101 Little things that probably won't change the world...

Take a ride with me....

2009-08-11T22:04:00.002-04:00

So, loyal readers (all 2 of you), I am closing up my 101 little things blog and combining the chronicling of my 101 goals with my general personal blog. The personal blog pretty much talks about things pertaining to my goals.... food, relationships, my dog... and it also has some (hopefully more in the near future) just musings about life. The new blog's address is- http://atraintobklyn.blogspot.com/ I really hope everyone will come and check it out :-)

all of the posts related to my 101 goals will be labled as 101 things, so you can follow them that way if you like.

Thanks for reading!
Nana

Weekend fun in DC

2009-07-28T17:23:00.008-04:00

This quarter's weekend getaway (goal #44) was a trip to DC to visit my girlfriend Cynthia. Cynthia is a huge deal. She has her own fabulous blog, Hungry Sista, is a writer for Essence Magazine and is currently a press correspondent for the White House (yeah... Prez Obama, Michelle and them... fabulous). I traveled to DC with my girlfriend Alex (who is also a huge deal!) on one of those commuter bus lines that travels between DC and New York. I was NOT pleased with taking the bus (we were originally going to drive Alex's car), but it turned out not being as I anticipated. for $50 (round trip) we rode in a fairly comfortable, air conditioned bus with free wi-fi and watched a movie (Paul Blart, Mall Cop.... which was surprisingly funny and touching... I shed a little tear at the end... and I'm not ashamed...) Alex introduced me to TastyKake donuts at our rest-stop break... She says they are a Philly treat.... can't say they were too shabby. Def better than Entemann's powdered donuts.

After 5 long hours on the train, we finally arrived in Dupont Circle, got our luggage and decided to get a cocktail while we waiting for Cynthia. Alex and I both had John Daily's at a cute little place called Bread and Brew. John Daily's are one of my new favorite summer cocktails. I was introduced to them the week before at Delysha's wedding. It is a mix of sweet tea vodka and lemonade. You can't even taste the alcohol.... not that this seasoned gin and tonic gal minds the taste of alcohol, but it got the stamp of approval from lightweight Alex.

Cynthia showed up and we trekked over to her spot. We had plans that evening to meet up with Alex's friend for dinner so Alex decided to jump in the shower to make sure she was all fresh and clean (apparently Cynthia and I weren't too concerend :-p)... after a slight towel... "situation" and some back and forth about outfit selection, we were off to dinner at this awesome placed called Oya for dinner. It was fantastic. I had these BBQ sticky ribs that were AMAZING (but messy) and this great cocktail called a Fuji Island... which was a mixture of Soju, cucumber and black pepper. Sounds odd.... tasted fabulous.

Being the old broads that we were, we went home after dinner and, after a slight sheet... "situation" we promptly fell asleep. Saturday we spent the day wandering around in Georgetown, shopping it up and eating pizza and Ben and Jerrys. I "motivated" (read: forced) the girls to walk home instead of taking the bus... about a 45 min walk, mostly uphill (Hey we gotta work off that Ben and Jerrys) so by the time we got home we were beat, and I promptly fell asleep. It was 7:00. After making fun of me for falling asleep, Cynthia and Alex both decided to nap too... We woke up around 10:00 to pouring rain and decided we were too lazy to go out and just sat around chatting and watching TV.

Sunday we woke up bright and early, had a lovely brunch and then took an extremely anti-climactic tour of the National Cathedral. Church service was going on at the time, so maybe that is why we only got to see like 1.5 rooms?... but I"m not so sure. Beautiful cathedral though... from the outside :-p

We bid adieu to Cynthia, boarded the bus and were on our way back to NYC. I had a great time in DC and really can't wait to visit again :-)

Trying to regain motivation....

2009-06-04T16:31:00.004-04:00

Whew.... hello friend(s)... it's been quite a while since my last entry.... almost 2 months as a matter of fact. A TON of things happened in that 2 month period... I turned 30, went to Miami... helped Curly Tail Pug Rescue with the placement of over FIFTY (yes you read it right 50!) pugs/pug mixes in need, waved a not so tearful goodbye to the dreary winter and officially started basking in the Brooklyn spring sun..... Unfortunately some not so good things happened that really kind of put a damper on my blogging spirit; my camera broke which really limited my ability to document anything and my ipod was lost/stolen.... which just kind flucks up my whole sh*t... It's hard to do things.... anythign without an ipod....:-p

It's hard to keep up my motivation to blog. Really hard. It's kind of like the gym... once your into it you're good to go, but if you miss a few days or a week then (at least for me) then you're sidelined for a minute. But time is a-wasting and if I'm going to complete the remaining goals on this list I REALLY have to get a move on.

One thing I realize about myself is that I really do thrive on reinforcement... I'm a fairly internally motivated individual, but knowing that somebody is in my corner supporting me is EXTREMELY motivating for me. So if you happen to come across this blog feel free to leave a comment. I will LOVE you if you do :-p I think what I really need to do is find a community of folks who are also into completing/working towards goals so I can stay motivated that way. Thirdly I think I need to find a way to actually get more people to read my blog(s)... knowing that someone (other than Janet... LOVE YOU JANET) reads my blogs and knows when I'm being a complete slacker and not posting will definitely help me stay motivated to update this thing.

Whew... so hopefully I will never be gone this long again. I actually have been doing some things that I will update now (I need some information from my old computer).... the next post will probably also not be that entertaining or colorful but at least I'm back.

Love y'all!
N

So long it's been......

2009-05-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

It's been SOOOOO long since i had a new post here... yes i KNOW Janet! :-p But I"m back in action effective today and hopefully won't be out of action like this again. Ugh who knew it would be so hard to maintain a blog?!?

Be back later!

Friday Night Ethiopian Extravagana (Recipes 15-17)

2009-03-29T00:34:00.010-04:00

So my guy Curtis and I had an Ethiopian food night on Friday. We had decided about a week ago that we wanted to get together and cook something new, and we settled upon Ethiopian food because neither of us had ever attempted that at home and there were tons of vegetarian options for Curtis and meat options for me.

The Menu: Since neither of us had had Ethiopian food for a while, I found a few menus online for Ethiopian restaurants and Curtis picked 2 veggie dishes (Atakilt Wot and Shiro) and I picked 1 beef dish (Tibs Wot) since I had beef in the freezer that needed to be used. In addition to the dishes we, of course, had to have some Injera and I made a little cocktail for us as well.

Ingredients of interest: Ethiopians use a LOT of spices in their cooking. The only spice that neither of us had ever cooked with was Fenugreek seed. Fenugreek seed seemed to provide an essential flavor to 2 of the staple components of Ethiopian cooking, Niter kibbeh and berbere (more about those later). Fenugreek is native to India and is often used in Indian, Mediterranean and Northern African cooking. By itself fenugreek has a slightly bitter taste. Incidentally I had become familiar with fenugreek a few years earlier when I ordered a "grow your boobs big" kit online. It came with a bunch of herbs and berries that were supposed to make your boobs bigger. One of them was fenugreek! I believe you were supposed to make tea out of the seeds AND use a lotion on your boobies that was infused with fenugreek. Obviously this didn't work out for me, but now that I have stock of seeds I may give it another shot... Anyway moving on...

The Process... So before Curtis came over I decided to make 2 elements of the meal, the niter kibbeh and the Tef. Niter kibbeh is a clarified butter that is infused with ginger, garlic and a ton of other spices. To make the niter kibbeh I just melted a 1/2 pound of butter with a couple slices of fresh ginger, 2 cloves of garlic, cardamon pods, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric and fenugreek, let it simmer for an hour and then strained out the solids. It smelled AMAZING! The smell was very warm and "comforting" (for lack of a better word) from the cloves, ginger and cinnamon, with a certain spiciness from the fenugreek and tumeric. it smelled SOOo good... i wish this blog had smell'o'vision so I could share it.

Tej is a sweet wine that is made from fermented honey and the leaves and twigs from a special kind of hops called gesho. Obviously i wasn't going to be fermenting honey in Bed Stuy so I decided to go with this rough approximation of tej that was basically honey, water and wine. It was tasty... I'm sure it didn't taste ANYTHING like real tej, but it was sweet, refreshing and got the job done. I think I'm going to try and get some real tej sometime soon then just so I can try it.

Curtis came through around 7:30 and we quickly got started on the berbere. The berbere, along with the niter kibbeh, seemed to be the most important, quintessentially Ethiopian, elements of the meal. Berbere is a hot pepper baste (or dry powder) that is made from a TON of spices (cumin, cardamom, allspice, cloves, turmeric, nutmeg, paprika, cayenne, etc etc). Curtis and I had most of the spices on hand in ground form, but we decided to be authentic as possible and purchase the whole form of each spice, and toast and grind it into powder ourselves. The berbere was really easy to make.. we just toasted the spices until they became fragrant, ground them up in my coffee grinder, and then threw them in the blender with some onion, garlic, ginger, oil and water. So easy and so tasty! I can't really describe the taste of the berbere itself it was similar to Indian curry but sharper... not quite as muddled. Ours wasn't that hot, but i don't think I got the right kind of peppers for it. I have about a cup of berbere left over and I'm definitely going to keep it on hand. It would make a fabulous marinate for fish or chicken, or just an additive to stews for an extra kick of flavor. Yumm....

The actual dishes were probably the least excite portions of the meal to make. To prepare Tibs Wat (Beef stew) you cook up some pureed ginger, onion and garlic in hot niter kibbeh, add some paprika and berbere paste, red wine, beef stock, cayenne and beef chunks marinated in lemon and salt and let it cook for about 40 min. Nothing terribly exciting but this mess was hella tasty. I was very concerned because I tasted the mixture after the addition of the paprika and berbere and it was REALLY disgusting. If it weren't for Curtis calming me down I might have chucked it... it was that nasty, but obviously the addition of the wine, stock and beef created some sort of culinary magic because in the end it was fantastic... spicy, complex, creamy, and a tad bitter.

Curtis took the lead on preparing the veggie dishes but they also didn't seem that difficult to make. The atkilt wot was basically a bunch of cut up veggies (carrots, green beens, cabbage) and potato cut up, COVERED in niter kibbeh and baked until tender, buttery and delicious... and it was.. Seriously that niter kibbeh is no joke because those veggies were excellent. The taste was much milder than the tibs wot, but i liked it because it allowed you to really taste the complexities of the niter kibbeh. Also the flavor wasn't so overpowering that it couldn't be combined with other types of cuisine. I would totally make this as a side dish to go along with baked chicken and brown rice... I think a lot of people would enjoy their veggies prepared this way. Not particularly healthy (veggies doused in spiced butter) but definitely delicious.

Lastly Curtis made the Shiro Wot which was spicy green pea stew. As written the Shiro Wot was simply peas, onion, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper. The flavor was obviously really mild and not particularly Ethiopian... I think I dropped the ball on this recipe. I should have looked for a better one. I think niter kibbeh should have been subbed for the oil and there should have been some berbere in there. We ended up adding a few tablespoons of berbere at the end and it really kicked up the dish.

Lastly we tried our hand at injera... injera is a spongy, sour, crepe-like flat bread that is used as a utensil for eating the stews. Proper injera is made from teff (a cereal grain indigenous to Ethiopia) flour mixed with water and allowed to ferment for several days. Because of the fermentation, injera is very sour. After fermentation the injera is baked into large flat pancakes. Soo... we decided on our Ethiopian theme late Wednesday and I didn't figure out how to make injera until Thursday so obviously the fermentation was out. Instead we decided to make this "quick injera" recipe that I saw online which was basically a batter made from whole wheat and white flour, baking powder, club soda and a little lemon joice. This was not injera. These were very bland pancakes. They definitely LOOKED like injera and were spongy like injera... but they tasted like very bland pancakes. Thankfully neither of us really like injera so we were pleased with our pancakes.

Overall I give the meal a solid A and the company an A+. Although we didn't actually eat until 11:00 we had a great time cooking and chatting and it was just really nice to be able to share an activity that I like so much with someone who enjoys it just as much as I do. By the end of the night i was EX.HAUSTED but the learning and company was totally worth the effort. Hopefully we can make this a monthly or bi-monthly activity. Here are a few shots of our finished products:
My Plate...

Curtis' Plate...

The table:

I think I'm going to use my leftover berbere to make some doro wat next weekend or later on this month and try to make a proper injera. If anyone interested in coming over for dinner just let me know. :-)

N

Oh My Damn....

2009-03-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

OKAY Eric Benet... I see you... I watched this video at work... probably shouldn't have.... Whoo wee..... That's all I'm going to say...

Chocolate Legs @ Yahoo! Video

2 More Best Picture Movites- Platoon and Out of Africa

2009-03-22T17:21:00.001-04:00

I watched 2 more movies on my "picture of the year list". I watched both of these last Saturday during my failed DIY kinky twist experiment... Even though I wasted 3-4 hours last weekend trying and failing to put in my twist extensions, the day wasn't a complete loss because i got to see 2 really good movies!

The first movie I watched was Platoon. I didn't think I would really like this movie, since I'm not that into war movies but it turned out to be a pretty decent flick. The movie centered around the lives of 13 soldiers and specifically 1 new soldier who had volunteered to go to Vietnam (he was a wealthy, white guy who dropped out of college) in an effort to personally recify the injustice of only the poor having to go to war (something the other "poor" soldiers thought was really idiotic). The movie kind of followed his change from a shared shitless newbie to a "real" soldier and showed his struggle to not let the atrocities that he saw committed in Vietnam turn him into a monster as well.

