Crossword Love

Some call it love. Some call it an obsession. I call it an absolute necessity.

The crossword puzzle is an indulgence I get -- no, have -- to partake in every morning, thanks to the year long subscription to The Oregonian that my parents so lovingly got me for Christmas. Everyday I plan out at least 30 minutes of coffee and crossword time....so yes, during the week when I'm waking up at 4 and 4:30 in the morning to run before work, I'm also figuring in a solid crossword and coffee session.

I know, I know, I already hear people gawking that I wake up THAT early JUST to do the crossword.

But I can't help it.

I've tried -- like today, when I simply woke up, laced up my Nikes with my building key tucked tightly in the tongue and headed out my building door into the early morning darkness without caffeine running through my blood and crossword clues running through my head. It was a good run -- heck, it was a great one (10 miles before 6:15? Yeah, it was real good). But here I sit, with nothing to do at work (Literally nothing. It's been like this for three days now and my writing fingers are itching with idleness), feeling slightly amiss because I have yet to complete any crossword puzzles.

In fact, my little Oregonian is still wrapped in its blue plastic sheath, begging me to read it and not succumb to the diabolic lure of Internet news. I actually think I can hear it sighing, holding back weepy tears from my desk drawer...

"Read me." "Open me." "Do me." "Finish me."

Hmmm. Somehow that turned slightly pornographic.

[Insert commercial break]

My love for the crossword puzzle grew, thanks in large part to the boring classes I had during my college years at the University of Portland.

IMPORTANT CLARIFYING NOTE: Not ONCE did I EVER EVER EVER pull out a crossword puzzle during an English class.

That being said...

Had I never been forced to take Biblical Traditions from a professor who adamantly called me Annie the entire semester (But then mysteriously called me Amie a year and a half later on a random campus pass-by), I probably never would have learned to fold the newspaper just perfectly to cleverly camouflage it amidst my notebooks. Were it not for freshmen level communication studies classes I took as a fifth year, I wouldn't have learned the codes of the crossword (For example: Abbreviations in a clue means an abbreviated answer. And, not Or, adds an "S" to a name. You get the idea).

Nor would I have learned that an "aerie" is an eagle's nest, that Ella Fitzgerald is a jazz legend, that Erma Bombeck is absolutely awesome (Okay the crossword didn't teach me that but her constant appearance in the grid piqued my interest to put my Google skills to work) or that Nikola Tesla was a rival inventor of Thomas Edison.

I don't think I would have learned any of that in my theology or communication studies classes either.

I guess I like the crossword so much for the simple reason that it gives me something to do. It's a time-wasting past time that's actually productive -- I'm learning (as aforementioned factoids clearly prove evident), working my brain and, on the glorious occasion that I fully finish a puzzle, experiencing a glorious rush of accomplishment and pride.

It's dorky, I know. An obsession, of course. But few things are as satisfying as unsheathing the newspaper, flipping through to the crossword puzzle and burying myself in the black and white boxes while I wake up over a hot cup of steaming coffee.

Gmail Inbox: me, Frank (2) Dear Amie

ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod.

Frank Bruni. THE Frank Bruni. The person I want to BE when I...err...grow up...e-mailed me.

Okay, he e-mailed me back. Whatever. He still wrote MY NAME...his fingers typed out A-m-i-e...and wrote me a personal response back.

Cue 12-year-old teeny bopper girl squeal combined with uncontrollable jumping up and down and waving of the hands in a spirit-fingers-on-crack manner: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Okay. That's out of my system ("EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"). Now for the story:

In my very sad and distraught state Thursday night I opened up Frank Bruni's website and wallowed in total gin-induced depression. The website has a couple of tabs including biographical information, reviews for "Born Round" and, lo and behold, a link to his blog, complete with an e-mail address.

For some reason, the fact that he has a gmail account made me highlight and copy the address into a new e-mail.

I wrote with fury:

Dear Mr. Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni. Frank Bruni in Portland, at my favorite bookstore. Frank Bruni, the man whose words finally made me realized that I'm actually, indeed, not a total nut job for overcoming years of tormented relationships with food and wanting to be a food critic. I cannot believe you're in Portland right now.

What's worse is that I can't believe I didn't get into Powell's for your reading and book signing.

