooking. I could do the former, and I could do the former well, even for complicated dishes. But I did not know how to cook the simplest dish.

But ever since DeSloFooMo, I've been forced to learn. Now that frozen or one-serving meals are pretty much verboten, if I want to eat, I have to do more than microwave. And I gotta tell you, that what started as a personal campaign against waste has become much more. It's not just that frozen meals produce a lot of trash, they have a lot of preservatives and sodium. And frankly? Now that I've started to remember what a home cooked meal tastes like? Well, Lean Cusine just doesn't compare.

On Wednesday night, I decided to try out a turkey-bacon chili recipe for the first time. I left out two spices I didn't have, and subbed in five others that I did have. Six months ago, I would never, ever have thought to defy a recipe. That would be blasphemy! I would have hurried off to the store and bought the two spices I didn't own, and never thought of adding anything else. But, now those once-weak cooking muscles are much stronger, and I'm no longer afraid to use those muscles. It's exciting to take a recipe and "make it my own," as Simon Cowell would say.

Fast-forward to Friday, when I handed a bowl of my chili to a co-worker of mine. "Wow," she said tasting it. "You know, I'm a Texan, and so I'm a huge chili snob. This? Is good chili."

Wow. No one ever complimented my microwaving skills like that!

So, sorry, Lean Cuisine. You probably have been wondering why I've been avoiding your eye in the grocery store. Why I ignore your calls. You send me coupons (5 for $10!) and I am still not enticed. And well, you've been good to me in the past, so I feel I owe you an explanation.

It's like this. We had a good run. But frankly, I've changed, and you ... well you haven't. It's not your fault, exactly. It's me. I want more than what you could provide me. I want food instead of maltodextrin and xanthan gum, and taste instead of cardboard. You were convenient, Lean Cuisine, but you didn't have much else to offer. So it's over. Don't try to call me or email anymore. Let's just agree to go our separate ways. No muss. No fuss. Breaking up is never easy. But it's time.

Miscellany

Today I got an email from Red Envelope: LAST CHANCE for Romance. Sheesh, Red Envelope, I think I'll survive somehow without your $40 mile high kit thanks. Seriously, and I don't really mean to take this blog into R-rated territory, but apparently everyone else is doing it, do you really need to spend $40 so that you can have ess-ee-ex in a tiny germy bathroom? I really don't get why everything for Valentine's Day has to be so manufactured-romantic. In my humble opinion, chocolates and a teddy bear don't say romance so much as, I-didn't-put-any-thought-into-this-so-I-picked-this-thing-up-at-the-Vons. I love presents, both giving and getting, but I feel like the point of Valentine's Day is often to give presents that are designated romantic, as opposed to giving something that your sig-o will actually appreciate/wants/needs.

In other news my friend Honda IMed me today to tell me that her mom was getting rid of some kitchen stuff, so she snagged a gingerbread man cookie cutter for me. So, yay! No more having to hand cut from paper templates! We're so excited that Honda decided we might need to make summer gingerbread men in bathing suits.

And yes, summer has come to LA. I'm hoping we still see some rain, but last night I was wishing for a fan instead of a rice sock. So technically, there's six weeks of Freeze Yer Buns left, but, I'm going to start preparing for Heat Yer Buns Summer edition, and am on the look out for a used fan.

What else? Project No Waste is going poorly. Somehow I ended up with a loaf of bread that went moldy in about four days. I don't know how that's possible because normally bread keeps at least a week, but it meant I had to throw away about 3/4 a loaf of bread.

And Trim the Fat is going worse. I signed up with pretty much one goal: to reduce the time I spend online. If you've guessed that I've made barely any progress you would be correct. I *have* been spending less time online when I'm not at the office, but that's only because I've been going out a lot. When I get home, I still make a bee-line for the computer.

Next on the agenda for FeGROCMo? Paring down my purse collection. Someone once said that you are either a purse girl or a shoe girl, and I am definitely the former. I have WAY too many purses, but I love them so, so much. So this is going to be a tough one for me.

Oh! Remember the wine corks in my garbage diary? Well, the illustrious Green Bean tipped me off to a place that will take back your wine corks! Check them out.

Okay, I think that's all the updates for now. Any questions?

People of the Corn

I just started reading Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and so far it's been a fascinating and somewhat frightening read. It's an interesting time for me to be reading this book- halfway through my DeSloFooMo challenge. One of the things I like about this current challenge is that it has made me take a closer look at the food I'm putting in my body and how it gets from wherever it is grown or raised to me.

