Back to the grind

After a week of chilling out, having hot dates with my wife, eating great food and sleeping in until 10 a.m. every morning, here I am, back at the office.

Holy gyoza! part deux

yum.

Holy gyoza! B's big potsticker project

I'm taking advantage of my time off from work this week to do a few things that I've always wanted to do but just haven't had time. For instance, I decided to try to get rid of some of the drops of dried candle wax spread about on the kitchen floor. So, I squatted down with a lighter and a piece of paper towel to melt them away. But that got old quick, so I decided to make a big batch of potstickers.

After a failed attempt at grinding my own chicken (it was ugly), I decided to go to a professional and get some ground pork. Once I got all my ingredients, I started with this:



Rum and pineapple soda -- this actually goes into the cook, not the food.

Now, for the 'solid' ingredients:



Looks almost good enough to eat raw: ground pork, grated ginger, crushed garlic, chopped scallions, shredded napa cabbage, salt, pepper and a little Chinese five spice powder. I salted the cabbage and squeezed out some of the liquid before I mixed it with the rest of the ingredients in the food processor.



I brushed a little water around the edges of the wontons and sealed them as best I could. I made a few mutants before I managed to get some pretty decent looking ones.



I made two cookie sheets worth of these little love dumplings, covered them loosely with plastic and put them in the freezer. About an hour and a half or so later, I placed them in a large ziploc freezer bag.

My favorite way to eat these precious morsels is to brown their bottoms in a pan with a little bit of oil. After a few minutes, pour in a little water, cover the pan and steam them for close to ten minutes (since they are frozen and contain raw meat). I eat them with a dipping sauce made out of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, red pepper flakes and chopped scallions.

mmmmmmmmmmm

B's Staycation part 2

Woke up this morning when my body told me to get out of bed. Stomach told me I was hungry and should seek food. So me and Mrs. took a little trip to Sea Salt. If you try to go to this place on a sunny summer eve - you can expect a wait. The first time we went there last summer, we waited in line for an HOUR. Normally, we would have said, 'forget that shit.' But we had taken our bikes there and by the time we made it, we were too hungry to find a plan B.



Ah, but on a Monday afternoon, the wait was minimal and as you can see the food was a treat. I was craving fish tacos like a traveling hamster and that's what I got. And yeah, I picked the cilantro off. Apparently, I have the 'cilantro tastes like soap' gene.

Time off...

Last year I took a week off from work around my 40th birthday, just so I could hang out and screw around. Well, this year, I can't wait until September, so I'm taking this week. My goal is to do pretty much whatever I feel like.







Today, Sat. I took the bike out for a long ride down the Midtown Greenway. And fired up the grill and burned some chicken.





Per a previous post, I like my job, but sometimes I just get really tired of having a schedule: getting up by a certain time, putting on appropriate clothing and being in a certain place for a specified amount of time. For the next week, I'm staying up until I get tired, getting up in the morning when I'm ready to get up, wearing what I want to wear and not keeping a schedule.

ahhhh.....

Let's face it...

Commuting to and from work day in and day out gets to be a big drag. So I made a short video that attempts to make the drudgery of driving cool. Check it out.

Let There Be Rawk...

This here video was made possible by Fender, an iMac, Garageband, Quicktime Pro, WireTap Studio, iMovie and of course a guitar player who's still got a little too much 'guitar-ego.'

Enjoy.

Gorilla video

I just got one of these kewl tripods for my camera. So every once in a while, I set the camera on the car dash to record some video of my travels. On my way home from work on Friday, I filmed this on 35W.

Your life or your jewels, fool

A little Sesame Street gangsta rap for y'all.

The Office

No windows. No people. Flourescent lights. This is the office. My workplace. If I had a weaker constitution, I would surely flip-out under these conditions. I am, for lack of a better term, a weekday warrior. I get up early, even though my body tells me to sleep. I get up early, even though there is no boss here to keep track of when I come in. When the walls close in on me, I get out and walk around downtown. When my brain begins to wobble after staring at the computer screen for too long, I put my head on my desk and doze to the serenading buzz of flourescent lights. I daydream about having enough money to do other things. I prefer to walk up and down the six flights of stairs rather than stand in an elevator with strangers. I don't care to chit-chat or listen to the big-assed office ladies bitch about Judy in accounting, "who does she think she is? I turned in those forms three weeks ago."