I'm not typically a person who swoons over celebrities. I wasn't the girly-girl who had posters of the latest heart throb plastered on my bedroom walls and I rarely look up to a famous person and think, "Yes, I want to be exactly like that."

But -- and I apologize that this probably comes across as a bit stalkerish -- you're a little different. As I mentioned before, I had...a less than normal appetite for food (That's the polite wishy-washy way of putting it anyway) for a large portion of my adolescence. Being a cross country runner throughout junior, high school and college, I found myself in an environment ripe with thinness and the pressure to run well. After all, the less you have to carry, the faster you're going to run. For eight years I pushed myself to be thinner, faster and stronger through means that were detrimental to my mind, body and relationship with food. For years I never found pleasure in food.

What changed? I hate to give attribution to a boy -- especially an ex -- but as I was really finding myself, months after rigorous treatment, I was dating a chef whose passion for food fell into me. Instead of fearing food, I took on an almost Anthony Bourdain approach to eating, trying out whatever, whenever I could. Each new food I introduced into my diet assuaged my fears of enjoying food.

I learned to cook -- and cook well.

I learned to discern tastes and flavor profiles. I began to understand why some ingredients work together and why some ingredients don't.

I began to study the cultures of cuisines and the histories of food (The history of sushi is by far my favorite).

And I learned to unite my passion for food with my skill for writing.

And I learned, thanks to your book, that I'm not crazy for loving food and wanting to write about it.

So, thank you. A lot. While not seeing you tonight makes my Top Five Life Disappointments, I'm hoping that by sending you an e-mail (Though your website says you don't stay on top of the inbox very well), missing tonight will somehow be made up for.

Sincerely,

Amie Dahnke

His response:

Dear Amie,

I'm sorry you didn't make it on Thursday but thank you very for this lovely note. I'm glad the book meant something to you. And I'm touched you read and liked it.

Be well, and good luck in all you do.

Frank

PS - The pulled pork sandwich looks great. Keep up the great writing.

Cue adolescent girlyness: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Frank Bruni has read my blog.

Ahhhhhhh.

I am what I am

I finally understand why I am the way that I am. Or rather, and perhaps more accurately, I've finally been given a plausible theory regarding my love for good food and desire to be a food critic despite my overwhelmingly awkward and unfavorable history against it.

I went out last night with my ex-boyfriend, a move that, I understand, doesn't seem like the best idea to most people. However, the night was pleasant and, throughout the course of a couple of beers ($2.50 special-list pints on Tuesdays and the Mash Tun Pub on NE 22nd and Alberta Street), we accepted what was, moved forward on what it and talked, as we always have, about food.

While he's never been much of a reader, he does relish in reading books about food and restaurants and people involved with food. As we were breaking up he was reading Jeffrey Steingarten's second book (Which I'm still mad I didn't get to read because of the breakup) which, according to Kevin, really details Steingarten's reasoning behind becoming and being a food critic.

One of the chapters is titled, "Brain Storm" and explains how suffering a head trauma could potentially lead one to have an obsession for gourmet food and refined tastes. The chapter's first sentence reads that "a profound interest in food may be caused by a lesion in the anterior portion of the right cerebral hemisphere of one's brain." When Kevin dealt this morsel of information last night I knew he knew I was thinking about when I was five-years-old and ran into a mailbox (Hey, before you judge, know that I was running for my life away from a dog scarier than The Beast in The Sandlot) chipping and swallowing half of my two front teeth and damaging some muscles in my right eye so severely that I developed a head tilt during my childhood years that was corrected only through surgery and near-coke-bottle-lens-sized reading and work glasses (Yes, I am wearing them as I type).

Kev continued recalling Steingarten's chapter, which surveys Steingarten's experience with the doctor who originally told him about Gourmand's Syndrome. The doctor told Steingarten, a glasses-wearing older man, that the most common symptoms of Gourmand's were visual spatial dysfunctions (Like I said, I am wearing coke-bottle glasses right now) and that there is some research indicating that eating disorders spring from brain injuries because even though eating disorders appear to be purely psychological, physical changes are evident too. (Of course, there's a lot of research indicating a lot of causes for eating disorders and I personally don't think there's a solid consensus and don't believe there really ever will be. It's one of those mysteries like whether we dream in color or that age-old standby wonder about the falling tree making a noise in the forest).