Before DeSloFooMo, I really didn't give much thought to the food I ate. I know it seems crazy, but I never considered who made the Trader Joe's prepared lasagna I like. I never considered where it was made or when. I didn't think about where the lettuce for my prepared salad was grown, or whether the dressing was made with high fructose corn syrup. I bought organic at times, and didn't when I was feeling cheap. Food sustains me, but it didn't sustain my interest. I just ... didn't care.

Since starting the challenge, I've become more keenly interested in the food I eat. I've bought mostly organic when it was an option. I've examined ingredient labels. And since I'm the one preparing my lasagna, I know when it was made and where. I felt like I was becoming much more food conscious and savvy.

But as I read this book, I realize, I still have so much to learn.

One of the most interesting parts of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" has to do with its in depth coverage of the corn industry. I knew that corn was in a lot of foods and drinks, and yet, I never really realized the extent until I started reading this book. Pollan writes that while Mexican descendants of the Mayans may claim to be "the corn people," the truth is that Americans have more of a claim to that title:

But carbon 13 doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of North Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn. "When you look at the isotope ratios," Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist who's done this sort of research, told me, "we North Americans look like corn chips with legs." Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar.
So that's us: processed corn, walking (Dilemma 23).

I knew from traveling to other parts of the world that most other countries weren't as addicted to high fructose corn syrup, but I didn't give much thought to what we feed our livestock. As it turns out, corn is in our sodas, our burgers, and probably in our fries as well.

Was I a really a 'corn chip with legs?' I started to pull jars out of cabinets to get a closer look at what I was eating. The cereal I ate today didn't have high fructose corn syrup, but it does contain corn bran and corn starch. The milk I drank probably came from a corn-fed cow. The yogurt I had was imported from Greece, so the cows there probably weren't fed corn, but I really don't know much about Greek farming. The honey I had with the yogurt is corn-free, as was the peanut butter and jelly I ate. (Both were organic, from Trader Joes. Smucker's would have contained high fructose corn syrup.) But the bread for my PB&J sandwich? Contained corn flour.

Obviously corn isn't a bad guy. I love corn, corn bread, and corn tortillas. But the idea that we're unconsciously eating so much corn is scary. And the more I read and learn, the more I realize that the way we grow our food is fundamentally problematic.

And yet, it seems unlikely to be changed.

Arduous Can Bake, But She Cannot Ice

On, Friday, I made some chocolate gingerbread men to take with me to my friend's holiday cookie decorating party.

Of course, I didn't have a gingerbread man cookie cutter, nor could I buy one, so I had to cut them out using a paper template.



All things considered, I think they turned out pretty well.



I took them to the party, where I scored massive bonus points for making CHOCOLATE gingerbread men, and also for making them without the use of a cookie cutter.

And then I tried to decorate them. And let's just say, I'm not giving Martha a run for her money any time soon.

This was my first attempt.



It wouldn't be so bad ... you know, if I were FIVE.

This is punk man. I made him when I got tired of trying to use the icing.



Uh oh. I guess this gingerbread man suffered some red eye when I took his picture.



A Family of Freaks.



Luckily for me, freakish gingerbread men taste just as good as the non-freakish variety. Unlucky for the poor gingerbread men. They're all gone now.

Happy Friday!

My desk is a mess, and my Christmas to-do list feels a mile long, but I wanted to wish everyone a happy and low-stress weekend (as low stress as weekends this time of year can be.)

I've lately taken to listening to holiday music at work, and it's amazing how it's been putting me in the holiday spirit, and making me less cranky about my epic to-do list.

This weekend, DeSloFooMo-holiday baking edition! I can't really remember the last time I baked cookies. And I definitely cannot remember the last time I baked cookies that weren't pre-made in a tube. Probably hasn't happened since high school. But I got to say, this cooking thing? I will admit, it's become a little addictive for me. I definitely don't hate it so much as I used to. So I'm excited to try my hand at baking. And if it all goes terribly wrong, well, you know you'll be the first to know.

DeSloFooMo- Shoot Me Now

Today I am eating a heavenly butternut squash soup for lunch. I am sincerely glad it is so good, because making it almost killed me.