I'm good at working. I actually have two jobs and work nearly everyday of the week. I'm not a whiner. Don't believe in it. It doesn't accomplish anything. And actually, I like what I do. It's better work than digging ditches. But it's still work.

Band of Brothers

Nate, Billy, Me and Chrispy earlier this week at Cosmos. These guys are, as the Chosen People say, Mensches. I looked up a couple definitions for Mensch and this one, from JewishHealing.com says it best:

A mensch literally means "a person" in Yiddish, but figuratively it means something much deeper. A mensch is a person with whom you would be happy to befriend and associate with, because you feel genuine in a mensch's presence. A mensch is a highly evolved human being.

The night this photo was taken by my lovely Mrs. was a weeknight. I had to cut my celebrating short, but she, Nate and Chris were heading out for more drinking and shenanigans. Now, my wife is a full grown woman and can handle herself. But there are times when I wake up at 7:30 a.m. to start my day and she's still out having her evening, I can get a twinge of worry. In this case, I didn't have a bit of concern. I knew she was with two men whom I trust with my life. And I knew that if any crap went down, that these guys would do everything to protect hers.

That's just what a mensch will do.

Time out

I'm a news-aholic, but sometimes the stuff gets so potent that I just have to put down the sauce. I'm taking a break from news about bank bailouts, about the father who got stomped by six dudes - one of whom pinched his 12-year-old daughter's butt, Iran, Iraq, the presidential campaign etc. So I'm watching nothing but fuzzy bunnies and kittens today.

We're all a bunch of stupids - part one

No one on TV does a better job than the Daily Show of showing how stupid we can be. Check out how Jon Stewart skewers the television media coverage of the New Yorker cover of the Obamas.

After hearing people say they were 'offended' by the cover, I get reduced to ranting like Lewis Black. @#%! You ##$!! idiots! Satire! @@#$%! Liberal magazine !@#%&** Because some !@#%! actually believe this #$^%#^!!

Ow, my spleen.

A few things to like about America...

...besides the Muppets.

NFL Football
The interstate highway system
the pursuit of happiness
wide open spaces
Jimmy Carter was born here
the Constitution
all the best music started here

That's about it.

Vegging out

This box of veggies came from the farm this week. The cool-looking long, curly things are garlic scapes. I'd never seen a garlic scape before, but the things are delicious. We also got three pints of fresh strawberries (little jewels of tasty goodness), asparagus, lettuce, kale and more.

It's almost a shame to eat the things, considering how cool they are and what they can do.

In a recent column in the Washington Post, Sally Squires writes about the nutritional virtues of fruits and veg. Although it's nothing you probably haven't heard before, Squires points out there's still much scientists don't know about what goes on inside fruits and veg - and what goes on inside your body after you eat them. It seems there's a new wave of nutrition science which -- instead of trying to extract the good bits out of plants and putting them into pill form -- is telling people to just eat the whole plant.

mmmm....phytochemicals and beta carotenes never tasted so good....

When the cat's away...

The mrs. has been away for nearly a week exploring Costa Rica with her ma and sis. So, what's a guy to do? I've been doing a lot of cooking, sleeping, enjoying an occasional vodka cocktail and playing guitar. One day, I got it in my head to go crazy with the Garageband and let my inner Joe Satriani out. Yes, I am a guitar nerd.

Here's what it sounds like.

I also rented some movies the mrs would never watch. Like The Empire Strikes Back, Family Guy's Blue Harvest, and Cloverfield (although I had to stop the movie when the people started walking through the subway tunnels. Too scary).

As Sting sang, "the bed's too big without you..."

Highlights and lowlights of the past week

Here's a few:

Got called to do an assignment for work that involved driving to Winona, MN (140 miles one way). During the course of my 14 hour work day, I spent about 5 hours in the car.

Next day - the alternator in the car goes on the fritz and I spend $482 for the repair. Also, my battery is weak and will need to be replaced before winter.

