Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts

Friday, January 7, 2011

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.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Confession of a One-time Smoker

I've got a really major confession to make. I mean, it's a big one. You could easily call it a doozy.

I smoked a cigarette.

Okay, that's a lie. I smoked a pack of cigarettes.

I know, I know. I deserve more than just a simple, "Shame on you."

Allow me to explain.

It went down like this. I've been dealing with a slew of stressful and emotional issues of late -- break ups, pending surgeries, insanely demanding job to name a few -- when, there I was, cleaning out my car during what became the most inane of torrential downpours -- according to Portland meteorological records, it was the most rain Portland, the city infamous for gloomy rain, had ever gotten in one time -- when I reached deep underneath my passenger's seat and felt a box like I had never felt before.

Pulling it out, I learned that it was a pack of Marlboro's that belonged to my boyfriend's -- ugh, my ex's -- best friend. I was ready to put the box into my trash bag already teeming with coffee cups and empty Jelly Bellies boxes when I noticed there was still one solitary cigarette hiding beneath the gold foil.

I threw the bag away and kept that solitary cigarette.

I dried off, soaked after half-standing in the rain for 30 minutes (What can I say? My car was messy!), and stared at the cigarette, sitting on my table, beckoning me like I was Alice. I could see the words written on its white, half-crumpled body: "Smoke me," like it was my key through the door to Wonderland.

And so, I did. I grabbed a pack of matches from my closet, ran outside to my apartment's fire escape and lit up.

Trust me, as a runner...yes, now a runner who chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes...I know how awful smoking is for the body. I cherish my lungs, my heart and my body -- they've all been with me and have held their own relatively well so, to completely destroy all three with the puff of one cigarette is seemingly nonsensical. I mean, studies show that smoking just one single cigarette increases the stiffness of the arteries in people my age, 18 to 30, by a whopping 25 percent. That's not good for the body.

Yet, despite these stats, an alarmingly large percentage -- 17.9 of adults in Oregon -- of the US population still smokes. It's really no wonder why the CDC named cigarette smoking as the leading preventable cause of death in our nation.

Most scientific research shows that the compulsion to smoke again after that first cigarette can lie dormant for three years. My compulsion lay low for a whopping 48 hours. As disgusting as it felt afterwards -- the smell of nicotine and smoke lingered in my nostrils while the taste of raw, burning chemicals and tobacco pierced my every taste bud -- I got the point of such pitiful and disgraceful agony and depression that I needed to turn to something.

And that's when my mouth started to get dry. And when my fingers started to itch. And when my new-found arrhythmia began to explode in my chest.

I knew I wanted -- needed -- a cigarette. So, with unsteady footsteps, I walked to the corner store and nonchalantly bought a pack. And then I went to town; huffing and puffing on one right after another until, much to my surprise, I had none left.

And that's when it hit me: Nicotine is, as every healthcare advocate and worker will tell you, the most addictive drug. It's smarmy, making you feel cool...like those ultra hip yet laid-back 20-somethings who read and write in the park. It's comforting, releasing you from experiencing the stress of real life. It's intoxicatingly indulgent...like allowing yourself to have a thick slice of sinfully rich cake.

Unlike that cake's moment on your lips that stays on your hips, the damage caused by a moment with a cigarette isn't possible to eradicate and it's much harder to say, "No thanks," to another cigarette than it is to another slice of cake. Why? As any smoker will probably tell you -- it's the withdrawal that makes the body scream for a kid like ice cream, "YES, PLEASE! I want ANOTHER!"

And so, it's a mind game: At first I'm dealing with the taste in my mouth and the stench in my nose that doesn't seem nearly as bad when there's a cigarette at reach. And the physical effects -- my shaky hands, awkward heart beat, the feeling that my tongue is growing larger and larger. Then there's the dizziness, unbalanced by that awful sense of vertigo like I'm swaying on a boat that has no exit.

It's enough hell to make me wonder, "Why'd I ever do this in the first place?"

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Hump Day

Today has been a rough day. For no real reason in particular I haven't been sleeping all that well and today was definitely a result of the four hours of sleep I've managed to wink in over the past two days. It's not a case of the Mondays but rather, as the rest of the working world calls it, a case of the Humpdays.

No. I'm not talking about anything pornographic or icky (I hate the word hump with as much passion as I do the word horny. They both just sound so gross).

