Culinary Concoctions Week Two: The Ingredient

Since I want to write more than just once or twice a week, I'm going to begin blogging three times a week during  this year-long cooking project of mine:

1. To introduce next week's ingredient (You know, for educational purposes)
2. To share the recipe (Also for educational and sharing purposes)
3. To lay out the play-by-play of cooking, with photos taken by Jason (For sharing and narrative purposes)

So next week's ingredient, as long as I'm able to find it at the farmer's market this weekend, is going to be black radishes.

Allow me to geek out:

Part of the brassicaceae or cruciferae family -- which takes its name from the New Latin word Cruciferae which, as my UP alumnus might have guessed, means cross-bearing for their criss-crossing leaves -- black radishes typically come in two varieties; the Black Spanish Long and the Noir Gros de Paris. Go figure I'm using a root plant native to Spain and France.  They grow best in winter, after sowing during June through September, because their white, firm and compact flesh will keep fresh most of the winter without entering a state of vegetation (Ha -- vegetables vegetating; seems like some kind of Buddhist practice, huh?) or becoming hollow.

I mean, who really likes a hollow radish, right?

Exactly.

The black radish is rich in vitamin c, which is why they're fantastic for winter time consumption, especially when you're living in the Pacific Northwest where the common head cold is just lurking around the corner of your favorite non-Starbucks coffee shop, waiting to latch onto you. They're also high in vitamin B and sulfur, which is the culprit for it's strong flavor. Furthermore, black radishes carry a serious punch of fiber and water which aids in digestion (Which, after three weeks of Vicodin and OTC cold head meds, could be of use).

To eat them,  you have to peel the skin because that's the most pungent part of it all; I'm assuming the strength of the sulfur would be akin to eating the skin of ginger root...not the same flavor profile but packing the same, "WOAH MAN!" reaction.

Not that I've eaten ginger root peel out of sheer curiosity or anything.

Okay fine. I'll give you a full Amie-palate review of black radish skin (By the way if that doesn't sound like a solid emo band name, I don't know what does.)

That said, let's hope Sunday's venture finds me buying black radish from the farmer's market.

Wish me luck in the Portland January rain! (Caveat: Even if my black radish pursuit IS a total wash, at least I get to A) Drag the boyfriend along with me after a two day hiatus and B) Savor my favorite treat at my favorite Portland bakery: The garden bread at Baker and Spice. As my mother would say, yum-a-dum-dum.)

PS -- On a side note, I never really thought I'd get to tag a blog with 'Vicodin' more than once. Shows how much I know.

Aunthood

So holy cow I'm an Aunt. That's right; my brother and his wife Amber gave birth --

Wait.

Scratch that. Try again.

My sister-in-law Amber gave birth on Tuesday to a nine pound eleven ounce beautiful baby girl who she -- and now my brother can come back into play -- and my brother named Kairi Nicole.

That makes ME an aunt -- and of course, this new life in my family is all about how me. Aunt Amie.

Cue girly squeal. I finally got to head up to Tacoma for a quick day trip to see her and the new parents and man oh man oh man.

As I was telling my friend Matty, there's absolutely nothing like a teeny tiny little hand wrapping itself around your finger...and not having even cover a fourth of the length of your finger. It gives you a feeling that totally just eradicates everything sucky that's going on in the world because you've got this adorably innocent and gorgeous little person who's just content to do nothing but rest in your arms, wrapped in a fuzzy pink swaddle and just hold onto your finger.

It was at that moment when Matty sounded that it seemed like I was ready for my own.

Dear god no. I might already love this teeny baby with more gusto than I ever thought I could have for kids but I am by no means up for having any of my own. I'm totally down with being the cool Aunt Amie, the psuedo-hippie (To my family's standards anyway) who has a psuedo-shaved head, wears sandals in the rain, walks and bikes everywhere (Yeah...getting my bike fixed. Woot woot) and prefers acupuncture over western medicine. I'll be the family member she can escape to. I'll buy her lots of cool stuff and teach her the ways of Portland: Good coffee, good beer and good food.

See...the fact that I want to teach my five day old niece about coffee and beer CLEARLY shows that I am so NOT ready for motherhood. Aunthood should suit me well.

Congrats again to my brother and Amber.

The Web

No. I'm not talking about the internet.

So...if you're a tech-savvy super nerd (Ahem, Walker), feel free to stop reading now because my story of the web probably isn't going to interest you.

That said...


I'm talking about a different type of web...the spider web.