The movie was violent, but not in a gratuitous way, and had that late '70s, grimy, M.A.S.H type visual effect... like the movies i used to watch on Sunday afternoons on FOX growing up. Overall I really enjoyed the movie To me, the main theme of the movie seemed to be the struggle not to let Vietnam eat the soldiers alive... Stress, fatigue, disease, often leads soldiers to do things that they wouldn't normally do (rape, kill innocents, pillage villages) and it seemed like there was a real struggle within all of the characters around what Vietnam was making them become. There were 13 or so "supporting" characters and I really appreciated the fact that each of the 13 had their own personality with depth... it wasn't just like, "this is the evil guy ann this is the good guy..." they each had their own struggle, which Oliver Stone was able to get across quite skillfully despite the fact that no one had that many lines. Also it was also just kind of cool to see all of the young actors, Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, The guy from Scrubs, Willem Defou, Forrest Whitaker, the bad guy trying to take over Ice Cube's shop in Barbershop... Good times all around. I don't know if I'd watch the movie again, but i give it a solid B.

The second film I watched was Out of Africa. I was NOT excited about watching this... from the previews it seemed like it was going to be one of those beautiful, sweeping, but mind-numbingly boring pics... like the English Patient. Also the movie is about colonial Kenya and the main characters were all rich white people.... I was not excited about this movie. But it turned out to be REALLY great! The main character, played by Meryl Streep, was an "aging" (probably late 20's... but I guess that's old for a single woman in the early 1900s) single woman with family money who married her best friend, a poor Baron, in exchange for a title and had to relocate to Kenya to be with her new husband.

When she arrived at her new place it was made pretty clear to her that her marriage wasn't real and her new husband wasn't really going to be around much and of course at first she was put off by all the black faces she saw. She didn't trust anyone... she looked at all the natives like they were dirty and were going to steal her stuff...( needless to say I was getting annoyed at this point.) With no friends or family in the remote area where she lived, the Baroness decided to throw all of her energy into making sure her farm prospered and creating actual relationships with the people who worked on the farm and lived in the neighboring villages. During this time she met and fell in love with a man, played by Robert Redford, who seemed to be sort of a wandering/jack of all trades type... but with money. LOL He was sexy and funny and they had a true connection and fell in love.. aWWW but he was also a man and didn't want to be "controlled" by calling it a relationship or actually getting married.

Anywhoo I'm not going to recap the entire story, but all in all the Baroness grew to really care about her "native" neighbors and friends... not in an annoying, paternalistic type of way, but a real, honest affection for who they were and respect for their ways and culture. Through her relationship with Robert Redford's character (who was RIDICULOUSLY hot in this movie...) she discovered herself, her own self worth. SUCH a great movie! The end was heartbreaking... I was sitting in my apartment crying like a fool. I won't spoil it, but it's definitely worth checking out. I would watch it again in a heartbeat, so i give Out of Africa a solid A.

Pasta in Almond Garlic Sauce (recipe #15)

2009-03-19T23:08:00.011-04:00

I made a pretty tasty new dish last night- Penne pasta in Almond Garlic sauce. I came across this recipe last week on one of the blogs that I follow and it seemed pretty interesting. It's basically a pasta with a white sauce made of pureed almond, garlic, butter, Parmesan cheese, and lemon, mixed with frozen peas and topped with mint and basil. The idea of pureeing almonds into a pasta sauce was intruiging, and I had basically all the ingredients on hand (except for the mint and Parm) so I figured I'd give it a shot.

According to the recipe, this entire meal (including prep, etc) was only supposed to take 20 min and wonder of wonders, it actually did! This was a super easy meal. There was virtually no prep work. No onions or garlic to chop, no peas to de-shell... Pretty much the only prep type work you had to do was blanch the almonds... but then again you could buy almonds already blanched.

For those of you who aren't cookers, blanching is basically dipping a food into boiling water briefly. Vegetables (asparagus, snowpeas, etc) are often blanced to bring out their color and then placed in ice water. You can also blanch tomatoes to easily remove the skin... but I digress. I generally think of blanching as ONLY dipping the food into hot water, but apparently "blanching" an almond is dipping it into hot water and then removing the skin from each almond. I found this out by mistake... I don't think I've ever blanched almonds, so when they came out of the water and the skin was all bubbly I just figured that's what they were supposed to look like. I was about to throw the almonds in the blender when I saw that the skin was peeling off of a few of them and I realized "OOOOOH maybe I'm supposed to take this skin off so it's not all chunky and stuff in the sauce!" I'm smart :-p So I peeled all the almonds... which was kind of fun.. If you grasp them with your thumb and forefinger at the pointy end, the white inside will kind of shoot out of the skin like a little nut missle... This was great fun for me... because I'm a dork. It was great fun for Leroy as well because he got to eat a few wayward missles.

After I finished with the almonds I threw them in the blender with a little water and a couple cloves of garlic. Next you heat a little butter and olive oil in a pan and add the almond-garlic mixture. The garlic almond mixture will begin to thicken after a few minutes...
It will go from this ---- > To this --- >

After the mixture thickens you add a little bit of the water that you cooked the pasta in. The starchy water will help the mixture thicken. Then you throw in the cheese, peas and lemon juice and lastly you add the basil and mint. When I opened up the basil I had in my fridge I realized it had gone all funky, so I had to use dried basil instead of fresh. Other than that (and not using as much butter) I pretty much followed the recipe. This is what my version looked like!

Overall it was pretty darn good. It wasnt' particularly nutty... the almond taste was really mild. I LOVED the peas and mint combination. Apparently that is a very "spring" combo... according to my boss :-p And honestly even though I didn't necessarily know those 2 were like quintisential "spring" ingredients, when I tasted it, I thought "This tastes like spring..." As written I think I give the dish a solid B+. If I were to make it again, I would obviously use fresh basil. I would also think about using a sharper cheese? I'm not sure if straight Parmesan is sharper than Parmesan-Reggiano, or if there a sharper hard Italian cheese I could sub? I would also probably add far more lemon juice, and more garlic.

Anyway, my Penne with Almond Garlic sauce was QUITE tasty. Please let me know how it turns out if any of you make it.

The food of the Garifuna... (new foods 9-10)

2009-03-15T22:47:00.010-04:00

So this weekend my homegirl Tania invited me to a wonderful Garifuna cultural affair in the Bronx. Tania is Garifuna and she was born in Honduras. Just a little history on the Garifuna, the Garifuna are mixed race people who are descendants of Carib, Arawak and African peoples. The Garifuna generally live in Central America along the Caribbean Coast of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. I kind of thought that the Garifuna were like Black Hondurans.... I'm not sure that's 100% accurate, but the folks at the festival were definitely of African descent and the food was delicious and had definite African inspirations.

Given that it was Tania and I at this affair, obviously the first thing that we did was take a shot. Guifiti is a traditional Garifuna spirit made from rum infused with herbs, nuts and berries. Apparently alcohol was not allowed at this function because after we paid for our shots (actually a scary drunk man paid for them.... but that's another story) we were covertly handed 2 little cups and a half empty bottle of rum and had to pour the shots ourselves under the table while trying to disentangle ourselves (physically and socially) from the scary drunk guy... Anywhoo I have no idea what the rum was infused with, but it was strong and it was tasty. It had a bit of an anise taste to me... a little licorice-y. The guifiti went down fairly smooth, but I think I would like to mix it with something or at least have a chaser next time.

Machuca- The next thing we ate was this DELICIOUS coconut based seafood soup that you eat with a mash of green plantains called Machuca. We actually got to the Machuca right when they ran out, but Tania told her friend, who was making the food, that she wanted to introduce me to the Garifuna culture and I NEEDED to taste the Machuca so she scraped a bit more soup and plantain out for me. And I'm glad she did because it was tasty... coconutty, but not in a heavy way and had notes of cilantro and lime in it. There was only a bit of seafood in my portion, but the broth was nicely infused with seafood flavor. The plantain mash was actually pretty tasty. I'm not usually a fan of starchy mashes (fufu, etc), but the mash actually had a flavor of it's own...

Next on the list was also one of my favorites, Baleada. Baleada is popular street food in Honduras... it's basically a thick, homemade tortilla filled with refried beans and a slightly sweet cream. It sounds like it would be a bit odd, but it was really tasty. The cream tasted a bit like cream cheese or sour cream but it was a bit sweet. The refried beans were just refried beans, but together it worked. Yummm...

After the Baleada we got a couple cups of hot Atole. Atole is porridge like drink made with corn, coconut (or Carnation evaporated milk I was told... Do any people of African descent NOT love the Carnation?!?), hominy, and spices... i think i tasted nutmeg and maybe cinnamon. It was VERY sweet and heavy. I initially though that it was a soup because, despite the fact it was served in a cup, they gave us spoons, but apparently Atole is actually a drink. It was tasty, but it was so rich I could only have a couple spoonfulls.

Next on our gastronomic tour of Honduras we had some Tamales... They were very much like traditional Mexican tamales... chick wrapped in cornmeal and steamed in leaves. They were tasty, but not my fav.

Tania and I took a few sweets to go. One was a sweet called semitas that looks like a very large, puffy sugar cookie with a braided ring of dough surrounding it. The Semitas (I'm not sure if that's singular or plural :-/) were tasty... They pretty much tasted like sugar cookies... with some nutmeg. Blacks all over the diaspora love them some nutmeg... almost as much as they love the Carnation...

The last thing i tasted was the Garifuna Yucca Bread. It is pretty much what it sounds, like... "bread" made of mashed yucca. It was quite interesting... They cut it off of a big tray, and when I saw it on the tray, I kind of thought it was flan, or something similar... The inside of the bread had that kind of flan-like firm mush look. Upon tasting it, the texture was a little like flan, but much denser and chewier... i can't think of much to compare it with, but it kind of had the consistency of fufu... if you for some reason decided to chew your fufu. It was chewy, firm and kind of elastic. The texture was interesting, but definitely not unappealing. The bread tasted pretty good... it was very sweet and moist and tasted of.... you guessed it! Brown sugar and nutmeg... heh heh... yum..

All in all I really enjoyed my taste of Garifuna! I am going to count it as 2 new foods given the Machuca, Guifiti, Tamales and Semitas were not totally foreign to me. I think I am going to try and make machuca this month... it was really tasty. So look out for that :-p

Peace!

Recipe #14- Barley Risotto with Asparagus and Peas

2009-03-13T16:28:00.007-04:00

I tried one of the recipes from this month's issue of Clean Eating this past week. It was a take on risotto, but instead of using a short grain, sticky rice like Arborio, you use barley. I was intrigued when I first saw the recipe, not only because the picture was so beautiful, but also because I'm always looking to introduce grains in interesting ways into my cooking.

So why try the risotto with barley as opposed to just using the rice (What's wrong with Rice? Right Janet :-p) Well when compared to white rice, barley has almost half the calories (193 v. 242 calories per cup) and fewer grams of total carbs (53 v. 44), but I think the biggest difference between rice and barley is the fiber content. While white rice has a whopping 53 grams of carbs, it only has .6 grams of fiber. Barley, on the other hand, is lower in carbs, but MUCH higher in dietary fiber with 6 grams per serving! Barley even tops brown rice when it comes to calories, carbs and fiber. Anyway...we all need to up our fiber content, and barley risotto sounded WAY better than a glass of Metamucil...

The recipe was pretty simple. You basically saute up some shallots and scallions in olive oil, add the barley and some chicken broth. Let that cook. Add the cut up asparagus and peas, and then stir in fresh basil, parsley and lemon zest.

Overall I REALLY enjoyed my barley risotto! Initially I had planned on putting a little butter in it and maybe throwing in some white wine, but I figured I would try and make it a totally clean meal and see how it tasted. It was really good. Clean and simple, but very very tasty and that was just with the asparagus (I forgot the peas).

The thing I was most worried about was getting the creamy consistency that most risottos have. While it wasn't creamy like a typical risotto, it did have an element of creaminess to it.... I'm not really sure where the creaminess came from... maybe it was cooked in more or less liquid than normal, or maybe barley is supposed to a little creamy when cooked? Either way I was pleasantly surprised by the texture and the taste of the dish. The next time I make it I may try and up the creaminess quotient (without ruining the clean-ness of the meal) by roasting and pureeing some cauliflower to add to the broth... I'll probably also add a little coriander (which I like with asparagus), more lemon zest to brighten up the flavor, and I have to think of a different herb to add... I'm not really a fan of parsley.

Overall I give the dish a solid A

New Blog... come check it out!

2009-03-09T16:00:00.004-04:00

Hey Y'all...

I started a new blog. It's just a subset of this blog. One of my goals was to blog 90% of the time. that comes out to over 900 blogs in the 1001 days. It's going to be nearly impossible for me to write 900+ blogs about my 101 goals, and there are lots of other random things I'd like to blog about, so I figured I'd just start a new one. :-)

The new blog is tentatively titled "Pondering Life on the A Train to Utica" I titled it that because most of my brilliance occurs during my 1.5 hour commute everyday. The blog is mainly going to be about things that I find interesting, confusing, beautiful, enlightening, etc.... music, relationships, food, life, hair... I will hopefully put up some poetry and other general creativeness that I'm usually too shy to show folks.

Anywhoo... check it out here and feel free to comment freely.

N :-)

Relationship Ponderings.... Marathon First Dates

2009-03-09T15:18:00.000-04:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about marathon dates in the last couple of days. A friend of mine had a first date that lasted 3 days (Friday-Sunday) It was a long distance first date (ie the people lived in different cities), and the person coming from out of town was staying at my friend’s apartment and they were just going to spend the weekend together.