Allow me to pull some definitions:

Ala Urban Dictionary:
1. The middle of the work week; used in context of climbing a proverbial hill to get through a tough week.
2. Wednesday, the middle of the week, implying you have to 'get over the hump' before you can anticipate the weekend.
3. The middle of the week or the beginning of the weekend, depending on your level of addiction to alcohol.

Ala Dictionary.com:
1. The middle of the work week, usually Wednesday.

Sadly, since I no loner have access to the Oxford English Dictionary since I graduated UP 13 months ago, I can't dive into the serious etymology of Hump Day.

So I Googled instead (Yes, I know...I am indeed a giant dork).

Apparently Wednesday is just a mediocre middle day in most worlds...real and fictional.

There's AE Bray's nursery rhyme, "Monday's Child," that decries Wednesday's child as full of woe (IF...yes, big IF, I ever have kids, I'm sure my mom will hope I have a Wednesday child since, as she and my father have told me numerous times, if I were the first child, I would have been the only.). Solomon Grundy was married on a Wednesday, fell ill on a Thursday and was buried by Sunday (I DO plan on getting married someday but definitely NOT on a Wednesday).

In Winnie the Pooh, the cruddy nature of the "Blustery Day" is attributed to it being "Windsday" (a play off of Wednesday, just in case you didn't catch that). And in Richard Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar," Wednesday is the only day the sun shines gray (Considering his troubled life and eventual suicide, it's probably best he was a Montana boy who didn't know that in Portland, the sun shines gray every day).

But it's not even in literature and poetry where Wednesday is a crappy day (PS as I write this the once-sunny day is vanishing under a sheet of heavy, heavy rain). In astrology, the planet Mercury represents Wednesday. Mercury, a/k/a Apollo, is simply the messenger (Maybe there's a reason for that adage, "Don't shoot the messenger" because it sucks to be the proverbial bearer of bad news.), noted for his swiftness and speed...a flat out lie considering the length of the modern day Wednesday. I think that the first century poet Manilius probably had it right when he called Mercury inconstant and vivacious.

If we shoot over to the Bible, we get Ash Wednesday (Caveat: This is all coming from a non-religious individual who attended a private Catholic university so take the commentary with a grain of salt). Yes, of course, it's a wonderfully spiritual day on the whole but it comes with the confessing, fasting and the promise to not eat meat for FORTY WHOLE DAYS. Plus as it was at my college, most people are hungover from going nuts the night before on Fat Tuesday.

So, as one can see, Wednesdays are blah all around. For me, Wednesday's few saving graces are all modern-day guilty pleasures like the Willamette Week (Of which I only read the Dish section. I pick up the free weekly paper solely because it means I get a THIRD crossword puzzle to work on), America's Next Top Model (WGN is rerunning the Petite Model season, fyi) and no boyfriend until later at night to make fun of me for indulging in either (Quarter Orange duty calls). On my cross country team in college Wednesdays were always an easy training day; no practice and either a light run, cross training or a total day off.

Considering my lack of sleep and the fact that my body feels more zombie-like and less humanoid, I'm going to pay homage to my cross country team training schedule and take the day off from running (I've gone a solid 12 days in a row!), kick back with an IPA and watch ANTM while doing the crossword puzzle.

Of course, that's after I finish this ginormous internal project that's due...oh...today.

Hump Day indeed.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden #%&*#@! Sun

Warning: I'm a bit of a potty mouth in this post.

For a very brief 15 minutes this afternoon I saw blue sky.

No, I'm not kidding.

For those of you readers who aren't Pacific Northwesterners (Which might be just Meghann, Rachel, Timmy and the occasional random outsider who might, maybe, perchance stumble across my blog), you don't know how incredibly awesome seeing blue sky was.

We had just finished our weekly Friday lunch time meeting (Which actually sorta sucked because my sandwich -- we always get lunch purchased for us on Fridays, courtesy of a department in the company -- was slathered in gut-wrenching cream cheese so I was forced to buy my own lunch) and were back in our cave of an office when our boss came to talk with us, the messaging team. He was in the midst of explaining how we need to really hammer down on perfecting the narration aspect of our Impact Movies (since our writing and graphics are already pretty bomb) when I, gazing past him, blurted out:

"Holy shit, that's blue sky!"