However - Saturday is a beautiful day. Wife and I ride downtown to BluesFest for the afternoon and then hang out at a backyard bbq in the evening. Over the course of the day, I got to hang with good friends and their adorable children, hear some good music, ingest lots of beer, grilled meat and vodka. And, to top it off, I got lucky.

Ice Cube aint' got nothing on that day.

Happy Anniversary

Dining by the lake at sunset

Food cooked by fire

Serenaded by loon calls

Deep gazes into the flames of a campfire

Huddled under a cold canopy of stars our love is warm

Be kind to animals...

...because they just might be planning our demise.

The following is a 10 minute presentation by Joshua Klein, who has a thing for crows. In the first 5:00 minutes of the lecture you'll see something that will blow your mind about how smart these little buggers are. Apparently, crows can make tools AND hold grudges against people, so don't piss them off.



By the way, I also highly recommend the TED Talks website as a great way to spend 'non-porn' minutes in front of the computer.

My eater's manifesto

WARNING: this post is a little longer than usual. Most of it focuses on Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. He's much better at talking about his research than I am, so if you're so inclined, check out the video of this Google chat he did a few months ago (it's an hour long, but it's the best non-porn hour in front of your computer you will ever spend):



And here's my little food testimonial:

I’ve noticed a pattern among my male friends. As we get to be 40-ish, we’ve come to the realization that we can’t eat like we were still 18. We used to believe we were indestructible and we ate like it. I remember being able to eat (and keep down) a Big Mac, large French fries and three hamburgers; pizza several times a week; and then there was the day me and Bill downed a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken between the two of us.

Now we are reminded by our bathroom scales, blood pressure levels and cholesterol test results, that we are not only mortal – but we are on the road towards heart problems, diabetes and other serious health problems that are linked to poor diets.

Hypertension (high blood pressure) and diabetes spot my family tree. I remembered my grandma Minnie, who had both afflictions, taking a handful of medications and giving herself insulin shots daily. It horrified me. My father also had a couple scares with high blood sugar and cholesterol and my own tests showed that I was pre-hypertensive, pre-diabetic and my bad cholesterol was kicking my good cholesterol’s ass.

I knew that I could get these levels under control by going on a low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb diet. But I also knew that, for me, that’s not a sustainable diet. Anyway, I don’t believe in diets. All a diet makes you do is crave the food you can’t eat and then fills you with guilt at any little slip. Face it, it’s no way to live.

Lucky for me, my wife read Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The book challenged her to look more closely at how and what she ate. And she challenged me to do the same. I first read Pollan’s follow up to ‘Dilemma’ a shorter read called In Defense of Food – An Eater’s Manifesto. It contains a lot of the info from the previous book. And in seven words Pollan sums up a reasonable approach to eating:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Here’s what I’ve taken to heart and have tried to adopt – not as a diet – but a lifestyle change (there’s a big difference):

Eat food. Eat real food -- not a bunch of processed stuff. Why? Because processing eliminates the natural goodness in food (and it puts a lot of harmful stuff in its place in order to give it shelf life). Plus, when food companies try to put the good stuff back in, scientists have found that the nutrients don’t behave in the same way. Meaning, all the supplements and “vitamin fortified” shit you eat – isn’t making you healthier.

Real food is more than the sum of its nutrients. For example, scientists have extracted the beta-carotenes from carrots and put them in other food. Now the evidence shows, you’re better off just eating the friggin’ carrot.

It goes the same for all the so-called ‘bad stuff’ like animal fats, carbohydrates and cholesterol. Remember, there are societies where their main source of protein is animal fats. Think about it. Herding societies and Eskimoes eat a lot of meat and fatty fish and whale blubber. Think of the French diet, full of butter and other fatty goodness.

The point Pollan makes is to look at the lifestyles together with the diets. Long story short – fat alone is not the enemy. And the fear of fat is driving people to eat artificially produced ‘low fat’ foods. I used to think I was eating healthy by eating those Boca burgers. But if you look at the ingredients, you’re going to find a bunch of other crap in there, that may be making you worse off than if you’d just had a burger.