It's everywhere. Or rather, to be more realistically and grammatically correct, they're everywhere.

August and September mark one of my favorite times of the year to be a Northwest (Okay, fine...they're all over Stumptown) Portland resident because spider webs are in absolute overabundance (Yes mom, I know you're cringing and wondering how I ever came from your loins but, come on, by now you should know that I'm a psuedo-hippie -- to Spokane standards, anyway -- creature-loving nerdy  hipster. I mean, half of my hair is shorn for crying out loud). I first fell in love with them -- and noticed them, to be honest -- at the end of last summer when I was taking a lot of early morning, have-to-get-out-of-the-house-or-else-I'm-going-to-go-crazy walks. Still shining with early morning dew, the spider webs, which decorate bushes, trees, building eaves, fire escape stairwells, road signs and everything in between, simply shine in a glorified omnipresent beauty that's just radiant.

And the spiders that dabble in the middle of these five and eight and thirteen inch webs (Yes, I've measured and taken photos) just hang out, asking whoever stops in jaw-dropping awe in proud mockery, "Yeah...what have YOU done today?"

Turns out...usually when I have the chance to really admire these webs, my answer is, "Eh, not much."

That's how it was this morning, anyway. After a night of tacos and tequila with Walker and Jason, I was..admittedly...a bit slow to the start of my morning. Usually, during the work week, I'm up at 4:30, running by 5 when the spiders are rebuilding their webs after a night of human destruction.

How do I know? Because I'm the one breaking the random web strings flailing like silent assassins from the the trees. They attack my face and brush my cheek with such eerie vengeance which, regardless of how much I don't mind spiders, freaks me out. If anyone saw me karate-chopping with my arms while running up Lovejoy and Cornell at five in the morning, I'm almost certain they'd believe I was yet another neighborhood crazy.

But this morning, as mentioned before, was slower, recovering from a celebratory night with Yeyo (QO landed quite a few jobs lately...woot woot), so instead of an early morning run, I went on a regular-morning (i have to believe that 8 a.m. is 'normal' morning time) walk around the neighborhood while talking on the phone. It was nice...taking time to notice the beauty of nature that, despite living in the city, surrounds me.

Big old spiders. Big old webs, glimmering in the big old sun that danced behind big old clouds in that big old sky.

It was pretty and calming and nice to realize that, even though I'm typically a hustle-bustle, go-go-go individual, the power of nature never ceases to amaze me.

Mommy Wow! I'm a big kid now?

Yep. I'm a big kid. An official adult and stuff.

Why?

Because today is the day my insurance benefits really officially kick in.

That's right...I can break a leg, break my teeth, break my spirit and have it all fixed...and paid for.

While I don't have any plans on breaking any of the aforementioned, I guess today just gives me peace-of-mind (There's AngelVision speak for you) knowing that, in case something really crappy and painful does come my way -- say the lady who almost hit me during my run this morning hadn't finished applying her lipstick and actually turned into me instead of nearly into me -- I'm covered; good to go.

It's hard at this juncture to not want to go down the highway of political ranting but, considering I have a plethora of friends and loved ones who are my age, working their asses off without a safety net of health insurance, it's inevitable that my typically non-political posting is taking the on ramp at full speed.

A couple of weeks ago the New York Times T-Magazine ran an article about kids my age. The headline pretty much sums up the subject of the eleven page issue: "What Is It About 20-Somethings?" "Why," the subhead asks, "Are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?" One of the reasons...healthcare. The other reason? The economy. It's awesome, really, that our president has allowed those of us no longer in college but without a job like mine to stay on our parents' health insurance plans until we're 26 but, at the same time, allowing us to keep suckling away on that parental teat just pushes us further and further away from real, live independence. It's a way of keeping us half-grown up as psuedo-adults who are almost...but not quite...there.

What pushes most of us down even further is the still-tanked and ever-tanking economy that's ripe only with un-and-underemployment. There are too many degree-bearing 20-somethings with stocks of creativity, passion, drive and talent who are working part-time, unfulfilling jobs (By the way, unfulfilling isn't actually a word. Good thing I've got an English degree and license to make up my own). And here in Portland (Okay, and Oregon in general where the unemployment level is still over 10 percent), the economy is nearly impossible.

It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair!

Wait...this post was about me being a grown up, right?

Anyway...

While I typically don't agree with Nancy Pelosi, I found a quotation from her on Friday while looking up quotations for a client.

