FoodiePop

I am a bad little blogger, but I can be better. As soon as things settle down a little bit, I have a laundry list of things I know I want to talk about. But right now, there is one thing I have on my mind. Change. Beau is selling his house and I am hoping that someone out there is dreaming about a huge house in our neighborhood. Every day I read online or the news tells me about the market improving or not, up and down, my brain is scrambled eggs. Now I live in said house with him and I am a team player and I have made it priority number one to get the casa staged and Pottery Barned. We live in 2000 sq ft with the minimum amount of furniture, needless to say I have been purchasing a lot of wall art and bullshit such as that. I am at Pier One at least 4 times a week. Home Depot is… I can’t believe how much I’ve been to that store.

When I say that it is crazy, tiling the laundry room and organizing each room is just the surface. This year has been about a lot of change, new president and the crumbling economy is making all of us think about a new direction. I am ready for change and moving and starting a new life together is just the start of that. I have been working on a book and the writing has been exciting and frustrating all at once. Spring is here, at least in my mind, and I wanted to convey that even if things are hectic right now, there is much to look forward to. Take the positive in your life and make it a springboard to bigger and better things. I have been letting stress make me it’s bitch and I’m no one’s bitch. I guess I needed to get that out. For those few that actually read this, there is good stuffs to come. I’m ready.

Oh Friday, where have you gone? Instead of having fabulous dinner plans, we are tiling the laundry room. Don’t get me wrong, I would sit in a cardboard box with my man, but I want to go out for a nice dinner. I don’t want to go to Home Depot. Okay, I am sounding like a spoiled brat. Maybe it is the imminent arrival of Spring, but I am antsy. I want to be out and enjoying life. Now I have to remind myself of all the great things to enjoy this weekend and the ones that might send me over the edge.

Pro-Beau trying not to yell at me when I glue myself to the floor.
Con-When I eventually do glue myself to the floor and I blame him.

Pro-Sleeping in.
Con-Having to get my lazy arse out of bed.

Pro-Friends coming over tomorrow night, lots of fun and drinking to come.
Con-I am going to feel like total shite on Sunday.

Pro-I am making Italian Beef sandwiches tomorrow!
Con-I am trying out a spicy chicken dip that may give our guests gut rot.

Pro-Sharing the weekend with Beau, he has nowhere to run. Muah ah ah!
Con-In order to keep me in whiskey he has to go to work on Monday.

I am trying to find some balance in my life. Yeah, I just realised how lame that sounded. Happy Friday! Screw the pros and cons and have some fucking fun.

Roasted pork belly over sauteed brussels sprouts slaw.  Didn’t get the skin as crispy as I wanted, but it was my first time.  Just have to keep on pluggin away!

So yesterday should have been an extremely productive day. It wasn’t. Instead of cleaning the basement and doing responsible things, Beau and I watched an entire season of Amazing Race. Right now they are on season 14, but a reality channel was doing a marathon of season 9. The show is great because I like watching the dysfunctional couples. The group dynamics and personalities is what makes reality television great.

Well one of the challenges on the show was when they were in Thailand. Each member of the team had to eat a big bowl of stir fried grasshoppers. I’ve eaten bugs, I think they are crunchy and fun. I am also the girl who as a toddler got a fly stuck between her teeth while out in my paddling pool. Now I like the fact that the show tries to teach you something about the culture of the country they are in. Grasshoppers were the added bonus. I like to think the food community as a whole are opening the door to our stomachs and closing the cultural gap one insect at a time. I mean, that was their challenge. Eat a food that thousands of people eat on a daily basis. They weren’t saying drink out of a toilet.

I have a point here, somewhere. I was thinking that mainstreaming what we eat and how we eat was the way to go. Now I think that the realism of what things are makes it that much cooler. I told someone I was making pork belly last week. They gave me a face and I just explained that that is what bacon is before they cure it. Then it was, “Ohhhhh. I love bacon.” They come from the same foundation, but they are two unique and separate foods. I like each for different reasons and would not replace one with the other. I suppose it is all about perception. It’s not that different to how we see other people. Some find me brash and rather strange. I drink a lot of whiskey and I think gossip sites are awesome. Scary movies are really scary to me. I’m from the UK and I live in the Midwest now. People look at me like I am a bowl of grasshoppers sometimes. But I would rather be myself then have to explain that I am just a version of something that makes people comfortable. I don’t want to mainstream myself. Call me pork belly, cause I haven’t been cured yet.

image by ewen and donabel

My dreams have finally come true. Last night I ate a cheeseburger, okay a half of one. With chips though! Beau and I went to the Lion’s Tap in our hood because the web told me too. Apparently they were ranked high for best burger in the Twin Cities. And they were right, damn they were right. It was everything I thought it would be. (sigh) Regardless, the healthy eating has not stopped. I have been cooking with a vengeance. I have a bunch of pics and recipes to post, so when I can pull my shit together I will do so. For some reason I have been falling into shit and choking on leftovers. Today is a dangerous day for some reason. I am going to go play in a padded room.