It all started when the magnificent ScienceMama sent me a few recipes to try including her recipe for butternut squash soup. I LOVE butternut squash soup. In fact, it might be my current favorite soup. So I skimmed through the recipe, and it seemed that ScienceMama had adequately judged my level of culinary skill (or lack there of.) Most of the recipe seemed doable. The only thing that confused me was this one phrase: "Brush cut side of squash with oil."

"Brush cut? How do you brush cut something?" I wondered. I came to the conclusion that brush cutting must be some sort of more advanced culinary skill that I had yet to learn, perhaps involving a cooking utensil I didn't own- half basting brush, half knife? Because I don't ALWAYS like to telegraph my cooking retardedness, I decided to Google "brush cut," and see what I got.

Of course, all I got was that a brush cut was a type of hair cut. Which, somehow, I doubted that I was supposed to give the squash some sort of hair cut, so that was out. I googled "brush cut cooking," and came up with many results involving brush cutting things, but nowhere was brush cutting defined!

Finally, I gave up and turned to Awesomest Co-worker. "Okay, this is probably a really stupid question, but I'm looking at a recipe that's telling me to 'brush cut' something. What does that mean?"

Awesomest Co-worker looked at me dumbfounded. "Brush cut? I have no idea."

I began to feel relieved. "Oh good. So this isn't some sort of culinary term that EVERYONE knows except me."

"What's the context," Awesomest Co-Worker asked.

"Brush cut side of squash with oil," I began.

And that's when Awesomest Co-Worker started to laugh. "It's not brush cut, it's brush THE CUT side of squash. Like, brush the side of the squash that has been cut as opposed to the non-cut side."

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. See, THAT I know how to do."

That being settled, I reviewed the rest of the recipe. It looked easy, though time-consuming, with a lot of down time while things roasted or simmered. So I figured, while I was making that, I might as well make tomato sauce as well. I had been meaning to try my hand at making my own tomato sauce- mostly to use up all my tomatoes before they went moldy. (I'm trying really hard this time NOT to end up with moldy vegetables. So far, I've been successful.)

The tomato sauce recipe looked easy too. Why not just make one night a giant cooking night? So, I decided to make BOTH the butternut squash soup and the tomato sauce.

THIS WAS MY HUGE MISTAKE.

I got home at 7:10 pm, having had to stop at two grocery stores on my way, because neither Trader Joe's nor Vons carried ALL the ingredients I needed. I immediately got to work on the squash.

For a while it was all sunshine and daisies. I successfully roasted the squash.



I observed that tomatoes look naked and sad when peeled, and that de-seeding them is intensely boring.



But as the minutes started to tick by, I got more and more tired. My back ached from stooping over to chop things. My feet hurt from standing. I was STARVING because I still hadn't found time to eat dinner. My hands were freezing from handling cold vegetables, and the rest of me was burning up from the heat of the stove and oven. I was slowly getting crankier and crankier.

By 10:00pm I was entering the home stretch. The butternut squash soup was almost done. All I had to do was throw it in the blender, and season it. The tomato sauce just had to be pureed in the food processor and then reduced. No more chopping! Hooray!!

And then my blender did this:



Butternut squash soup splattered all over my fridge, the counter, the blender, and my hair. I quickly unplugged the blender before it could vomit up anymore soup and stared at the mess. By this time I was tired enough, hungry enough, and achy enough that I could have cried. But luckily, the first thought that came into my head was, "Well at least it will make for a good fodder for my blog."

I managed to salvage most of the butternut squash soup, and then started re-blending it a cup at a time, while holding on tight to the blender to prevent it from leaking. I quickly tasted the soup (amazing!) and I wanted to stop right there, but I still had the freaking tomato sauce to finish and also my kitchen looked like 20 toddlers had had a food fight in it.

I quickly put the tomato sauce through the food processor, and set it on the stove to reduce while I cleaned the kitchen. I cleaned up most of the dishes, and then decided, "Screw it. I'll do the rest tomorrow," and went to watch TV and eat the remainder of the rum cake from Sunday night.

Meanwhile, my sauce continued to reduce. I took a quick shower. I got dressed for bed. I brushed my teeth.

The sauce was still not done.

At last, at 12:30 at night, a mere FIVE AND A HALF HOURS AFTER I STARTED COOKING, my tomato sauce was done. Luckily, it too, had turned out to be delicious.

As I crawled into bed last night, I decided, "That's it. I'm eating sandwiches and omelets for the rest of DeSloFooMo."