I personally was NOT a fan of this plan. Not to say that I haven’t had numerous marathon first dates, and I couldn't’t see the draw in it, but in my old (read: bitter and jaded) age I tend to lean towards the less is more style of first dates and suggested that maybe the date was scheduled on a weekend where the person was coming into town for something else (not JUST for the date) and they could meet up for a few hours on 1 or 2 days.

I feel like marathon first dates have the potential to go south, or even sabotage the entire potential relationship for a couple reasons:

1. One party may feel trapped and not comfortable enough to leave. I can think of one specific date that started out fairly early in the day with brunch, and then we were wandering around for a while and decided to catch a movie… good conversation, having a good time, etc… then the guy invited himself over to watch TV because a reality show that we both enjoyed was on…. I liked him and was having a good time, but honestly just wanted to go home and sit on my couch… but I didn’t really feel comfortable telling him he couldn't’t come watch it, when he knew that that’s what I was going to go home and do (I had mentioned it earlier in the date). I ended up getting really irritated with him, not only because I felt like he was crowding my space, but also just because he kept on making stupid comments during the reality show. LOL. Afterwards he wanted to sit and chat, and I finally just had to tell him that I wanted to go to bed and he needed to go. I don’t think he realized I was irritated (people who know me may question that :-p) but the experience left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, and definitely didn’t leave me hungering for more of him… Other than with my case, I feel like this may be more of a danger for girls than it is for guys because, in my experience, a guy doesn’t really like it when girls are all up under them too soon… and guys, (again in my experience) don’t like unpleasantness and try to avoid it at all costs… So they may go along with the long *ss date, and seem totally into it, but in the back of their mind they’re thinking, “This is a needy *ss chick…” and may be put off and never call again.

2. Knowing too much too soon = loss of interest. This is another one that I suffer from… when I leave a date with you I want to be excited to see you again, and hungry for more information about you… I feel like a first date should kind of be like a teaser… you put on your best dress, make sure your conversation is on point, and give the person a glimpse into your life and make them want to get deeper with you…. A 9+ hour date provides WAYY to much time to get too deep too fast. It also provides a false sense of comfort/security. If you spend an entire day or more with a guy you may feel like, “I’m really comfortable with him. I feel really close to him,” and may be tempted to share things that you would usually hold off on sharing (family issues, thoughts about marriage, kids etc)… and then the dude (or girl) could be scared off.

3. Increased length of date = more time for the other person to annoy you, or vice versa. I feel like everyone has had this experience… you’re on a date… he’s looking good, you’re having a good time, joking, and then someone just says something real dumb that throws the whole vibe off. Sure… this can happen during a dinner date… But if this can happen during a 1 hour dinner, imagine the likelihood of someone saying something stupid during the course of a 3 day date. Granted, people are always going to say stupid stuff… but having 3 short dates where you come away feeling like this person is the most awesome guy/girl in the world will give a better buffer when he/she says something idiotic on the 4th date…. Versus you spend 8 hours with someone and they say 2-3 stupid things… you come away thinking “seems like a cool guy/girl, but they sure do have strange ideas on xyz”.

4. Increased likelihood of regrettable slutatiousness- Longer time together = greater opportunity you’ll end up at someone apartment/house = increased probability that you’ll get it poppin = increased possibility of post-sex weirdness = less likelihood that this relationship is gonna work out. If you add alcohol into the mix, the greater opportunity of ending up at someone place turns into an almost certainty and the likelihood that the other person is going to go away from the date thinking “This person is definitely marriage material” decreases to next to nothing. I think this is common sense, but I’m sure some people disagree and think great, long lasting relationships can be born out of first date sex…

Just my thoughts… Thoughts?

Plastic belts? Is that what's hot for spring?

2009-03-06T19:46:00.000-05:00

First Lady Obama is sharing the cover of "O" magazine this month with O herself. She looks so cute! She's wearing a red dress with a bright yellow cardigan with the waist cinched with a clear plastic belt.

Are plastic belts what's hot for spring?!? they BET not be charging $100's of dollars for those damn belts... A plastic belt should be $20 tops..

I will be copying this look... I wonder who makes the dress?

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Please

2009-03-05T21:50:00.000-05:00

Soo..... this is my second blog. This blog is a spin off of sorts on my 101 goals in 1001 days blog. I found myself blogging about a lot of random crap on that blog... and I really want to keep it more about my 101 goals and not just place a bunch of random crap up there. One of my 101 goals was to blog 90% of the time in the next 1001 days. I honestly don't think I'll be able to have 901 things to say about 101 goals... So I'm going to combine the count over these 2 blogs.

This blog is mainly going to be about things that I find interesting, confusing, beautiful, enlightning, etc.... music, relationships, food, life, hair... I will hopefully put up some poetry and other general creativeness that I'm usually too shy to show folks.

I'm still working on the title for the blog.... The address is www.ATrainToBklyn.blogspot.com because I realize that 90% of my brillant thoughts come to me on the train.... I commute an hour and a half a day and I think the A train has the MOST interesting cast of characters of any train in the city.... Always provocking thoughts in my brain... hence the title.

So that's this blog.... It's just going to be the recepticle for my mental diarrhea. Feel free to leave comments, complaints, etc.

Love y'all!
n

My new favorite magazine

2009-03-05T17:38:00.004-05:00

Hey Y'all... I stumbled across this GREAT magazine and I wanted to share. I've been trying to clean up my diet a bit... halfway in preparation for the bikini/stiletto fest that will be occurring in Miami for my birthday, and partly in preparation for my 20% body fat challenge.

Usually when I try and get a little leaner I go back to the tried and true methods that I learned from my co-worker, Desiree, when I worked at a gym in New Haven, CT. Desiree was an aspiring body builder, (and super creative Sponge Bob Square Pants impersonator), and she was the QUEEN of clean eating, body builder style.... Which essentially meant eating 6-8 times a day and the meals generally consisted of lots of egg whites, oatmeal, brown rice, steamed veggies, grilled chicken, sweet potatoes, and cans of tuna on lettuce. That chick, and many other ridiculously ripped folks at the gym, ate like that EVERY DAY.

I was on the body builder style clean eating plan for a month or so and... that mess WORKS. It's no joke. If you're trying to drop weight quickly, that would honestly be the way to go. I stopped because honestly I was looking a little crackish... I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror one day and though; stop the maddness. It wasn't cute. I think it was around that time some members of my family started whispering about me possibly being anorexic.... Yes y'all... that diet is no joke. LOL

Anyway while I still incorporate a bunch of things I learned from that diet/lifestyle, that particular style of "clean" eating didn't really work for me. Firstly, I need variety and excitement in my food... While it really works for some people, the "food is fuel" viewpoint that a lot of body builders take is completely at odds with my personal "food is fun" viewpoint. Secondly, the diet makes you lose weight pretty quickly, and I'm not trying to really lose weight like that... and Thirdly, eating egg whites, tuna, and grilled chicken and veggies all the time REALLY made your farts stink... and I just wasn't down with that.... heh heh was that too much information?

Anyway... I was looking online last week trying to find some resources on "clean" eating to see if there were any new foods I could add or recipes that would spice things up if I decided to try eating that way for the next few months. That's when I came across Clean Eating Magazine! Although the magazine is from the same people that make Oxygen and Muscle Fitness ( I think), it really isn't about "clean eating" in terms of what fitness fanatics eat, but it's totally dedicated to eating foods in their most natural state... meaning minimally processed, seasonal, fresh foods. The magazine also talks about healthy lifestyle (mind and body) and has a TON of recipes that actually look like they would taste good (unlike the recipes in most fitness/muscle mags).

I LOVE this magazine! It completely speaks to how I try to eat generally (small amount of processed foods, cooking with seasonal ingredients, etc) and it uses a ton of grains and other ingredients that I wouldn't necessarily think about, or know how to use, but it doesn't do it in a crunchy granola, hippy-dippy kind of way. There is this really great looking white pearl barley and asparagus risotto that I want to try this month, and I think they have some recipes with Amarath as well. I'm so excited about this mag. It's a really great resource so far. You guys should check it out. Clean Eating Magazine

N :-)

Daily Wrap up- Wednesday March 4th

2009-03-04T13:02:00.005-05:00

Just my little update for today.... not the best of days... woke up hella late, felt like crap, didn't drink enough water... didn't eat too badly except for the white bread, and didn't work out. Um... yeah.... Next.

Status Table:

Wake up time:
Ugh I set my alarm for 6:30 this morning.... I stumbled grogily out of bed at 7:45, my head was pounding and I felt like I had been beaten with wet rags.... I guess that's what I get for hitting snooze 10 times.

Water:
Ugh... I wasn't keeping track of this today.... But I know I drank more than none because I bought a gallon of water last night before bed.

Food:
3/4 of a banana
8 oz. oatmeal from Starbucks with brown sugar and fruit
3 little pieces of coconut candy from Vietnam
Bowl of white bean and chicken Chili with Lime
Chicken, goat cheese and sundried tomato sammich on White Baugette
Couple glasses of Cranberry wine

Workout:
None

Money Spent:
$4.50 on Oatmeal and HORRIBLE, NASTY Skinny Vanilla Latte... bleh I can still taste it.

Shoulda gone to Chick Fil'a... (WTF News of the Day)

2009-03-04T12:21:00.004-05:00

So apparently this chick, Latreasa Goodman, was REALLY upset that her neighborhood Micky D's was trying to scam her out of her paper with the old Chicken Nugget switcharoo.... She ordered a 10-piece at the drive- through window, paid for it and THEN was told that they were out of those sweet nuggets... to make matters worse, they would not refund her money. They tried to pawn a nasty McDouble on her... So homegirl took matters into her own hands and called 911, not once... not twice, but THREE times an an attempt to report the travesty that was occuring....According to Goodman, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn’t have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don’t want one," "This is an emergency."

I feel her... I rarely eat at McDonalds, but the only thing I've gotten there in YEARS is the chicken nuggets and maybe some fries... I mean the little McDonalds window person really tied her hands in this one....They should have givenLatressa her $6.48 back straight away. That drive through chick should consider herself lucky... you really shouldn't mess with people's food... People are very unpredictable when they're hangry... it's a good thing she called 9-1-1 and didn't just go in and shoot up the employees and ransack the place looking for chicken.... 'cause you know they had some in the back or in the basement somewhere, Little Pookie and them were probably just too lazy to go down there and get it.

Oh well, Latressa was charged with misuse of 9-1-1.... hopefully she has learned her lesson and will just hit up Chick Fil'a next time.

E.T.A. HAHAHA they posted a link to the actual 911 audio on theybf.com... HAHAHA at how earnest she is in....

Daily Wrap Up- Tuesday March 3

2009-03-03T08:41:00.009-05:00

Today went pretty well me thinks.... I almost got up on time... I actually sat up in my bed at 6:30, when the alarm went off, and thought about whether I wanted to get up.... usually I just roll over and smack my nightstand until the music/alarm goes off, or falls off the nightstand... At that point I generally fall back asleep with the music still playing ( a lot of times what's on the radio gets incorporated into my dreams... I've had some fascinating conversationss with Steve Harvey....).... and get up an hour or so later than I had planned. So... yeah, so despite the fact that I still didn't get up on time, I consider today a small victory because I THOUGHT about getting up on time! Yay!

I worked out (YAY), but I ate too much... was doing well until about 10:00 when I started snacking on avocado and wheat tortilla... I also had to douse and dump (ie pour water over and throw away) the rest of my salt water petite brownies... I was just eating WAY too many of them... All in all, not a horrible day, but I can still do better...

Status Table:

Wake up time:
Woke up at 6:40 (or 6:50... i don't remember). I hit the alarm once or twice, I was supposed to get up at 6:30.

Water:
About FOUR full glasses of water today!!! YAY!
Food:
8oz of Perfectly protein shake (post- work out)
1/2 cup Fage 2%, some honey and GoLean Crunch and a banana (breakfast)
7 mini eggs (snack)
Turkey, Munster and bacon open faced sammich and Small chicken ginger chili from Whole Foods(lunch)
Lil bit'o'Cherry Cobbler ($1.12 portion from Whole Foods... I don't think I've ever gotten ANYTHING from Whole Foods for less than $5, so that should give an indication of the amount of cobbler:-p) (lunch dessert)
1 glass cranberry wine
Bootleg Salmon wrap - Salmon, wheat wrap, lettuce, goddess dressing
5 sea salt petite brownies (dessert.... The remainder of the brownies were doused in water and thrown in the trash)
Wheat tortilla
some avocado
Swig of Bolthouse Farms

Workout:
Jillian Michael's 30 day crunch level 2
Arms: Push ups, arm curls, tricep kicks, overhead triceps
Shoulders: Shoulder set (military press, boob squeeze, front lift), Shoulder Fly

Money Spent:
$10.22- Expensive, yet quite tasty, lunch from Whole Foods

Daily Wrap up- Monday March 2

2009-03-02T08:06:00.007-05:00

It's really funny how much of a motivation it is for me to see little stickers, in a goofy excel table. Numerous times today I was sitting at my desk thinking, "Yo I HAVE to do my dishes tonight or there's going to be NOTHING in today's box!" now granted.... I didn't do shit when I got home other than take out my braids, but it is definintely a motivation to know that everyone (meaning the 3 people that may check this blog) will know how crappy you ate today, or that your sink is filled with crusty dishes and your floor is covered with dirty clothing. While it didn't necessarily work today, I do have a good feeling about this little status update thingie... I forsee strong work this month.... strong work indeed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status Table: (heh heh... I really need to figure out how to make this table look better ;-p)

Wake up time: 7:45 Grrrr totally forgot to set my alarm... fell asleep last night with all the lights on and all my clothes on.. :-(

Water: Hmmm no water as of 3:07.... I need to remedy that
-Ok... now it's 5:20pm and still no water... I did drink a cup of honeybush tea with no sugar... I think that counts, no?
-11:45pm- Just took a swig out of the water bottle in my fridge.... This only the 3rd drink of liquid I've had today; coffee, tea and swig'o'water.... I really need to find a way to drink more water. I hate drinking with meals, but maybe I'll force myself to drink at least 8 oz of water with lunch and dinner?