(Sidebar for all of those in marketing...don't EVER promise a client you'll find a quotation for them. It takes for fucking ever. And yes...the F-word was indeed necessary. End Sidebar)

Pelosi said: "Think of an economy where people could be an artist or photographer or writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance."

Indeed...where is that economy? And where is the universal  healthcare? Where? Where? Where?

Maybe we 20-somethings don't want to grow up just quite yet because there's not a whole lot of awesome to grow up to.

Hmm. I think I broke my spirit somewhere during that joyride.

And here I thought the start of September never looked so good.

Shingles

Disclaimer: This blog was written while under the influence of vicodin and benadryl. That is all.

It's been far too long since my last post and for that, I apologize (To who am I apologizing, I'm not entirely sure, perhaps the two followers I have). However, this little blog of mine, which I began less than two months ago as a way to rant and, perhaps reduce, stress in my life, had to take a back seat because I have been dealing with stuff much larger than online writing.

That stuff would be Shingles. Yes, on Christmas Eve I noticed, after taking my bra off and changing into pajama pants to watch Knowing (The latest Nicolas Cage movie that, big surprise, lacks acting talent and a plausible plot line), a few small red bumps on the right side of my back. I showed my mom who insisted, for the sake of my sanity, that I need not worry.

She also said she thought it was Shingles.

Like any good American who thinks he or she is a doctor, I looked up shingles on the Internet to confirm my mother's diagnosis. Shingles are (or should I use 'is?' After reading through pages upon pages of online Shingles literature, I have yet to come to a consensus on whether I should use 'is' or 'are' but, considering that Shingles ends with 's,' thus making it plural, my grammatical instincts tell me to use 'are.') caused by the same virus as the chicken pox. Little red blisters pop up in clusters on one side of the body, usually the back, trunk, chest and stomach, and last for weeks, morphing from red hot bands of hellatiously painful blisters to oozing pustuals of pain and disgustingness to flaking and scabbing sheets of grossness. Shingles are further accompanied by sharp lightning-bolt like nerve pain.

In my case, the actual shingles aren't that bad. Sure, I've got no fewer than six major bands of shingles, all in varying stages of pain and ooziness. The worst part of my case of Shingles is the nerve pain. Blinding pain shoots across my right rib cage, crushing me and making me unable to breathe. I'm pretty certain that J.K. Rowling had Shingles pain in mind when she wrote of the searing scar pain that Harry Potter experiences whenever he is near Lord Voldemort.

Shingles are my Lord Voldemort, that's for sure. They're ugly, they're useless and stare at me with such blatant irony that I can't stand it (Lord Voldemort, much like Hitler, was ironic and hypocritical in the fact that neither were 'pure bloods.' Yes, I've just likened my Shingles to Hitler. Again, I've got a cocktail of medicines floating around my blood stream). The irony in my Shingles is the fact that 20-somethings don't often get Shingles...

...unless they're stressed out. So my stress -- over finances, family, work, boys, you name it -- has not only caused me emotional pain; it's now causing me actual physical pain. Of course (Which is actually the exact reaction my friend Jacob had when I told him about my Shingles). And now I'm in so much pain (Okay, currently I'm floating on cloud nine with just a few itchies) that I can't work. If I can't work, I can't bring in money and if I don't bring in money...well, then the entire vicious circle of stress begins all over again.

Sigh. I'm just glad I have vicodin so I can stay relaxed, even if it is artificial.

Waiting

For as good of a runner as I am (or perhaps once was, considering that I'm in such poor shape that a 5-miler is now a long and incredible-energy-consuming run for me), life has used its second wind and kicked to catch up with me. The last few months of "Everything will be alright," "It'll all work out" and "Just have faith" have all of a sudden and unexpectedly morphed into simply, "Oh shit." All of my efforts of running this race that everyone calls life (How's that for the cheesiest of cheesy metaphors?) have deteriorated: In my pushing and striving and churning during this race, I've somehow been passed by the stronger and faster competitor that most people refer to as reality.

What a bitch.

I talked with my mother on the phone today (Okay, it's not technically fair to refer to her as my mother since I only use the phrase, "my mother" when she has made me mad or irritated) to figure out what the heck I am going to do come January when I don't have enough money to pay for my rent. Despite talking for nearly 30 minutes (Which I know, doesn't seem like long but I was on my lunch break and had little time for a long, drawn-out heart-to-heart nor the patience to wait to hear what she and my dad had decided), the two of us were unable to come to much more of a conclusion than waiting.