Steingarten's doctor continued over dinner at a five-star restaurant within the chapter that "changes in neurotransmitters and serotonin and noradrenalin along with brain lesions affecting the system have been linked to OCD, pathological behavior, kleptomania and so forth." So, people with Gourmand's might not necessarily crave gourmet food but they recognize the superfluous indulgence in steak tartare, black truffles, white truffles, foie gras, sea urchin, pork belly, monkfish liver, lamb burgers, toro (fatty tuna), sweetbreads (the gourmet nugget, if you will), geisha varietal coffee, kobe beef, chicken heart, beef heart, saffron and the like and crave the richness and indulgence of these delicacies.

In fact, Steingarten argued against his doctor -- who, I might add, says that Gourmand's Syndrome is bad for a person to be 'afflicted by' -- saying that he's okay "pleading guilty to an obsession with beauty, edible or otherwise."

Could I really have Gourmand's Syndrome? Probably not. I'm not a kleptomaniac and, despite my obsessive and compulsive fretting over the lifestyles at work (It's a good thing I've recently been officially assigned as a visual associate at Pottery Barn), I'm not, in medical definition terms, OCD. Still, it's nice to have another key as to why I, the once-food-fearing, fat-avoiding freak of a girl is now striding to becoming a try-everything-at-least-once food critic.

And as a food critic, I definitely plead very, very guilty to my obsession with edible beauty.

Oh...and yes, I've eaten everything in my aforementioned list of delicacies.

Amie Dahnke: Food Critic

So I now understand why food critics get fat. I mean, sure, anyone who critiques food for his or her profession is bound to be curvy regardless of how much he or she works out; it's just part of the profession. Frank Bruni, the writer and food critic who I admire most (He used to be the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times, was a guest judge on the Food Network's Iron Chef America, wrote a memoir that helped me acknowledge that I'm not insane for wanting to be a food critic despite my history, and is now a writer for T Magazine, producing lofty and wonderfully-structured profiles that are worth more than any photograph...but I digress in admiration), always struggled with his weight and Jeffrey Steingarten, most familiar to Food Network viewers as the robust white-haired judge on Iron Chef America (Can you tell which cable channel I miss the most?) used to be a svelte, fit man.

But now he's kind of big.

And this morning, my size two Gap jeans are fitting a little bit tighter (You could call me, as my sister and I so immaturely coined when I was in high school, a jumbo shrimp: A woman who is wearing clothes that are way too tight for her and is thus bulging out. Jumbo = woman; shrimp = clothes) than they did last night thanks to a seven course meal I had at Santa Fe Taqueria last night.

I sampled two burritos, three tacos and more chips, salsa and guacamole than really one person should probably handle. I tasted beef, pork, chicken and fish. I ate cheese and sour cream (No, my body is not  happy today). I lushed on a margarita (After a glass of wine from Umpqua Bank ala Elephant's Deli) and lots of water (I'm thinking that water is the key to preventing me from eating too much).

I was surprised I could waddle the 1 1/2 blocks home. I mean, it's not like I ate both burritos and all the tacos (Okay, okay, I ate all of the fish and carnitas tacos. I can't help it; I love me some grilled fish and spicy pulled pork); but I definitely ate more than I usually do in one sitting.

Perhaps, as of late (ahem; since I became impoverished in November), last night's meal was one of the largest I've had (Save Thanksgiving and my three days home during Christmas when I gained three pounds in 72 hours). And it was so good.

And I got to write about it...which is the best part about a dining experience for me. I simply love being able to express how food tastes and smells and what the atmosphere of a place is like. In our society, dining out has such a bad rap: It's either too high of a financial burden or too much of a health cost.

I say 'patooey' to that. People; dining out is such a joy. As humans, we're pretty unique in the animal kingdom because eating is actually a social activity. It's not often in the wild you'll find animals digging in together unless, perhaps you run across a venue of vultures (There's a fun fact of the day. Another one: A group of vultures circling around in the air is called a kettle. Don't say you never learned a thing from reading my blog) ripping apart an innocent carcass. For humans, dining is a sensory experience that brings out memories and emotions that simply have to be shared with other people.

Why? Because sharing a bite of anything bridges gaps between strangers and makes connections. It's the first step in kinship, friendship and relationships.

And that's why I like dining out and why I like writing about food...which apparently, I can do rather well. I just got an email from the Santa Fe Taqueria's GM inviting me to chit chat with her.

Sweeeeeeeeeet.