Food:
1/2 cup Fage 2%, some honey and GoLean Crunch, and cup of coffee with sugar and half and half (breakfast)
Spinach and Salmon Wrap-salmon, tortilla, spinach, mushrooms, Goddess dressing (lunch)
Apple and 7 mini eggs (Snack-yummmmmmmmmm)
6 Raw almonds (Snack)
Big bowl of White bean Chili and Brown rice (dinner)
3 sea salt petites (dessert)
A few mini sweet peppers (random snacky)

Workout:
No workout today. I didn't set my alarm, so I didn't wake up on time, and I had to take my braids out, so I couldn't do it when I got home... tomorrow morning.. it's on

Money Spent:
$1.90 Coffee
$25.00 Muscle Milk Powder at GNC
$1.07 Little Mini egg packet
$5.00 Hair pins and Black soap at Beauty Supply Store

Daily Wrap Up- Sunday March 1

2009-03-01T22:45:00.004-05:00

Wake up time: 10:45am

Water: Unknown but more than none :-p

Food:
Breakfast:
Leftover Garlic Kale from dinner (Breakfast)
Fage 2%, kashi go lean, honey (Pre-workout)
8 oz of Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Perfectly Protein (Post-workout)
Little sample of Trader Joe's Barley Soup (yummy!)
Little sample of Brown Stewed chicken from my landlord (I'm trying to learn how to make proper stewed chicken)
2 glasses of Tempranillo
2 bowls of white bean chili with brown rice
5 sea salt brownie bites

Workout:
Legs: Basic Squats, Step ups, Split Squats, Jumping Lunges, Dead lifts, dumbbell squat, calf lifts
Back: Back row, Back fly, Back press
Abs: Double crunches, scissors/lower leg lifts, Bicycle

Money Spent:
$7.00 on a Metrocard (my daggone Transit check expired! Grrrr!)
$1.50- water at the gym
$10.00 - 2 magazines
$19.00- Produce at produce stand
$37.00- Grocery at Trader Joes

Good day overall... I ate too much chili, but other than that I'm ok with what I ate today. There were a ton of cute guys at the gym tonight.... Is it tacky to meet guys at the gym? I'm guessing if I have to ask, it probably is.... not that any of them were checking for me anyway, and I was wearing tight ass black pants and doing dead lifts. Oh well... there was this cute dude there with glasses... he had the unfortunate Superhro physique (Big ass upper body and little teeny legs), but he had glasses on and just seemed cute in the geeky "I wear glasses to the gym" kind of way... tee hee... cute.

I am planning on doing upper body and abs at home tomorrow morning. We're supposed to be getting like 27 feet of snow tonight and I don't want to trek to the gym in the morn.

Nighty night! :-)

In like a Lion and out like a f(cking monster!

2009-03-01T22:12:00.004-05:00

So I think I need to kick this goal thing into higher gear and star to actually complete the goals that I say I'm going to start each month and blog on them more routinely. I think one of the issues that I've been having is that I set my sights WAY too high at the beginning of the month... I'm a pretty results oriented person. When I can actually see the results of my work, I am WAY more likely to actually get it done... so this month I'm going to do things a little bit differently. I'm going to focus on actually completing one or 2 goals, and I'm going to do some preparation work for other goals.

Goals I’m going to continue/stick on track with this month
4.) Acquire 2+ new songs (The last few months of failure on this will hopefully have prepared me for success this month.... :-/)
10.) Make 2 new recipes
13.) Try 2 new foods/types of cuisine
20.) Watch 2 movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive.
Read 1 non-fiction book (a new book or one on my shelf)

Here are some things I’d like to start to track in the next month or do the preparation for the actual goal

- Wake up at the same time every weekday: I wake up at different times every day depending on what time I want to be at work or whether I'm working out that morning. I think it would really help me with my timeliness if I had a routine wake up time every morning. In order to take care of my morning dog routine, go to the gym and get to work on time I have to wake up at 6:00am. If I can get an actual set routine for my gym days I should be able to wake up at 1 time for gym days and another time for non-gym days, but until I get my gym schedule set in stone I'm going to shoot for a 6:00 wake up time.

-Find a multivitamin that I’ll be able to swallow
-Record the amount of water I drink each day.
-Record everything I eat. I think I eat pretty well, but I'm trying to clean up my eating habits a bit in preparation for summer and Miami to a smaller extent. I think writing down what I eat everyday and posting it for everyone to see will keep me honest :-p

-Record when I go to the gym and what I do.
-Record all the money I spend for an entire month
-Record the number of days that I go to bed with no dishes in the sink and all clothing hung up.

At the end of each day I am going to write a daily update which will include the time I woke up, whether I worked out, what I ate and drank and the amount of money I spend each day.

I respond REALLY well to tables so at the end of every day I’m going to update my little status table with cute little icons and what not.... I often have tables like this in my apartment... with little stickers or symbols on them... I'm such a kindergartner :-p

Wish me luck

February Wrap up...

2009-03-01T00:28:00.003-05:00

February was an “ok” month in terms of my goals. I achieved 1 goal- goal #85- follow a face regimen every day for a month. The skincare goal went REALLY well! I followed the skincare plan that I described in 2 other blogs. I feel like my pores are getting smaller, my skin is getting softer and smoother and the chemical peel might actually help minimize the dark marks. Most importantly I think the skincare goal actually achieved the purpose that I hoped ALL the goals would achieve; taking things that I know I should do for myself and make them a routine part of my life. I really enjoyed the process. It wasn’t difficult and taking the time to go through all 3 steps every morning and night really reinforced the idea that I am worth the time and effort to do stuff like this. May sound corny, but it was really great for me….

So here are the goals that actually had some movement in February (started, continued or failed :-p)
4.) Acquire >2 songs per month for 6 months (2/6)- FAILED! Looks like I’m starting over again. For some reason this is hard… I think I need to make it a point to get out more to listen to music (live or not). I don’t even hear 2 songs per month that I would be interested in having… I know good music is out there… I need to make more of an effort to get to it.

10.) Make 100 new recipes (13/100) Made 3 new recipes this month: a GREAT chicken Tortilla Soup, a kind of nasty White wine, Kale and Pork soup, and my remake of the Shrimp Provencal.

13.) Try 50 foods or types of cuisine I haven't tried (8/50) I tried 3 new things this month; oysters, bone marrow and pigeon. I found the oysters to be… interesting, the bone marrow was kind of booger-y and not that exciting and the pigeon was pretty tasty.

34.) Blog on my 101 90% of the days (40/901) 10 times in February… that’s about 36% of the time.

55.) Go to the gym 500 times (0/400) February was actually a pretty good month in terms of working out. I'm getting back into the swing of routinely hitting the gym... but unfortunately I didn't mark down the number of times I went. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to hit the 400 mark, but starting in March I'm going to actually start documenting when I work out.

Here are the goals that I had planned to start/continue in February…. But didn’t... :-(
20.) Watch all the movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive. (1/25)
31.) Read 6 non-fiction books (0/6)
39.) Be on time or early for everything for a month (0/30)
50.) Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months (0/60)
56.) Complete 50 military push-ups
35.) Go to bed with all clothing hung and no clothing on bed, floor, etc for 45 days (0/45)
87.) Leave no dishes in the sink overnight for 1 month (0/30)
88.) Make bed every day for 1 month (0/30)

Building on what I learned from my skincare goal (I do better when I can physically see the results of my work) I’m going to try something a little different for March…. More to come soon.

Really Mayor Grose.... really?

2009-02-27T11:47:00.003-05:00

So in WTF news of the day, I was scrolling through my Google Reader (thanks Janet!) and came across this story... Apparently Mayor Dean Grose of Los Alamitos California decided it would be cute to email this picture with the title "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

.... Really Mayor Grose? Watermelons? I don't know if I'm more upset with the poor photoshopping, the racist-ness, or the stupidity of an elected official emailing this picture... Either way Mayor Grose is Mayor no more.

Dumb ass...

Goodbye Slum!... minus one

2009-02-25T12:25:00.010-05:00

So there's been a bit of an uproar about the treatment of the kids that starred in Slumdog Millionaire. I believe the kids that played the child versions of the main characters of the movie were actually residents of the slum where the movie was filmed. Reports have stated that they weren't adequately compensated (movie reps stated that they were paid "above local Indian wages") and despite the success of the film they are still residing in the slum...

Well the Indian government has graciously decided to purchase new houses for the Slumdog Kids... wait... for only TWO of the Slumdog kids... the 2 that played the child versions of the "main" characters "Jamal" and "Latika". According to the Indian government those 2 actors have brought "laurels" to the country..... Uh weren't there 3 main kids in this movie? Jamal, Latika and Jamal's Brother Salim.... WTF happened to his house? Maybe Salim's character didn't bring "laurels" to the country since he was a jackass kid who pushed his brother into a hole filled with runny poop and was the mastermind behind all of the swindling and general mischief that they 2 got into, but damn! He was playing a character! It's not like he personally pushed someone into a pile of shit and stole tourist's money. WTF?!? I honestly think that kid stole the movie. He was my fav by FAR! And how shitty will that be for him when he's busily scavenging for breakfast in the local landfill and sees his slum friends roll by in their new Landcruisers on their way to their new houses with their non-landfill breakfast... Damn...

But honestly why is it the Indian government's job to buy these kids houses? I mean, while I think all 3 should get houses, kudos to the government for doing anything, but where the fluck is Danny Boyle?!? He made a little movie that was originally going to go straight to video and now he is going to make MILLIONS on this movie. I would understand more if he wasn't going to make any money on the movie then maybe he could have been given a pass, but come ON! It's just common decency to share the wealth with the people that helped create it. If nothing else the filmmakers/production company should at least set aside a few 100,000 for each kid to receive when they come of age and ensure that they are in school. But apparently they don't feel that's the responsibility.

Argh... This angers me. I think we should start a campaign to at LEAST get the third kid a house. Who's with me?!?

ETA: Apparently Danny and co have set up a trust fund has been set up using some of the movie's almost 200 MILLION dollars in profit... But it looks like the trust fund is also just for the 2 kids. Am I missing something here? Maybe the 3rd kid isn't from the slum.... SMDH

Edited AGAIN to add that houses and the trust fund will go to the kids that played Salim and Latika, not Jamal and Latika... Perhaps the kid playing Jamal (the real Main character) isn't from the slum... it's sounding a bit better... but still a bit sketchy IMO

Spring/Summer/Miami Slutatious Fashion...

2009-02-25T11:53:00.009-05:00

As some of you know, I'm heading up to Miami this April to celebrate my dirty 30th birthday! I planning on looking hot and maybe a little slutacious throughout the entire trip (stilettos at the pool, thong bikini, the whole 9...)

Since this is my blog and I can do what I want, I'm decided to post a few pics of ideas for Dirty 30 looks... I'm posting these mainly so I can remember things that I've seen and liked, but feel free to post comments, links etc for other looks that you think are cute :-)

Here's a few...
I like the look in the picture to the left... the crotch grabbing pink teddy number...... maybe good for a night out?

SIKE... (heh heh I said "Sike")

I do like the high waisted mini, simple tank top and long necklace look... Cute look for a night out in Miami, or a night out in NYC.... I'm not so sure about the booties... I like them with the look, but I feel like my feet will get hot or something :-/

Love this little dress! Love the frills! Love the color... (although I think it would look better on my skin than Kim K's)... just love it. Definintely a little too conservative for Miami.. I'm not really sure where I would wear this? Maybe a wedding? Maybe a really nice date? Very cute...

In terms of accessories, I really love those full finger rings... Not the crazy claw things that Beyonce's been wearing, but I really like the Gold one in the pic... Very cute.... And I really need to get more accessories for Goal # 42

Ok that's all for now.... :-)

Clear skin WILL BE MINE!!!! (clear skin challenge part deux)

2009-02-23T17:46:00.002-05:00

Ok... given that the original product choices in my 30-day skin makeup produced less then stellar results, I decided to switch up the program a bit and bring in some heavier artillery.

As I described previously, the initial plan was to use the Clinique 3-step Acne Solutions program which included a foaming cleanser, a clarifying "lotion", and moisturizer for acne prone skin. I soon found out the "moisturizer" turned my skin into a flaky, raw mess so I decided to go with an oldie but goodie for my moisturizer; Origin's "Have a Nice Day", and I threw in a deep pore masque just for good measure...

The results after 25+ days of consistent use were not negligible, but not spectacular either. I think the foaming cleanser did an ok job at cleaning my skin and preventing breakouts, but it wasn't "great". A couple pimples still managed to break through, especially during that "special" time of the month... As I type this, I have a little annoying sucker on my chin... argh. So honestly I have to give the cleanser a B/B-. It was OK, but nothing to write home about. I decided to try a new cleanser this month- Murad Clarifying Cleanser. I heard great things about this one as well... so we'll see if it fares better than the Clinque.