I hate waiting. I hate waiting simply because I am not a person who can sit back and sit patiently for something to occur. I am a go getter; a doer, if you will. But for some reason, I feel like I have been waiting; waiting for that something better to happen, waiting for things to get better, waiting for my life to begin. But, as my mom reminds me, "This...this waiting, anxious, scary, unknown fear and feeling you're experiencing day in and day out is life."

Seriously, what a bitch. Whoever thought that this is what life after college would be like? Aren't we all supposed to land stellar jobs, live in cookie cutter houses and pop out 2.5 babies with our incredibly amazing and loving significant others? I never imagined that food stamps, bill collecting callers and minimum wage jobs would be a part of it.

I for one, am defeated by it.

At least temporarily. More to follow. I guess I'll keep whoever may read this waiting.

For that, I apologize.

Laundry Money

Every time I come home I always take inventory of what my parents have laying around. In what can only be described as the utmost moochiest of mooching, I gather up and load into my car at least half of the items I make note of. Over the past five and half years since I began (And yes, finished) college, I have permanently borrowed from my parents house the following:

Razor blades (Although to my credit, I bought my own for the first time last May)

Mascara (My mom buys the fancy schmancy kind from Macy's where she always receives 'free' gifts in return for her $100+ purchase)

Baking supplies, including cookie cutters, a flour sifter, measuring spoons and (my favorite) sprinkles

Towels (Both of my parents are a bit OCD when it comes to certain items. For example, my father has more guitars, boats and CDs than any solitary person could possibly use. My mother's obsessive collecting is a bit more practical; she has more towels than any two people could ever, EVER use.)

Socks (See above regarding my mother's aforementioned obsession with towels.)

I also always, always gather change. My parents' house is decorated with random vessels -- urns, vases, baskets, bowls, you name it -- of change; lots and lots of change. Throughout the past five or so years I'm fairly certain that, thanks to my change gathering ability whenever I am home, my parents have paid for more of the laundry that I do in Portland than my own toiling has. I figure they aren't going to miss it, since all the hundreds of dollars (I'm really not exaggerating here) in silver and copper are simply cluttering their house. Plus, I'm their daughter and they shouldn't mind helping me out a little bit, regardless if they are aware of their formidable contributions or not...right?

Right.

Despite everything, this trip home was no exception to my kleptomaniac endeavors. While I mostly scourged the house for photographs, I also managed to fill up a Ziploc sandwich-size baggy half way full of quarters. Without counting it, I took the baggy (shame-free) to the bank where, for the first time in two days, I pulled out my debit card and deposited the quarters.

The damage? $28.75. That's enough to cover laundry costs for two months....or a full tank of gas...or a week worth of groceries...or two weeks worth of coffee...or five weeks worth of beer.

It's also a fairly solid sale shopping trip to the Gap.

Decisions, decisions.

Fatherly Advice

I'm home in Spokane for my 'weekend' off, taking a much needed and long overdue break from trying to be a real, live and responsible adult. After a short five hours, I got home and just finally felt...relaxed. I've been so stressed out (see my last blog entry) as of late that I realized, upon entering the familiar warmth and comfort of my parents' house, I haven't taken a good, long breather.

After tucking into a good dinner, the family sat around the TV watching (God forbid) the CMAs (I know one person of all my Portland people who listens to country. I love her to death but I just can't do country). During one of about a million commercial breaks, my dad turned to me and asked me about my writing jobs.

"I've only got one, dad."

"Oh."

"But I'm looking. Always looking."

And here's where my dad, who usually offers such sage and logical advice, suggested to me something that I never thought I'd hear come out of his mouth.

"Well, why don't you get a job as a cocktail waitress?"

Granted, trying to get a job as a cocktail waitress isn't a bad idea. After all, I have my Oregon food handler's card even though I've never worked in a restaurant. Waitresses can make pretty decent money and I would definitely love the influx of cash tips (as would my baristas who I have been tipping less). I could work evenings as a waitress while keeping my day job at Pottery Barn and still continue to write for the Regence Group (and any other writing job that I stumble upon). My father's next comment is where the sage and wisdom and all-around fatherly protection falls away:

"It'd be perfect. You'd make good money and you can meet a guy."

Job recommendations and love life advice. Apparently, they go hand in hand for my father. And what's more, my father thinks it's a good idea for me to get a job where possibly intoxicated men can (and apparently to my father, hopefully will) hit on me.

Perfect.