Changing your lifestyle is not something to be taken lightly.  When I met the Beau, I was a crazy drinker and could drink him under the table like the sissy he was.  Now our tolerances have met in the middle and I still fall down for no reason, drunk or not.  I changed that part of my life to make room for him and also because no human being wants to cuddle a gal who smells like whiskey… a lot.  Cooking has seen a similar change.  I found myself making things I knew he liked and making a lot of it.  We had gotten into a rut and I’m glad we are starting fresh.  That having been said, vegetarians and vegans seem to go to great lengths to maintain their lifestyles.  I have spent countless hours perusing blogs for recipes and these people are serious.  They have a substitute for everything and seem to be fueled by the conviction of their dietary habits.  It’s kind of inspiring.  Kind of.

I haven’t decided how all of this new exposure to food has changed me.  I dream about cheeseburgers on a daily basis.

Trying new things can be a daunting experience. The fear and apprehension can grip your senses like a vise. Nonetheless, in the past two weeks I done quite a few things for the first time. This juice fast was the first. I posted earlier about the pre fast, but I don’t think I mentioned how great I felt pre fasting. I had clarity of mind and was flying high. A diet of fruit and veg was quite nourishing. Getting into the actual fast was a whole other story…

The diet I am on is outlined from the book JUICE FASTING & DETOXIFICATION by Steve Meyerowitz. He details everything from what to juice you should drink to what equipment to purchase. He gives a realistic take on what your body can handle and the benefits and dangers of such a regime. Now I think I was too cavalier going in to fully grasp what I was doing. Up until then I was stuffing my face full of calories and then BLAMO! a diet of less than 800 calories a day, easy.

The first few days became a blur. I was a juicing machine and the novelty of the whole process kept me going. It wasn’t until my first morning of detox that I hated the world and mostly myself. Through the various green tinged juices I drank, my body was and is cleansing itself. Those toxins gotta come out sometime. I was sweating with fever which would immediately be replaced with a horrible chill. I was too weak to lift my head and I cried a little. Really, little tears came out on the pillow and everything. Beau made me some juice and I fell back to sleep. A few hours later I felt right as rain confusingly enough. The next morning wasn’t as bad, but I was dizzy enough to fall down the damn stairs. The remedy? More (cringe) juice.

Even though the detox has passed, I still have these horrible mood swings. Beau has been dealing with headaches and the occasional grumpiness. As I write this I am on Day 9 and I know I won’t make it much longer. 3 cups of juice a day and a couple of bowls of broth do not a happy girl make me. And let me tell you strained miso and veggie broth has never been so delicious. Both were purchased at an organic shop and when cooked with some cayenne, heaven. Regardless, I’m tired of juicing the parsley, celery, lemon, apple, spinach, carrot… I could go on and on. Although the wheatgrass we purchased looks really cool on the counter. Cleaning that damn machine makes me want to throw it out the window. There is a monotony to my life that I have never experienced before… and it kind of sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, to date I have shed 8 delightful pounds and I feel pretty great right now. I know I got some much needed gunk out of my system, partly in thanks to the colonic, enemas and ear candling I have gone through. More of that in future posts. It has opened my eyes to a world that I think I needed to experience to know that I don’t want to experience it again. Beau always says to me, “It’s not for everyone.” No shit. But I am staying true to my commitment until the urge to murder him has reared it’s ugly head. I would quit if I was starving or going mad, luckily all of those feelings have subsided. I’m taking it one mug of soup at a time, but girl cannot live on miso alone.

I knew it was getting bad when my Beau was rubbing up against me the other night, saying I was like a hamburger and he could cover me in his condiment if I wanted. It was a low point for us, even if he thought it was funny.

image by sota767

I am a bit of a piggy.  I am the girl that wakes up ravenous and makes some ridiculous non-breakfast meal, sits on the couch to turn on CSI Wherever and then proceeds to stuff said food into my face.  And I love it.  It tastes so good when it hits my lips!!  But I love myself as well.  It took me awhile to get to this place, but I care about my body.  You would never know by the amount of booze and cigs I suck down.  So when Beau told me about his juice fast I was intrigued.  I wanted to support him and I figured making dinner for myself while juicing his was not the way to go.  So I was on board although I had no clue what I was in for.  I figured this experience would bring me closer to my healthier, more wholesome self.