I really liked the clarifying lotion. It has exfoliating powder, and I feel like it did help tighten and shrink my pores and produce a smoother appearance. I got a ton of compliments this past month on my skin (from people who hadn't seen the blog :-p) All of those compliments occurred when I had foundation on, so it's not like my own skin looked extraordinary, but I believe the tightening of my pores and general smoothing and softening of my skin helps my makeup go on more smoothly.

Re: the Origin's products... I've been an Origin's use for a long time. I'm not sure exactly what benefit I am getting from the deep pore cleansing mask that I do 2x a week, but honestly I just kind of like doing it... it looks cool... I feel like I'm really doing something, and it definitely hasn't hurt. My pores are smaller and my skin is less dull. I also don't know if the "Have a nice day" is the best moisturizer on the market, but it's VERY potent... a little goes a LONG way and I've never had a problem with it so for now it's a keeper.

Next steps... Getting rid of this daggone mother flucking dark marks! UGH I hate them! My skin is softer, my pores are tightening, but you can't have perfect baby butt skin with dark marks... Gabby ain't got no dark marks. So I went out and got a very highly rated, (and fairly expensive) at home chemical peel kit today. It's a 2 step process from Philosophy called the micro delivery peel. The first step is to rub these vitamin C crystals into your dry skin... you're supposed to rub them for about a minute. After you rub your face with the citric acid you add the activating gel which is made of lactic and salicylic acid... the addition of the activating gel should cause the citric acid crystals to heat up and foam, and apparently eat off the yucky top layer of your skin... YES!

I am very excited about this.

I read tons of reviews and people seem to notice a difference even after the very first application. I'm going to try and do this once a week....

so this is my new skincare routine
Daily (am/pm) :
Cleanse am/pm with Murad Clarifying Cleanser
Tone/Exfoliate with Clique Clarifying Lotion
Moisturize with Origin's "Have a nice day" cream

Bi-weekly:
Origin's Activated Charcoal deep pore masque

Weekly:
Philosophy Microdelivery chemical peel

I've spent entirely too much money on my face during this process.... If this doesn't work, I'm just going to throw in teh towel and go back to coating my face with Palmer's Cocoa butter and embrace the impending cystic acne.

*sigh*

Curly Tail's first meetup

2009-02-23T00:10:00.004-05:00

Leroy and I had a GREAT time at Curly Tail Pug Rescue's first meetup on Saturday. The meetup was at Happy Paws, which is a pet boutique and also offers dog boarding and doggie daycare. We were expecting over 60 pugs. I think about 40-50 actually showed up. It always amazes me how different the puggies look. You'd think they'd all kind of look alike since pug are either all black or fawn, silver, apricot (It's hard for me to tell the difference between those last 3 though :-/).

Leroy and I always have fun at the meetups, but this one was really special because a couple of the people that adopted dogs from the rescue actually brought their dogs to the meetup. It was really touching to see how happy the dogs were! I had personal experience with one dogs that came back, Sunny (previously "Tyson"). I talked about Tyson in one of my posts about Bruno my foster pug. He was surrendered in front of my house and him and Bruno went to a vet visit together. When Tyson was surrendered he had a HORRIBLY ulcerated eye. It was awful. He was crazy hyper, had stinky breath and bad gas. When he went home with Nicole, his foster mom, he jumped on the bed and peed on her... yes ON top of her. Tyson had to have his eye removed and Nicole worked REALLY hard around the clock for the next month or so on keeping his other eye medicated so he wouldn't have to lose that one as too.... Well Tyson/Sunny was at the meetup and he looked SO GREAT! I almost cried when I saw him. His coat was shiny. He was calm. He had an adorable blue argyle sweater on. You could tell how well he was being cared for. His new mom was AWESOME. I loved her! And she lives in Brooklyn. If I hadn't seen him, I would have had NO idea he was the same dog. It was really beautiful.

Another dog, Teddy, was also at the meetup. Teddy was one of the puppy mill rescues. I had never met Teddy in person, I just facilitated the adoption partly via email. Teddy was a BEAUTIFUL pug. One of the nicest looking male pugs I've seen. And he looked SO happy and secure sitting on his new owner's lap. He was shaking and definitely too nervous to get down and run around with all of the pugs, but just knowing that he had someone who loved him and that his life had turned around so completely since his time in the puppy mill really made me happy for him and proud of the work that I do for the rescue.

It really was a beautiful afternoon. Hopefully I'll have pictures up soon.... But just to tide you over (all 3 of you :-p) Here's another pic of Leroy going down the slide at Happy Paws!

Shrimp Provencal... take 1

2009-02-21T23:47:00.004-05:00

Last night I tried my hand at a re-make of the delicious shrimp dish that Saba had at Blue Ribbon Restaurant in NYC. I've actually been kind of trying to figure out what was in this recipe since last week (I'm a dork, I know), so making it yesterday was kind of exciting. I talked about the dish in detail in the last posting, so I won't do it again (trying to make these more succinct), but the overall flavor of the sauce was pretty interesting to me, and I really didn't have any idea what the components were so... Chall-ange!

The first thing I did was just do an Internet search for Shrimp Provencal recipe to see if anything came up. Hey! I didn't say I needed to create it from scratch... just figure out what was in it:-p No luck with that. :-p

The next thing I did was to do an ingredient search on epicurious and the food network site to see if I could find anything with the ingredients that I thought I tasted, shrimp, butter, cream and fennel and cheese ravioli. From that little search I initially thought maybe it was a sort of Mornay Sauce which is a Bechamel sauce with added cheese, but I didn't remember tasting any cheese in the sauce.. somehow through a random series of searches I came across a recipe for a Lobster Ravioli in a Chervil Nage. I'd never heard of a "Nage", but the picture looked very much like the shrimp Provencal sauce and the ingredients seemed promising. Saba was pretty sure that the primary herb was tarragon and that there was no cheese in the sauce. I asked my boss (who is very food knowledgeable, and shares an office with me) some questions about fennel bulb (which I rarely cook with), and she mentioned that fennel bulb tastes much like anise when cooked, which was one of the flavors that I initially thought i tasted. So it looked like I was making a Tarragon infused nage sauce. Yay! I actually found quite a few recipes for Tarragon nage sauces, so I figured I was on the right track, but Emeril's nage recipe seemed more complex so I figured I'd pretty much use that one, but sub the tarragon for the chervil. I decided against making homemade ravioli, because I just couldn't do all that on Saturday. I thought there was goat cheese in the ravioli, but Saba thought it was just ricotta... I found a goat cheese ravioli at Whole Foods that had Ricotta as it's first ingredient so I decided to just use those. Here is the recipe I decided to use...

1.5 onion
3 carrots
1 lemon, juiced
1.5 leeks (white part only)
1.5 shallots
3 sprigs tarragon
3 springs parsley
½ tsp coriander seeds
6 peppercorns (or 1 tsp)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon salt
1 lb shrimp
1 bulb fennel fronds and upper stems reserved
3 tablespoons minced tarragon
1/2 cup heavy cream
6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon lemon zest

I first made a "stock" out of all the the veges and spices (Onions down to Salt). I then threw the shrimp skins in with the veggies. The initial recipe called for the lobster shell to be simmered in the stock. I simmered that for about 30 min. I cooked the shrimp in a butter with only kosher salt and black pepper. I cooked the shrimp only until it started to get pink in the center and then set it aside. When the "stock" had simmered for about 20 min I strained all the solids out and then added the fronds of fennel and boiled it on high.... According to the recipe I was supposed to boil it until the gallon of water reduced to 2-3 cups... but I had a hungry friend over who was getting drunker, hungrier and more belligerent by the moment so I figured I needed to get some food on the table, STAT! I just took 2+ cups of stock out and started to make the nage. The instructions for the nage said to bring the stock to a simmer and add the chopped tarragon, cream, butter and lemon zest, stir and remove from the heat.

So... I finished the sauce and it looked REALLY watery and was kind of bland, so I decided to add some flour to thicken it up... didn't help much. I added more salt and pepper and it helped a bit, but it was still really watery. But my girl was hungry, so I put it all on the plate and we ate. This is what it looked like:

Honestly I really liked it. In terms of mimicking the flavor I recalled I give myself a solid C+ The flavor of the sauce was similar, but it wasn't nearly as potent/flavorful as the original. Also it was WAY WAY too watery. The sauce didn't stick to the shrimp or the ravioli.. They just sort of swam in the butter/cream.

Next time I think I'm going to start with a vegetable broth instead of water. Maybe use less than a gallon of veggie broth with the same amount of vegetables to make the stock and let it reduce down to the 2-3 cups to make a more potent broth. I will also let the stock with the shrimp shells simmer for a little longer 30-35 min and add a bit more tarragon and actually add the coriander. Made a cream of asparagus soup for Christmas that had a lot of coriander and I think that was really one of the flavors that was missing. Saba said she tasted rosemary... I'm not sure if I missed the taste of rosemary, but maybe next time I'll add some rosemary to the chopped up tarragon.

Also I have to figure out how to thicken the sauce... maybe I'll start with a roux? Maybe I'll just use less stock?

Also I discovered how useful shrimp shells are! I ate some of the boiled out vegetables and you could REALLY taste the flavor of the shrimp shells in the vegetables. I think I'll start saving my shrimp shells. I know people use them to start sauces for risotto, bisque's, etc. I never really thought of it, but it really does make a big difference to the depth of flavor.

So overall I give the entire dish a C/C+ I give it a C+ for overall flavor, a B+ for the shrimp, but a D+ for the wateryness of the sauce.

If anyone has any suggestions about thickening the sauce, please let me know. I'm going to try this again in a few weeks.... it's a bit too rich to be eating all the time. :-p

Deliciousness at Blue Ribbon (beef marrow and piegon, yummm!)

2009-02-16T13:10:00.008-05:00

My dinner club compadres Del, Saba and Juan, and I headed out to Blue Ribbon Restaurant in SoHo last night for our "monthly" dinner club celebration. I had heard about this restaurant from my friend Keith who generally has excellent taste in restaurants so I was really excited to give it a try especially since there were so many strange/interesting things on the menu. (Double click on the picture to the left to see the full menu! ;-p)

Going into the meal I was initially interested in the Sweetbreads or the Pigeon because.... well because they were weird and I like to try new things.... no matter how nasty they sound...

Our meal: Starters:
Oysters: I have never had an oyster, so when the waiter said that you could get a single oyster for $3.50 I thought, what the hell lemme try and oyster while I'm here. We all decided to get one and take them as a kind of "pre-dinner" shot. :-p The oysters came with 4 sauces, one was just basic shrimp cocktail sauce, the 2nd was a balsamic vinegar based sauce and the third seemed like a tomatillo lime sauce. I opted for the balsamic vinegar... poured a bit on my oyster and slid the sucker down my throat.... It was cool.... chewy... very fresh and clean and balsamic-y. The oyster tasted like nothing. It was amazing. I don't think I've ever in my life tasted a food so devoid of taste. It didn't taste like salt water, it didn't have any type of a seafood taste... it was just pure, chewy, fresh nothingness. It was kind of nice actually. It was an interesting sensation to eat something that really tasted like nothing at all. I would probably eat oysters again.... although I'm not really sure why. They get a B :-p

Bone Marrow and Oxtail Marmalade:
For starters, Del and I knew we were going to get the Beef Marrow and Oxtail Marmalade. I had never had "prepared" bone marrow before.... I mean I've sucked some marrow out of a bone at dinner on occasion, but never thought to scrape it out and fry it up before hand. Del, of course, had had bone marrow before and was very excited. The presentation of the marrow was BEAUTIFUL. The marrow was presented in 3 hollowed out, blanched bones and surrounded by the oxtail marmalade and some tasty grilled sourdough bread. The oxtail itself wasn't too too flavorful... it was just like pure fat, not really what I was expecting... It also had kind of a lumpy, booger-ish consistency. I definitely wouldn't say I DISliked it, but I'm not sure if I like it that much. The Oxtail marmalade on the other hand was AWESOME! It was little chunks of oxtail in a slightly sweet orange sauce... YUMMMM and the bread was hella good too. Overall I give that app a A-, but that grade is more for the oxtail and the bread then the actual marrow.

Saba and Juan had some REALLY delicious ribs. There were 4 ribs in the order and they came with some crispy Asian style chips and a spicy mustard and sweet (chili maybe?) dipping sauce. The ribs also had a cool presentation, along side the ribs was a little fire pit/grill and you were supposed to grill the ribs for a few seconds before eating to caramelize the sauce. The fire pit was a bit dangerous.... we had a lot going on our table and I really thought I was going to lose a braid to the pit and Saba has a history of setting herself on fire, so we all a little bit weirded out by the fire pit. Nevertheless, the ribs were OUTstanding. I think I'll get those as an app next time I go back. :-) Ribs get an A

Entrees:
- My dish was the pigeon of course. I was actually really against the pigeon until I asked my boss if she'd had pigeon and she looked at me like, "hasn't everyone?" and I saw last week's episode of Top Chef where the guest judge asked for "Squab and Peas" as his last meal. I looked up Squab and lo and behold squab= pigeon! If it's good enough for Jacques Pepin, it's good enough for me. (Just to clarify, the pigeon that was served was not the run of the mill NYC flying street rat, but a breed of domesticated pigeons bred specifically for food. Pigeon meat generally comes from young pigeons less than a month old.)