Today, I feel a little better about the whole thing. But I have learned my lesson:

Never cook two time intensive recipes, neither of which you've ever tried before, in one night. Particularly a work-night.

I still haven't figured out exactly what went wrong with my blender, though I'm assuming that in my exhaustion, I didn't lock it down properly. I will say that it will probably be a little while before I work up the nerve to use my blender again.

DeSloFooMo- The Meltdown

So, while I am perfectly capable of making delicious vegetarian lasagna, or sloppy joes, or omelets, I am apparently a total disaster when it comes to making turkey burgers on a GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL.

Yesterday, I was kind of getting tired of the monotony of my diet, which mostly stems from my extremely limited cooking repertoire, because as mentioned previously, I am not much of a cook. Really. I think before this week, I cooked maybe 10 times this year. Total. But I figured, what the hell, everything's been turning out so well, and how can I mess up turkey burgers, really?

But I couldn't find my instructions to the George Foreman, so I called my mom and asked her how long I needed to cook the turkey burgers for.

"I don't know, about five minutes on either side. So 10 minutes total, okay? Be sure to cook them REALLY thoroughly," she warned because she totally doesn't trust that I won't give myself food poisoning. And I agreed with alacrity because I have a horror of uncooked meat that stems from this really scary movie that we watched in sixth grade science about a crazy dude named Fester who tries to get kids to eat foods that have been "in the danger zone!" (Annie, ScienceMama, tell me you remember this film.)

So I pulled out the George Foreman, and right here is where I admit that I also do not really like my George Foreman grill. And I know, I know, that saying that means that when I go home there will be millions of Foreman enthusiasts at my door lining up to beat me with Foreman sized sticks, but I've tried, people. I just don't like it. I don't like that you can't see the meat while it grills, and I don't like that it's so small and that it's hard to clean, and I don't like the weird little fat tray under the grill.

But it had been a long time since I last tried my Foreman, and I figured, well it's THERE, and everyone says that it makes cooking so easy, and I've been successfully managing to cook all week, so maybe I'm not the cooking idiot I once was. So I put my turkey burgers on the Foreman, and checked the clock. And then five minutes in, I opened up the grill, and this was my first indicator that maybe my mom was wrong about how long it takes to cook turkey on a Foreman grill, because the burgers looked about done, and also, why would I need to flip them since there's that double grill? But, my mom said ten minutes, and she's MY MOM. I trusted her. So I flipped them over, and closed the Foreman again.

But now I was kind of suspicious, so I ran to my computer to check and see if I could find instructions online, but I couldn't find them anywhere, and then I remembered exactly where the instructions were, so I quickly pulled them out and saw that according to the instructions turkey burgers are supposed to cook for FIVE TO SEVEN minutes.

But it was too late, it had already been ten minutes, so I hastily unplugged the Foreman and put the burgers on a plate. And I was starving, so I just poured a ton of ketchup and mustard on my burger to mask the slightly burnt taste, and took a big bite and my bite was COLD and I freaked out and had a mini panic attack and I could swear in my head that Fester's evil eyes were gleaming at me.

And then I realized that the cold was not from the burger, but from the bun, which ... okay, I had run out of hamburger buns, so I had pulled an English muffin from the freezer to use. Only it turns out that you should not put English muffins in the freezer because they turn into hockey pucks, and were impossible to separate, so when I finally managed to separate them, 3/4 of the muffin was on one side and 1/4was on the other, but the whole thing had been such a fiasco, and I was hungry, so I just threw it in the toaster like that, and well, the 3/4 of a muffin? It was still a little cold.

In the end I didn't die of food poisoning which is the most important thing anyway. And I learnt some very important things in the process, such as, "Don't put
English muffins in the freezer," and "In addition to being hard to clean, Foreman grills are also freakishly fast in cooking meat."

So there you are. I guess it would have been too much to have expected a week to go by without some sort of Arduous cooking fiasco.

Why "Freeze Yer Buns" Isn't So Arduous

It was a sunny 85 degrees in Los Angeles yesterday. Ha ha! We may be a city full of gridlock and plastic surgery, but on the flip side, we occasionally get 80 degree days in December.

(I think that's actually our official motto. LA: it's not that cold.)

Anyway, after a week of freezing my buns off and wondering if I was going to make it through this challenge, it was so nice to come home to an apartment that wasn't icy cold but warm, warm, warm. In fact it was a little too warm. And then I thought, hey, I committed to turning off my heat, I didn't say anything about my A/C. I can run that thing all night long.