I am now on the last day of my prefast and I feel pretty great.  I have rekindles my romance with frozen peas.  The fruit and veg we juice always tastes pretty scrumptious.  I haven’t really posted too much, because I didn’t know how I felt about it or if I would run screaming for the nearest Fat Donald’s.  Now that I am in the trenches of juicedom, I feel kind of ashamed.  Ashamed for how I ate and how disconnected I felt from my food.  There are so many of us who love to cook and love the taste and spice and colours.  But I realize I had lost that loving feeling.  (cue Everly Brothers)  I had become a semi-foodie whore.  Of course I always want the food to taste good, but I was drifting to the dark side where Darth Vadar is a pretty presentation and Darth Maul is the latest foodie trend.  I am not an expert nor a professional chef, so what the fuck is my problem?  Why has my food become so serious and I along with it? 

I am tasting my food these past few days and the biggest change hasn’t been the amount of snot that has been dripping from my nose (which has been an obscene amount) or the weight I have already lost cause I’m an oinks, but how excited I am to jump start the team that cooks with me, my stomach and my heart.  Little did I know, but this juice fast is giving me the sort of clarity that will help me be a better cook, eater and all around cuddly person. 

I haven’t even started the hardcore part of the juice fast, but I feel confident.  I may feel completely different at the conclusion of JuiceFest 2009.  I know the physical benefits will be a big plus which is always a good thing, but I want to have learned something, anything and if it takes a bunch of juice so be it.  Bring it on!  When all this is said and done I am ready to get back in the kitchen, if she will still have me.

 
image by Bohman

There is an ABC game going on and brookem assigned me the letter W.   She informed me I was lucky seeing as how it was the last before the letters start to get ridonkulous.  X, Y and Z are going to have to be pretty creative.  Muah ah ah!!

When you cook for someone on their birthday, you must be prepared for the copious amount of leftovers as well.  Good thing they were BITCHIN!!  Thursday night’s dinner was delicious and fun, spent with good people and good wine. 

We tried singing the Happy Birthday song and someone managed to fuck that up.  They know who they are.  See if we sing for you!

The starter was a creamy zuccini and anchovy soup.  Holy crap this was so good with some crunchy Italian bread.

Nothing says I love you like Chicken Parmigiana.  At least that’s what mine says.  I don’t know about yours.

So I was interviewed by the very fun and witty Lemmonex and seeing as how I love a good quiz game I figured others might as well.  Rules are as follows:      

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. Be sure you link back to the original post.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

image by -bast-

1. Your blog is pretty new.  What prompted you to start writing?

I’ve been writing for some time, but not anything in blog form.  I was losing the spark and I missed having fun writing.  My S.O. (significant other) thought I was nuts not to blog about the things I love talking about most: food, the shows I watch about food while eating food and all the bits in between.  I got started and I am really happy with how fun it’s been and getting to know other blog writers through their sites.

2. What is the worst kitchen disaster you have ever had?

Ugh.  I suppose the worst disaster didn’t actually ruin the food.  I was visiting a friend and got really drunk one night.  As we stumbled back to the house I realised that I wanted pancakes in the biggest way.  So pancakes I would have!!  I was too incoherent to remember if I had turned the burner on, so I tested how hot it was with my hand.  I am not so smart when there has been too much whiskey.  The next morning I was belching up maple syrup and wondering why I had a huge burn mark in the shape of a spiral on my palm.  I don’t think the pancakes were worth it seeing as how I don’t remember if they were good and that burn took two months to heal.

3. What is your favorite ingredient?

Hmmm.  I would love to say garlic since I put it in quite a lot of my food, but I don’t think it’s my favorite.  My favorite would have to be brown sugar.  Dark brown to be exact.  I use it in glazes, tomato sauces, oatmeal, tea, anywhere I can get away with it I suppose.  I was never into sugar until I started cooking and learned to use it in foods other then baked goods.

4. Name a hobby besides cooking, please.

Easy, karaoke.  I used to take voice lessons for years, but that is way too serious for something that is neither my career or something I am totally awesome at.  But I love the idea of singing for fun.  I don’t care if people are bad or great, there are some interesting characters at karaoke.  I sing a lot of country.  I relate to the depression and drinking.  And usually I tend to not suck it as bad singing country music. 

5. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I suppose I wish I could be really great at just one thing.  Like so many people I know, many of us are pretty good at a bunch of things.  I’m good at spelling, washing the dishes (seriously, I am efficient), playing the clarinet, sudoku, making chicken parmigiana.  But I wish I was great at just one thing, I mean REALLY great.  It doesn’t even matter what it is.  I guess it is just knowing that I am not just a hodge podge of all this “potential” and knowing where my true talent lies.  And if that talent happens to be duck calling then fucking rock and roll!!!  I would want to be the best duck caller I could be.