The pigeon was pretty daggone tasty, Thankfully my dish was only the pigeon legs/thigh, not the full pigeon, or I might have been a little freaked out. The pigeon legs were actually pretty meaty and they were served on a bed of barley and mashed sweet potato with a rich brown sauce. The pigeon had a decidedly "poultry" taste... it tasted kind of like dark meat chicken with the fattiness of duck and it had a bit of a liver taste to it as well. Overall I liked it. I feel like it could have been seasoned better. The taste of the meat was fine, but I feel like the execution of the dish wasn't really up to par of the Shrimp or the Hangar steak. I was pleasantly surprised that Saba tried some of the pigeon. I gave her a little piece, that she ate half of, but I give her a high 5 for trying it! :-) The picture above isn't my dish, but that's what the pigeon looked like.

-Del got the Hanger Steak with wild mushrooms and onion rings. The steak was REALLY juicy and the mushrooms were delicious. I can't really describe the taste of the sauce because I didn't eat that much, but it was TASTY.

-Juan got the Lobster, which was an entire BEAUTIFUL, little lobster with a side of corn on the cob and a baked potato. The dish looked SO fresh. The lobster was perfectly pink, and the corn perfectly yellow. The lobster was delicious also. I've only had lobster (like in the shell) a few times and none of them tasted like this. The flavor of the lobster was really intense and clean, like it wasn't marred by the flavor of the refrigerator, or freezer that it was kept in... i was just a really clean, pure tasting lobster... yummm.....

-Saba got the Shrimp Provencal with cheese ravioli. Just looking at the description of the dish it seemed really boring and I would never have chosen it for myself, but honestly it was my favorite dish of the night. When I think of Provencal, especially with cheese ravioli, I think of a tomato-y, garlicy, white-wine type sauce... which just seemed really boring compared to all the other stuff on the menu. In actuality, the sauce was REALLY complex... There was no tomato in the sauce, it seemed like a butter based sauce (maybe?) and at first I thought I tasted a bit of an Asian 5-spice type flavor, (fennel, cloves, cinnamon and anise), but it didn't really seem too sweet. In the end I think it was only fennel I was tasting... The sauce was AMAZING! And the ravioli... .Usually when you bite into Ravioli you get that kind of firm, pasty filling... Not this Ravioli... the filling was creamy and delicious... when you bit into it the strong, garlicy ricotta, poured out into your mouth mingling with the sauce in a sexy tango :-p OK I'll stop, but that mess was tasty! I think I'll try and re-create that this week.

Dessert: For desert we shared had the Chocolate Bruno which was sooo flucking tasty. It was a flourless chocolate cake served with a little ice cream and chocolate drizzling. Soooo goood. The cake was uber rich (just like a good flourless cake should be), warm and delicious. The ice cream was tasty too, but the dish was definitely about the cake... I have to try a flourless chocolate cake. My friend Anabela made one once for a birthday party and it was fantastic.

So all and all I have to say Blue Ribbon was one of my top 5 dining experiences in New York and unfortunately it had the price tag to match. Everything was just flavored and prepared expertly. I will definitely be going back.

N :-)

Clear skin in 30 days? (day 15)

2009-02-15T15:07:00.005-05:00

Hey Y'all...

I started my clear skin challenge on Feb 1. It's Feb, so I'm officially 15 days in. Just as a reminder, my toolkit for clear skin is the Clinique 3 step system for acne prone skin, Origin's "Have a Nice Day" moisturizer, and Origin's "Clear Improvement" masque for deep pore cleaning once a week.

The actual "goal" was to keep up a skincare regimine for a full 30 days. So far I've been doing great and it's been really easy. My "regimine" was just to wash, exfoliate and moisturize 2x per day and do a pore cleansing masque once per week. I stopped using the moisturizer from the 3 step kit because it made my skin dry (weird huh?). What's been really odd is the exfoliator is just a liquid with some powder on the bottom. You shake it up to disperse the powder and then wipe it on like you would a toner. I guess the new age exfoliators are like micro granuals... it's a big change from the St. Ives Apricot Scrub days. :-p

So far it's been simple as pie. I think it's been easy because I've been seeing improvement in my skin. It seems to be clearer and tighter. I'm still having some issues with the dark marks, but those even seem to be fading a little bit... Here's a comparison from day 1 (Day 1 is on the left)

Hmm... LOL the pictures aren't that compelling LOL. Although I still think that my skin looks much clearer than it did a month ago. Oh well I'll try again at the end of the month.

Right now I'm more focused on the dark spots. I still haven't really found a good spot remover or chemical exfoliator, but I'm working on it. If anyone has any tips/suggestions please let me know. As of right now I've been hearing really good things about MD Skincare Alpha Beta Facial Peel. It's a bit pricey, so I'm not sure when I'm going to start it... but when I do I'll put up some more pics. :-)

Thanks!

Get your butt ready for bikini bottoms! (Fitness move of the week/month)

2009-02-12T16:16:00.011-05:00

The move of the week (or month… let’s be truthful here about my ability to update this thing) is..... the Reverse Lunge and Lift!

Major Muscles worked: Gluteus Maximus, Quadriceps

Supporting Muscles: Hamstrings, Adductor magnus (inner thigh) Erector Spinae (worked during the kick and to stabilize), Abs (mainly to stabilize)

Equipment Needed: Dumbbells or just body weight.

Hardness Rating: 2 out of 4 dumbbells

I came across this move in the most recent issue of Oxygen (March 2009). They had a little mini section on building a better butt. I’ve incorporated a few into my leg workout but this is the one that I found worked the most muscles, and was the most effective (ie I felt it the most) while requiring only minimal equipment. The basic exercise is a series of back lunges (ie instead of stepping forward into a lunge –the kind you would do for walking lunges—you step backward keeping the front foot anchored on the ground.) but instead of bringing your rear leg back to the starting position you do a little glute kick and then go directly back into the lunge.

Here are the instructions from Oxygen

Set up: Stand with your knees slightly bent and hold a pair of dumbbells at your side.

Action: Take a large step to the rear with your right foot. Bend both knees, keeping your front knee over your toes and centering your weight between both feet. When your front thigh is parallel to the floor, push off your right foot and straighten your left leg while simultaneously lifting your right leg straight behind you, with your hips square and level, squeezing your glute. Bring your legs back together to complete one rep. Continue alternating sides

Proper form for the lunge is shown in the picture. When doing the lunge your thigh should be parallel to the ground and your thigh and shin should form a 90 degree angle. I tend to think this is the most important part of the exercise in terms of form. You can put a lot of strain on your knees when you do squats and lunges incorrectly, so please pay attention to form.

Please see the video below for a demonstration of the move. The fitness model in the magazine has her leg lifted really high in the glute lift.... My leg will not be lifted that high, but you'll get the gist. (My form isn't really stellar in this demonstration... I didn't have a mirror to check myself in. :-/)

Tips:
1. No baby steps! When you step backward into the lunge make sure your step is big enough. When you lower into the lunge your front thigh should be parallel to the ground and your knee should NOT extend beyong the front of your shin. It may be uncomfortable at first to take such a large step backward. You may need to do a few balence checks, but don't do the move until you can take the appropriate step back.

2. Keep pressure on the heel. When raising up from the lunge make sure that all of the weight of your body is being supported by your heel, not toe. Keeping the pressure on the heel helps engage the gluteal muscles AND helps you keep good form. If you push off with the pressure on your toes or balls of the feet your front knee will extend beyond 90 degrees which puts increased strain on the knees.... not a good thing. Lunges and squats always get a bad rap because they "hurt the knees". They only hurt knees if your form is crappy.

3. Try not to propel yourself back up using your back foot. As much as possible you should be pushing yourself up with your front leg. The majority of the glute work in this exercise comes from the front leg pushing out of the lunge. If you use your back leg to propel you off the ground then you are cheating yourself out of the exercise..... so don't do it.

I hope someone tries this out. It's really a great exercise for the butt! Do this as part of a comprehensive leg workout for a few months and your butt will look just like this! (ok... your but won't look like yours unless you do a HELL of a lot more than this move, but she's my butt idol, so I thought I'd post her. she works out with heavy weights 5 days a week...doing a few lunges won't bulk you up like this, so please don't post saying... "I don't do lunges because they'll make my legs big. They won't. Stop your yappin and do a lunge!")

Stay tuned for next weeks exercise :-)

Celebrity Pug Owners....

2009-02-04T11:40:00.003-05:00

Just Because I love da pugs.....

Jessica Alba has two pugs, Sid and Nancy.

Kelly Osbourne with her pug, Prudence. I need a hoodie like that for Leroy...

Tori Spelling with her pug, Mimi La Rue, and her family. I love her. R.I.P Mimi La Rue :-(

George Clooney's sexy ass has a pug...

Paula Abdul is crazy, but has a cute pug, Puggy Sue.

Valentino has SIX pugs.

Ted Danson has a pug.

Nick Carter (LOL) from Backstreet Boys has two pugs.

Denise Richards has a pug, who is famous for his appearance on The Dog Whisperer.

Eva Longoria is now the new mom of a precious black puppy.

Brooke Mueller (Charlie Sheen's fiancee) has two pugs..... after seeing this carrier NO ONE has a right to make fun of my dog sling :-p

Gerard Butler has a pug, Lolita.

Debra Messing with her pug on Rodeo Drive. How happy does her pug look! But then again I would be that happy shopping on Rodeo Drive too. :-p

Hope y'all enjoyed the celeb pugs.... BTW I totally stole this from another site. If I remember where I got this I will post it as a footnote :-p

I LOVE the 90's- Chicken Cacciatore edition

2009-01-26T23:49:00.006-05:00

I realized today that I haven't really made a new recipe since my holiday party last month, so I figured I'd try a few new things this week. I've been hunkering for home a bit lately (yes I said hunkering) so I was very pleased when I saw Giada De Laurentiis' chicken cacciatore recipe while I was browsing the Food Network site. I haven't had chicken cacciatore in YEARS, but I think it was one of those dishes that was really popular in the midwest during my elementary and middle school years.... Chicken Cacciatore, Salisbury Steak.... that nasty cassarole made out of chicken and cream of mushroom soup... All staples of a good midwestern home cooking. My memory of the cacciatore my mom made was a thick tomato-y chicken stew that she served over rice. (As I'm writing this I realize that maybe what she called "chicken cacciatore" might have been just regular Ghanaian chicken stew with a little orgegano... but I digress....). Here is the basic recipe:

Ingredients

4 chicken thighs
2 chicken breasts with skin and backbone, halved crosswise
2 teaspoons salt, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
1/2 cup all purpose flour, for dredging
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3/4 cup dry white wine
1 ( 28-ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice
3/4 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons drained capers
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves

Basically all you need to do is season up the chicken with salt and pepper, dredge (dip :-p) the chicken pieces in flour and brown the chicken in medium-hot oil. You then remove the chicken and sautee the onion/garlic/red pepper mixture in the oil until the onions are soft and then add the rest of the ingredients and let the mixture simmer until the chicken cooks through.

Super easy. I think the hands on part of the meal took about 30 min, and then I went out and walked Leroy for about 25 minutes while the stew was simmering. I didn't really make many changes to the recipe except I didn't add the capers and I added some olives and red pepper flakes. I would give the recipe, with my very minor changes, a solid B. It was tasty... comfort-y, butt the flavors weren't really that complex or exciting. I think this would be a great dish to make for company, especially guy company, as it is good, simple, comfort food. the next time I make it for myself I will make the following changes.

1- Use less onion. I used 1 nice large onion, but I think the freshness and the size of the onion imparted WAY too much sweetness to the dish.
2- Add some tomato paste to the softened onion mixture. I really missed the tomato paste-y taste of the chicken cacciatore that I remember. As I stated early, I have a feeling that my mom probably Ghanafied her chicken cacciatore by adding a bunch of tomato paste (Ghanian chicken stews are often very thick with lots of tomato paste), but I'm going for less authenticity and more homey-ness, so I think I'll add tomato paste next time.
3- If I'm making this for company with more complex tastebuds I'll probably add the capers. I felt like the dish was just too sweet and it was mising an element of savory-ness. I tried to fix it by adding the tomato paste and even though about splashing a bit of lemon juice, but I didn't want to fluck it up and figured I'd just add the capers next time.

I didn't really want to eat Italian food on brown rice, and I couldn't really justify to myself eating white rice, so I decided to pan fry up a little bit of polenta from Whole Foods and call it a meal. Here's a pic

I really need to learn how to take better pictures of food. My photographer friend Curtis told me that food needs lots of light... but for some reason I always turn off my flash when photographing food... I don't like the way the artificial shine looks in my viewfinder.... but I guess it looks much better when you actually look at the pictures:

I honestly might try Salisbury Steak next month...

:-)

Clear skin in 30 days? WARNING! Extreme closeups of bad skin!

2009-01-26T22:25:00.009-05:00

Is it really possible? I've always wanted really clear skin... not just acne free, but that beautiful, soft, never had a blemish, mosquito bite, scratch, just slid out of the womb type of clear skin.