I was obviously mortified; embarrassed by my foul-mouthed word vomit and apparent inability to pay full attention to what my boss was saying at the time and scared because I interrupted the flow of creative reconstruction of a major step in our scriptwriting process.

I was indeed the new girl who wasn't paying attention to the man who signed her paychecks.

Shit.

It wasn't even that...I mean, it mostly was, but there's also the factor that the big boss intimidates me. I'm pretty sure he is indeed a genius and because of that, I find myself super hesitant when speaking around or directly to him. I don't want to sound like an idiot, which doesn't actually happen to me often (I swear I'm smart and articulate...Jacob would call that smarticulate). However, I've found myself sounding like a total ditzy airhead (or perhaps the platinum blonde I've made myself to be) in front of him (I was actually surprised I landed the full-time position here, considering that I've never had such a bad and awkward interview as I did when I spoke with him prior to being hired). So, to blurt out something so remedially obtuse was really, the icing on the idiot cake.

Especially because my interruption didn't go unnoticed.

"What?" My boss asked.

"Oh...uh...there's...uhm. A break. In the clouds. And...uh...yeah...the sky...the sky is blue. Blue sky."

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

"You don't say? Well there it is. It's about fucking time."

Phew. Crisis averted.

But yes, there was a teeny, tiny sliver of blue sky this afternoon. After a month's worth of rain in the first four days of June, the third wettest May in history and a record-breaking 25 days of measurable rain in April, the slice of blue sky was a slice of hope for better, warmer and drier days to come.

Honestly though, they can't come soon enough. I'm ready to let these pasty white legs see some sunlight for a change; to not wear hooded jackets when I walk from car to apartment; to be able to wear sandals without having soggy toes afterwards.

Not that I'm complaining; I'm well aware I've established residence in Portland where we're as famous for rain as we are for great coffee, great beer and a great abundance of homeless people. And that's okay...sometimes a good rain is cleansing and soothing (Also like coffee and beer, though not really like homeless people).

But, after three months of rain with just a teaser of warm weather, I think we Portlanders (and all Pacific Northwesterners, for that matter) deserve a little big of Mr. Sunshine love.

It's about fucking time, after all.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Lost: Attention Span

If I were able to focus for long enough I'd like to make a poster:

LOST!
Have you seen my attention span? I can't seem to find it anywhere and am fairly certain that it was either stolen or, sadly, it ran away from me.

Last seen: Oh, weeks ago, probably prior to my first day off from work either in Northwest or Southwest Portland.

Reward: My sanity.

But making a poster takes so much work; I'd have to pull out markers and paper and scissors and be all creative and stuff.

Yeah, stuff.

Then I'd have to walk around, in the rain, carrying dozens of copies of my poster and a staple gun (Which I'd have to get from somewhere; a girl just doesn't own one of these) without simultaneously getting distracted by the blooming daffodils or friendly construction workers or lurking transients and avoiding eye contact with babies and old men who think I'm 'cute and artsy' with my short hair and big, billowy scarves.

Which reminds me, I think I need a haircut again.

But if I get a haircut I'll want to get it dyed. Like red or, if I'm feeling really ballsy (yeah, I went there), platinum blonde.

I don't know if I could go blonde though.

I used to want to go super red, like cherry red.

I was once magenta which was pretty great, though not as great as when I dyed my high school track coach's gray mullet purple.

Hey--he said I could.

Wait, where was I? Yes; my attention span.

It's weird; I've always been someone who can sit down and focus and for some reason, over the past month, I've been unable to really just

sit. down. and. focus.

I surf websites like a Vegas dealer hands out cards; shuffling back and forth between news sites, shopping sites and that damned Facebook. I flip amongst the eight tv channels I have like I'm an aging salt-and-pepper haired and moustached man (Yes Dad I am alluding to you here). I can't make up my mind, mainly because my mind is running on all eight cylinders even though it's really not going anywhere.

Maybe I'm just in a funk. Maybe I'm burnt out.

Maybe my brain is just so full of ideas and thoughts that my mind constantly bounces from one to the next by sheer involuntary accident, being unable to move without tilting in between stored memories. It's time that I expunge my brain of these ideas, onto virtual paper (ahem, my much neglected blog) so that I can, perhaps, find my lost attention span.