I'm kidding! I'm kidding! I didn't turn on my A/C. I didn't even crack a window. Instead I revelled in not being cold, made myself dinner, talked on the phone to a few friends, and went to bed in just a tee-shirt.

It was heaven.

Oh yeah, so far DeSloFooMo is going really well! I actually find myself *excited* to cook. Of course it's only been five days, so who knows if the novelty will wear off. But for now, I'm enjoying this challenge very much.

DeSloFooMo- 1st Shopping Excursion

Part of the reason that I started eating almost entirely pre-packaged meals was because I suffer from moldy potato syndrome. It goes like this. You go shopping, and you decide that you are going to be Healthy and so you buy all these vegetables- potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, spinach. And then you throw in a frozen pizza because one cannot be healthy all the time. And then two weeks later, you want something to eat, you open your fridge, and you find a bunch of bad vegetables and nothing else. (You ate the frozen pizza 12 days ago.)

Gradually, I decided that buying fresh vegetables was a waste. I never seemed to finish them before they went bad. I would buy a cauliflower intending to cook it, but then I would always pass up the cauliflower in favor of some mac and cheese. Because it was easier. So I reasoned, if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. I could delude myself into buying fresh vegetables and then never eat them, or I could just buy ready made salads and chicken wraps from Trader Joe's and at least then I'd be getting some veggies in me.

But with this challenge, I am endeavoring to find a third way. I don't want to buy a lot of things and have them go to waste. And yet, I also don't want to have to eat the same thing every day. This is the problem of living alone, and another reason I don't cook. Four to six servings is not much for a family, but for an individual, it's four to six meals!

I knew I needed to plan. I sat down with a few cookbooks, and came up with a few meals to eat this week whose ingredients somewhat overlapped. Then I quickly listed everything I needed for these planned meals- omelets, turkey burgers, turkey sloppy joes, lasagna, and spaghetti. And after THAT, I went shopping.

I always walk to the grocery store, and I also always shop in my bags. This prevents me from mindlessly throwing things into my cart that I don't really need. Yesterday, only two things not on my list went into my cart- ketchup and mustard that I realized I didn't have and would definitely need for turkey burgers. Aside from that, it was all on my list. I mostly bought organic when I could, though I couldn't quite stop stressing about the prices.

Finally, I was done. I chatted with the nice lady at the check-out counter (Trader Joe's has the NICEST employees), and kept glancing fearfully at the register as my items rang up. Finally, my final total. $64.57.

Not bad considering all the staples I had to buy.

And then I went home, and made myself an omelet.

It was delicious.

What Have I Decided to Do?!

Okay, I think this month's challenge might be a little harder than I anticipated.

Just so you can see what I'm working with, here are the current contents of my fridge. That's face lotion in the corner, and I think the lemonade is probably old.

And this is my fridge door. Probably half the condiments and the soda need to be tossed.

Okay, and while I know my freezer looks incriminating, I'm not a lush. I swear! I just happen to throw a lot of get togethers at my house.

And my pantry. Don't ask me how long I've had that random tin of water chestnuts on the top shelf. Or why I purchased a random tin of water chestnuts in the first place.

Clearly I have my work cut out for me. Sigh.

December Challenge

So tonight when I get home, I'll officially wrap up NoBloShoeMo, and give you an official count of shoes kept and shoes going.

But right now, I want to introduce my challenge for December.

As some of you know, I pretty much live on pre-packaged foods. I'm not much of a cook, which is to say that I can cook, but I don't derive particular enjoyment from cooking, and I don't have a ton of time. I know, excuses, excuses.

But I know that pre-packaged foods are not particularly healthy, and are also definitely not environmentally friendly. So this month, my challenge to myself is:

1. No buying pre-packaged dinners
2. No buying fast food

For one month. So I can either cook, or go to a sit-down restaurant. But I can't order take-out from a sit-down restaurant unless I bring all my own containers.

I'm really excited for this challenge, but also a little scared. This challenge requires a lot of preparation, and it also requires that I remember my lunch every day before work. Luckily for me, I'm doing this particular challenge in December which means that I'll be with family for a chunk of it, and probably have lovely dinners cooked for me!

My only problem is that this challenge doesn't have a snappy name to it. So if anyone wants to come up with one, that would be great. Otherwise, maybe I'll go with DeSloFooMo.