Skin like Gabbys... I just spent like 15 minutes looking for a pic of Gabrielle Union where her skin looks as flawless as it does in my mind.... Couldn't really find one, but here's the closest I could get :-p

I just liked this pic.... She's fabulous.... I might have to get a vacation weave that looks like this for Miami
<------ Moving on.... So starting last week I embarked on my 30 day skin challenge, which is to follow a real face regimen for 30 days. My current face regimen, at least for the last few months, has been to wash my face with Neutragena Clear Pore face wash or Neutragena Blackhead eliminating acne wash. I ran out of moisturizer a while ago so I just threw some Palmer's cocoa butter on my face or used some jojoba oil. Needless to say my skin wasn't in the best shape. It was horrible, but I was getting more acne (and thus more dark marks), my skin was dull, and my pores looked like craters. So I figured I'd see how good I could get my skin to look JUST from taking care of it properly at home. One of my goals is to get a facial, so I might get the facial to top off the 30 days... we'll see :-) Here are my goals: 1- Reduce my dark marks and even out skin tone 2- Significantly brighten my skin (not bright like lighten, but brighten like revitalize and get all the dead skin dullness off. ) 3- Tighten and cleanse my pores (I think that helps with brightness) 4- Reduce acne and learn how to quickly treat any bumps that pop up. 5- Soften and moisturize Here are the players: The Clinique 3 step system for Acne:
Step 1: Cleanse with Acne Solutions Cleansing Foam
Step 2: Exfoliate with Acne Solutions Clarifying Lotion
Step 3: Moisturize with Acne Solutions Clearing Moisturizer Oil-Free

I chose this because the reviews were really good and it took care of the 3 main skincare steps in one easy to find kit.

Origins "Have a Nice Day" Super charged Moisture cream. This is the cream that I used to use. It's really good in the winter. I originally was just going to use the moisturizer in the 3-step kit, but my skin was really really dry and I needed an additional moisturizer... The chick at the Clinique counter told me I'd probably need one, but I didn't listen.

Origins "Clear Improvement" Active Charcoal mask. I also used this mask in the past. It's supposed to help deep clean pores. Apparently when pores get clogged your skin looks "cloudy". We don't want that. I recall I liked it in the past... plus it's just fun to play with masks.

So these are the tools. I started this about a week ago, but the actual 30 day challenge started yesterday February 1. I took my pics of my skin the day I started using the products so we'd have an accurate "before" shot. Warning... my skin is a mess... but I will embarrass myself in the name of science:

So above you can see my head on shot: notice all the dark marks on my forehead and general tight, dryness of my skin. Ignore my 'flicted expression... I was tryna smile with my eyes. :-p

The next shots you can see my trouble areas, my big chipmunk cheeks. I always get blemishes there and because of the blemishes I also get dark marks. You can see an example of both and my large crater pores in better detail in the disturbing macro photo here ------ >

So this is what I'm looking like know... My skin SHO ain't lookin like Gabby's...

I'll update around 15 days

N :-)

15 pugs and counting!

2009-01-17T19:22:00.006-05:00

Many of you who know me or have been following my blog are aware of the long, and oftentimes infuriating, road I took trying to adopt a pug. I have been filling out applications for pets on petfinder.com for as long as I can remember and really kicked my application game into high gear around September and started volunteering for a pug rescue, PPRA (Precious Pugs Resucue and Adoption), and got my first real taste of pug life with my beautiful foster pug Bruno and the goal culminated with me purchasing my little crazy, sweetheart pug puppy Bruce Leroy --->

Despite the fact that I'd committed the cardinal sin of buying a puppy, I still was very committed to working with PPRA doing home visits or calling references when they needed me to. I wasn't going to be able to foster for a while until Leroy started to get the hang of house training and got all his shots, but I was happy to continue to help out. Soon after I got Leroy there was a coup of sorts in the organization and the woman that I had been working primarily with left to start her own Pug rescue with another former PPRA member. The new rescue org was called "Curly Tail Pug Rescue" and I was pretty happy to join them because I thought the org was going to be younger, fresher, more flexible, more creative, and probably just more fun to work with than the old organization.

I signed on to volunteer as the application coordinator which essentially meant that I answered all of the emails that came in about the pugs on our page. Look my name and Curly Tail Email are in the middle of the adoptions page!

Ok... so you can't see it from my crappy screen shot.... moving on.... I was really interested in that particular position because of my frustration with sending hundreds of emails to other rescues and never, or hardly ever, receiving a response. So I took on the job of being kind of the first point of contact when people were interested in one of our pugs.

So far it's been fun but it's also been a WHOLE LOT of work and I have been instrumental in the placement of about 15 pugs! Most of the pugs that come into rescue are adults or seniors. We sometimes get young pugs, and very rarely get puppies. Most of the dogs that we get are surrendered from owners who can no longer take care of them. Owners surrender dogs for a variety of reasons, some because their work or family situation has changed and they can't take care of the pug like they should. Sometimes a pug falls ill and the family can't afford it's medical care.

The most recent dogs that came into the rescue came from a puppy mill bust. Puppy mills are essentially massive commercial breeding facility where dogs are caged and bred constantly until they can't breed anymore. Most dogs that are in Pet Stores come from puppy mills. It's a pretty miserable existence, so when a large puppy mill in the midwest closed we, along with some other rescues, agreed to take the pugs. We got 8 pugs from the puppy mill rescue. The rescue effort is detailed on our webpage. "Working with" these pugs has been really extraordinary. These pugs came from a life where they had little to no human interaction and are just the sweetest little dogs. They fell into "normal" life quicker than I would have imagined and were even fairly easy to house train. We knew the pugs were coming so we tried to line up a bunch of potential homes for them prior to them getting here. I cut and pasted the below from the Curly Tail Pug Rescue Blog... but I wrote it so I don't think she'll mind ;-)

Angel was adopted on Sunday January 12th by a great couple and will live out the rest of her life with her new pug sister in an uber-fabulous house in Ogunquit, Maine.

Samson was adopted by a lovely couple in Massachusetts who were seeking a nice, cuddly yet quiet pug. Samson was a perfect fit and he will now be living out the rest of his years napping and eating in peace and comfort.

Teddy is another sweet and quiet pug who was adopted Sunday January 12th by a single woman living in New York City. Teddy and his new pug brother Mugsy hit it off immediately and Teddy will live out the rest of his days enjoying long walks in Central Park and longer naps snuggled with his new bro.

Sugar Pie was adopted this weekend by a great woman residing in Rhode Island. The applicant drove all the way to NYC to meet Sugar and was totally enamored by Sugar's sweet disposition and couldn't resist the little pink tongue that's always peeking out of the side of her mouth. Sugar is this applicant's first pug and she has been waiting to adopt a pug for years, so we are confident that sugar will be babied and spoiled silly in her new home.

It was really amazing to me how adaptable these little dogs were. They came from a totally horrible life and within days they were running around with each other, playing with toys, going to the bathroom outside or on pads... it's like the past never happened. I rarely get to meet the dogs because I don't foster, but we have 1 puppy mill dog that is left without any really solid leads. His name is Coy. He is totally my favorite and was my fav from the beginning. I have no idea why he hasn't been adopted. He's so freaking adorable. I think it's this picture that really gets me --------->

On an average day we usually have 2-3 dogs for adoption on our website and on Petfinder/adopt-a-pet. Those posting generate about 10-15 emails a day from people inquiring about the dogs. Most of the time there are 2-3 email conversations that occur before the person gets to the point of turning in an application. This amount pretty much triples when we have puppies. We had 3 puppies at one time in October.... it was a mess... So on a normal day between new inquiries and continuing conversations I probably have to deal with around 25-30 emails a day for Curly Tail. In addition to that I have to send the applications to everyone who turns in an application fee and receive and file the completed applications. 25-30 emails a day may not seem like a lot, but it takes SOOOOO much time. I usually check my Curly Tail email 1x per hour at work and organize the emails so I can reply to them when I get home. I generally spend about an hour to an hour and a half on Curly Tail emails each night. It's a lot of time, but it's nothing compared to what other volunteers put in. Our co-founders both usually have 2 or 3 foster pugs living with them in addition to their own 3+ pugsand they have to meet people for adoption appointments, update the website, work with the fund-raising team and legal team and all the other teams that go into making our organization fabulous. So I'm not complaning (anymore :-p). I feel really privledged to be a part of the organization.

So if anyone is interested in helping out a pug, or just looking at adorable pictures and reading great posts you should really visit our webpage (www.curlytailpugrescue.org) or our blog http://www.curlytailpugs.blogspot.com/.

Oh yeah... And my work with Curly Tail has taken the place of my goal to walk the dogs at B.A.R.C. (Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition). I sho don't have time with that between walking my dog and answering all these daggone emails... :-p

No doctor... This is NOT the time!

2009-01-17T17:33:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer! The following post is about a trip to the gynecologist. It will be in no way graphic, but if you are one of those people (*cough* guys) who gets squeamish at the mere mention of stirrups and or speculums then I suggest you stop reading now. :-)

For the rest of you....

So one of the goals on my list was to make sure that I get routine medical care, which basically meant I needed to go to the dentist and gynecologist 1x per year for each year of the challengs. I REALLY wanted to get the gyno portion of this goal done in 2008, and the doctor that I usually visit was booked solid until January 2009 (and I'm not that wedded to my current gyno) so I asked my girlfriends if they had any recommendations for a good gynecologist. Most of my girlfriends were in the same boat as I was; they had a gyno, but weren't super crazy about her/him, but I knew that one of my girlfriends LOVED her gyno. She was always talking about him ("oooh giiiirl! He is soooo fine! Oooooh girl!") Now... I probably should have been a little suspicious that most of our conversations around him centered around his appearance and the fact that "he could get it" and not his acumen with a pap smear, but I guess I was just distracted by the sheer excitement that she expressed when speaking of the Good Doctor and I went ahead and called to make an appointment and was able to get in in December of 2008.

I was actually pretty excited about my visit, first off just because I wanted to see what this dude looked like, secondly because his office was in Brooklyn, so if I liked him he would be very convenient to visit in the future, thirdly the medical assistant who gave my my appointment said I'd be getting a sonogram, which are standard at all his visit, and I'd never had a sonogram at the gyno before. So one afternoon in late December I left work a little early and skidattled off to downtown BK for my appointment. The office was a pretty standard looking office. I got my little sign in clip board and sat down next to a large African-American woman and her clearly ADD, possibly FAS, son and newborn. Glancing around I realized that ever last woman in that office was a quite young and black or Hispanic/Latino.... I guess it would make sense that they were young given that he's a OB, but it seemed strange that EVERYONE there was a woman of color... My girl's voice started to echo in my head (Oooooh girl he is SOO FIONE!)... I looked to the young Latina at my left who was carefully applying M.A.C. lipglass in "Flirt" and across to the middle aged black woman who nervously adjusting her Wonder Bra and I started to wonder if the Good Doctor was giving more than pap smears and breast exams.

I started to feel a little odd, and I had been waiting for at 35-40 min so I decided it may be time to take my exit. I informed the receptionist about this and she quickly told me I was next in line for the sonogram tech. I took one last look at the waiting room filled with unnecessarily eager looking women and decided that this would probably be an interesting experience, and honestly... how hard it it to do a basic gyno exam? So I followed the 50ish year old Russian tech into the sonogram room and got prepared for my sonogram. I had never had a sonogram before, and all of the sonograms I'd seen on TV were for pregnant women, so I was a bit surprised when she started to put the lube gel stuff on a long tube instead of putting it on my abdomen like I'd seen in the movies. Apparently this was a different kind of ultrasound. I'll spare you the gory details. While I was laying on the table, the tech was looking at the TV screen for the images from the ultrasound wand thingy. She was totally silent and had a concerned look on her face as she moved the wand thing around to look at different angles and draw on the screen with a little electronic pen. The whole thing looked like static to me, so I asked her, "Is everything ok? What are you seeing." she said, "The doctor will discus your results with you." When she was done with her explorations she sent me back to the waiting room. At this point I was a little freaked out and was glad that the nurse called me back only a few minutes later to see the doctor.

The doctor came in shortly.... My first reaction to the doc was to chuckle slightly because I had been watching this short, simian-looking man in scrubs hanging around the reception desk for the past 45 minutes and had been thinking to myself that this BETTER not be the doctor because 1.) he seemed to have way too much free time, and 2.) His ass was not cute. Well in defense of my girl and all the other women who are under his spell... he's not a BAD looking guy... He has the kind of curly hair, creole, pretty-boy look to him that many women find attractive, and he definitely had some swagger (as the youngins like to say). He glided into the office, introduced himself in a voice that was FAR more Billy D than the situation called for, and told me that he was going to do the basic exam and another "high resolution" ultra-sound and then we would talk. I'm like WTF? I told him that his ultrasound tech's bedside manner left a bit to be desired and I looked forward to talking with him about the ultrasound results. He didn't really respond to that... just told me to get undressed and he'd be back in a minute.