The same goes with carbs. People have been eating pasta made from white flour, eating white rice, and white bread for years. Why all of a sudden are these verboten? (read the book.)

Not too much: Portion sizes are way out of control. We really just don’t need to supersize everything. I now cringe at ads on television for Taco Bell which extol the virtues of stuffing your food sac for $1.99.

I learned a little tip: if you’re full, you’ve eaten too much.

Mostly plants: Notice he doesn’t say ONLY plants. Although he says there are plenty of good reasons to go strictly vegetarian, there is a movement that recognizes the benefits of eating pasture-raised animals. Thank the gods. Because, to be honest with you, I’m just not giving up the meat. But, I’m certainly more willing to make a serious effort to eat pasture-raised, naturally fed chickens, pigs, turkeys and cows. These animals live better, die much more humanely and taste better than their feedlot brethren. Plus, because these animals have eaten what they’re supposed to – cows are meant to eat grass, not corn (its bad for them) – their meat becomes more healthful.

The challenge for me is to incorporate more plants into my life. And I have to say, after reading about the process under which plants convert sunlight into nutrients, I’ve attained a much higher respect for the little beings. They are amazing little sources of all kinds of things that are good for you, AND, when prepared properly (meaning not overcooked), they’re tasty to boot. And for the record – you will not cancel out the goodness of properly wilted greens by adding a little pork fat.

So I’m making more room for them on my plate. Whereas, I used to have just meat and potatoes – now the meat portion is smaller and there’s some kind of dark leafy green, like spinach or kale or chard. And there’s some kind of rice (brown rice is actually quite lovely) or bean dish.

The more plants you eat, the less room you have for meat. It’s as simple as that.

Pollan says, and I’ve come to agree – that America’s got an eating disorder. We don’t know what to eat, so we’ve turned to the food scientists for advice. That has led to a national obsession with the nutritional value of everything. We count calories and carbs. We buy butter substitutes, fake yogurt artificially infused with good bacteria and vitamins, we swallow vitamin supplements by the handful, we buy vitamin-fortified water (are you shitting me??) and we buy fiber substitutes – All because we refuse to just eat a balanced diet. Remember, all the good stuff you need is in the food – no supplements are needed.

So, after reading In Defense of Food, I decided that what I needed was not a diet – but a lifestyle adjustment. That means I put more time into selecting and preparing the food I eat. I look forward to seeing the butcher at Clancey’s and getting the low-down on the farms where the best cuts of the day come from. Also, Mecca and I signed up for a half a farm share, which will bring us 10 lbs of organically-grown veggies every other week. That means I’m going to have to learn some new recipes that involve fresh veg.

And really, the extra few hours it may take me to shop and prepare this food every week, is time that I would otherwise be spending either in front of the computer or the television.

I did start exercising a lot more than I used to. It has helped bring my blood pressure down -- at last check it was 110/60. And, personally, I think the exercise has helped keep me from huffing and puffing in the sack (if you know what I mean.)

Here are the results of the food lifestyle change so far.

I’m slowly losing weight. Which is fine - because diets encourage rapid weight loss and then when the diet fails, the weight goes right back on. I’m still about 20 lbs over my BMI or whatever. I don't really care. Interestingly enough, at my last physical, my doc didn’t say anything about my weight. She was more concerned about my lipid and blood glucose counts. My tests came back and to my pleasure, my good cholesterol is back to where it should be and my blood sugar is around 80 (it used to be close to 100 which is pre-diabetic).

When you think about it, food is not medicine. It is to be enjoyed. Share it with people you love. Don’t worship the food, but respect it enough to get the good stuff. Veggies and critters that have been properly raised are also good for the environment as well as your health.

Michael Pollan knows a lot of people have read his books and taken his research and advice to heart. So he often says in interviews – don’t freak out if you can’t always get to the farmer’s market for organically grown food. A peek in his fridge once revealed some processed food, including a can of spray whip cream. He said his son likes the whipped cream on his Belgian waffles.

“I’m not a fanatic,” he said.

So I’ll add this to his seven word manifesto:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Don’t freak out.