So the doc came back in 5 min and I assumed the position that all women know and love while he made quick work of the pap smear/cervical cancer screening portion of the exam... and I mean QUICK work. I swear he was in there for less than 10 seconds and then he was pulling out his fancy smancy "high resolution" ultra sound, lubing up the wand, and going to town with the ultrasound... So I'm laying on the table looking at the images on the monitor trying to make out something.... anything that may have prompted the Russian lady's worried looks when I feel a hand on my knee. I look up at the doctor and he smiles at me, moves his hand slightly up to my thigh, lightly SCRATCHES my thigh and says, "So... where ya from?" WTF?! This is NOT the time doctor! I mean I know you're supposed to talk to your patients etc to put them at ease, but honestly it came off far more like the creepy guy that sits next to you at the bar, touches your leg, and asks, "Do you come here often". WTF! Anyway that awkward moment was over soon as he started to talk to me about what he was seeing on the screen. He told me to look at a large dark area of the screen and asked me if I knew what it was. I said "Uh... no I don't fucking know what it is. If I did I wouldn't be paying your ass to stick this wand up my vagine. Stop being fucking coy and just tell me what you see.!" Ok I didn't say that. I just said, "Nope. What is it." He told me I had a fibroid. I was like (in my head) whew! Is that is? He went on to say that I needed to come into his other office in the next 2 weeks for a "DNC". He needed to do the second procedure to check to make sure the fibroid wasn't cancerous. Huh? Since when were fibroids cancerous? I mean... don't like 3 out of 5 women have fibroids? I never though of them as something super serious.... just annoying and painful, but I was just relieved to find out that it was just a fibroid and didn't really question him. So after the Good Doctor finished telling me that I needed to schedule a D&C in the next 2 weeks, he then proceded to hand me his business card (my legs were STILL in the stirrups mind you) and told me to check out the website of his new book. I won't tell you what the title was, but it was essentially a guide to financial sucess. I chuckled, again, and told him I would look at it.

So I go back to the front desk, still kind of shaking my head from the leg scratching,inappropriate questioning, shameless self-promotion episode that I just experienced and went to speak to the girl at the desk. I told her what the Doctor said and she told me that he only operates on 2 days a week. Operates?!? WTF? Who said anything about an operation? So I started to get a bit freaked out again, but I figured she just mis-spoke and told her I would come in in 3 weeks (after the holiday vacay). She gave me an appointment in the late afternoon and told me that I could not eat after midnight on the night before and because I would be under general anestesia I would need someone to pick me up afterwards. HUH? General anestesia? Picking me up? Not eating? What the hell is this D&C thing? I told the woman that the doctor didn't tell me anything about this. She shot a glance at her co-worker, looked up at me kind of sheepishly and then didn't really respond. Why does no one respond to questions here? Anyway I was done with this adventure and needed to get home, so I just made an appointment, left, and promptly called my doctor friends to get their interpretation of the situation.

The consensus: they were all outraged, not at the fact that he inappropriately scratched my leg, but that he was doing transvaginal ultrasounds on all of his patients, which is apparently a completely unnecessary and extremely expensive procedure. And secondly they were even more outraged that he was routinely performing D & C's ( a common but fairly serious surgial procedure) on women who had fibroids but weren't complaining of any discomfort, irregular bleeding, etc. The both told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was NOT to go back to that doctor for a D&C or anything else.

So that was my Gyno visit 2008. See why I don't go! There's always drama. But I guess I don't need to check out the Good Doctor's book now. I already know his secrets to financial sucess: Building up a clientele of Black and Hispanic women (African American women are almost 3 times more likely than white women to have fibroids), screening them all for fibroids regardless of whether they have any complaints of discomfort or bleeding, and then performing, (and charging their insurance companies) a completely unnecessary surgical procedure.

Ugh... my people. I didn't want to mention his name because I don't want to get sued or something, but if you're in Brooklyn and want to know, just ask.

N :-p

Happy New Year Peoples...

2009-01-13T09:33:00.002-05:00

What up everyone! Happy New Year… I know it’s January 13th and I’m hella late, but I whatevs…. It’s the thought that counts, right? Well since it’s damn near the middle of the month, I guess I should post my December wrap up and January plans.

4.) Acquire >2 songs per month for 6 months (2/6)
- Kanye West “Love Lockdown”
- Robert Glasper “Canvas” (album)

10.) Make 100 new recipes (10/100)
- Blue Cheese and Hazlenut Crostini
- Asparagus soup with Lemon Crème Fraiche
- Roast beef with port and roasted shallots

13.) Try 50 foods or types of cuisine I haven't tried (5/50)
- No new foods this month

20.) Watch all the movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive.
- No movies this month….

27.) Walk Dogs at B.A.R.C 10 times (0/10)
- DONE! Didn’t actually walk the dogs at B.A.R.C, but I have put in almost 3 months of CONSISTENT work on behalf of Curly Tail Pug Rescue and I think that is an adequate substitute. Between walking my dog, transcribing, working full time, and answering 5 million emails a day for Curly Tail, I think my helping dogs mission is complete.

34.) Blog on my 101 90% of the days (40/901)
- as of December 31st, I believe 121 days have past since starting the list on September 1 (someone please correct me if my math is off). 90% blogging for that time (ie 1 blog per day) should be 108 blogs.... I'm currently at 33%.... I obviously need to get working.

39.) Be on time or early for everything for a month (0/30)
-*sigh*…. Will this ever really be achieved… I suck.

50.) Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months (0/60)
-Getting a little better with this one…. Had a few false starts, but I have been drinking enough water that most days I actually use the bathroom at least once during the day. That’s an improvement for me! :-p

60.) Go the gynecologist and dentist once per year (1/4)
-Had one very eventful gyno visit…. Very interesting….

80.) Do 400 "no spend" days (1/400) *UPDATED*
-I honestly haven’t really been keeping track of this…. Which probably means I haven’t been doing it :-p Maybe…. I recall a few weekends this month where I didn’t leave the house on at least one of the days. Oh well… I don’t know if I can make this one, might have to take it as a loss.

83.) Get a professional bikini wax (Brazilian)
-DONE!

90.) Buy a digital piano (casio privia or Yamaha YPG)
-Didn’t have money for this ish this month, but I really want to get on it before my birthday.

98.) Send Christmas cards to at least 20 people for 2 Christmases (0/2)
-I totally missed Christmas. I really wanted to make a card that had Leroy’s picture on it, but didn’t have time to set up the photo shoot and my old camera was dying so I couldn’t take the picture myself…. So instead of just buying cards like a normal person, I procrastinated until Christmas was over…. Oh well.. I wonder if there are 2 Christmases left in the remaining days of the challenge?

Merry Christmas from Cincy!

2008-12-26T00:05:00.010-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

I'm sending you all greetings from beautiful Cincinnati Ohio where my brother and sister-in-law reside. This year the Mensah Jr's. hosted my parents, Marie's parents, my brother Kelly, Leroy and myself for a lovely Christmas celebration... Here are the highlights...

First off...Never... NEVER fly Delta out of JFK during the holidays. Delta SUCKS. Leroy and I waited in line for 2 hours to check in. I had to check in in person b/c I was traveling with a pet. They literally had 1 agent working the check in line for all domestic and international flights... and then that check in person left and ALL hell broke loose. People were yelling, fools were cutting in the line. It was nuts. My flight kept on being pushed back, so I didn't mind too too much, but yo... I really though someone was gonna get the ho ho ho beat out of them.. it was quite humerous all around. Unfortunately the BRILLIANT folks at Delta just forgot to pack half of the plane's luggage (about 10 people... the plane was tiny) and then I didn't get my luggage until Wednesday... oh well

Our holiday celebration started off with a trip to the Ballet to see the Cincinatti Ballet's presentation of the nutcracker. It was really cute. Little kids LOVE the Nutcracker and there were tons of little cuties in the audience. The play was good... but my favorite part was after the ballet they, for some reason, had a big ass statue of Bob's Big Boy (those of you from the Midwest know what I'm talking about) in the lobby of the ballet... so we took a picture with Bob... I think this would be the perfect picture for "Caption it" challenge :-p

Christmas Morning! Tons of presents and Leroy's by the tree! I got lots of good stuff for Christmas this year... actually most of the stuff I got was really for Leroy, but whatever. So... My brother and sis-in-law got me a Pug Snuggly for Leroy. Pug Snuggly's are special coats made for to fit pug's big chest. Leroy LOVES IT! And he looks so freaking cute... Don't mind that sad look on his face... just focus on the happy look on mine... heh heh...

They also got us an Outward Hound Dog sling so I can carry Leroy around all the time.... because that is exactly what needs to happen :-p He seemed a little dubious at first... but then I think he started to really enjoy himself and DOVE right in to the experience!

My brother seemed to enjoy his stocking stuffer.... I thought he would enjoy it since I get daily text message reports on his poop activities....

My father seemed very pleased with his Vietnam War Video... We saw it on TV back in October and I remembered he said he wanted it... So WA-LA Now everybody thinks I'm a great, listening, daughter :-p

My mom and I were ENTIRELY TOO pleased to receive Princess Tyra Chapter 3. For those of you who are not up on Ghanaian Cinema, Princess Tyra is the scintillating story of a caring maid by the name of Maafia who worked for the evil Princess Tyra, until Princess Tyra's fiance Kay knocked her up, causing her to leave her home in the Ilugbo Kingdom for the big city where she got slapped a LOT by a lot of people and found out her man decided to impregnate a chick who, other than her bad African weave, looked exactly like her... I don't want to give it all away, but Princess Tyra chapter 3 was JUST as great as Chapters 1 and 2.... You can see the excitement on our faces! Leroy watched Princess Tyra chapters 1 and 2 when he was only 3 months old! I think he totally remembers it. You can just see the excitement on his face when he sees what's in the box!

It was a FABULOUS Christmas morning! Thanks Ekow and Marie for your hospitality! You can see WAY more pictures of the whole Mensah/Robinson plan including pics of everyone enjoying the gift opening and my brother Kelly trying to look suave for the camera on my facebook page :-p

Merry Christmas All....

Butternut Squash, Leeks and Apples... a story in pictures

2008-12-24T22:32:00.014-05:00

I spent a lot (entirely too much) time photographically documenting the process of making my butternut squash and leeks last month, so I feel obligated to share the process with all of you. I am on a plane and I don’t really feel like typing, so this will be a description in pictures…. Here we go....

... and for those of you who are more word inclined...
1. Take a lovely butternut squash and strip it of its modesty and chop it up into bits
2. Take 4-5 big leeks, clean and decapitate
3. Soften up the mixture in a skillet with some olive oil…
4. Get a Granny smith Apple. Chop granny up and add her to the pot.
5. Get out some sweet wine. I used a lovely cranberry wine… Pour some wine… into a glass and drink it. Pour some more wine into the glass and drink it too. Pour some wine into the Buttnut squash mixture.
6. Let it all stew and simmer and whatnot until the buttnutt is nice and tender.
7. Bake up a piece of tilapia with some salt, pepper, and thyme.
8. Put it all on the plate and bring the plate to the couch
9. Ignore the sad, begging look on Leroy’s face
10. Enjoy!

Braising pork at 7:00am...

2008-12-16T07:24:00.002-05:00

Hey Ya'll...

Next new recipe... I bought about a pound of boneless country style pork ribs a couple weekends ago.... just because they were there.... I have never made ribs, boneless or otherwise, so I thought it would be something fun to try.

Braising basically means cooking something in a little bit of liquid in a covered pot. I just checked with Wiki and it said that Braising is actually a 2 part method including dry and wet.... that I did not know. You always learn something new when you're braising country style pork at 7 in the morning.... Next time I will have to sear the pork before throwing it in the oven.

Anywhoo, basically all I did was throw the slab'o'pork in a little roaster pan, with about 2 cups of chicken broth and salt and pepper and seasoning. The recipe called for bay leaf, but I left my bay leaves at Juan's house on Thanksgiving so I threw some allspice and thyme in there.... we'll see...

The meat is supposed to be paired with a Cuban influenced sauced called Mojo sauce. It's basically a sauce of orange, lime, garlic, cilantro and some other stuff. I'll make that when I get home today.

It's been in the oven for about 40 min and it smells great! I'll keep ya'll posted on the Mojo sauce

N

AAAAAAAH KELLLY CLARKSON!!!!

2008-12-09T21:25:00.001-05:00

So.... I fulfilled another one of my goals tonight! I got a Bikini Wax. I had never gotten a bikini wax before b/c honestly I didn't really see the point. When I went to the beach I would just do a little at home bikiniscaping, and go... and the rest of the time... It was just au natural... I'm an au natural gal. :-p

My friend Alex had been talking about how I need to get a bikini wax for years an that her "provider" is excellent. She goes to Bliss Spa for her bikini waxes and she said that I might as well not get a bikini wax if I didn't go to Bliss b/c it was BY FAR the best place. She said that it didn't really hurt at all... uh-huh.... and that her "provider" was very "thorough" Alex's experience with bikini wax seemed so different than my other friend's experience (ie leaving the "spa" with blood spotted undies, unsightly bumps and walking funny...). I damn sure wasn't going to go to her place after witnessing all that, so I was off to Bliss with Alex.

First of all Bliss is a really pretty spa. It's connected to the W hotel in midtown on the east side. I felt very swank going there. They had little finger foods and snackies all laid out, it was very plush. Alex had gone ahead of me and apprently told the woman all my business (being my first time and all) so she had a lot of encouraging words for me before she started.

All in all the actual experience of the wax was surprisingly painless and not nearly as embarrasing as I thought. Homegirl was VERY efficient and the special wax they use really does seem to work. They use some sort of wax that is dark blue (not the yellow wax most places use) and they put the wax on and wait for it to dry/harden before the start ripping. Apparently this wax doesn't stick to the skin and really just adheres to the hair, so it's far less painful. Yo... I gotta give it to her... that mess really didn't hurt that much. I was expecting to be tearing up, holding my breath and silently cursing Alex, but honestly I just chatted with the waxer the whole time. After the wax I walked out of the place and felt NOTHING. No irritation, no bumps, DEFINITELY no blood drawn or anything like that. It was like someone hadn't just been ripping hair out of my nether region. Good stuff!

So for all of you out there in major cities.... run, don't walk, to Bliss Spa next time you have to get a bikini wax especially those of you who are experienced in waxing. I promise you'll have a better experience.

Yay 1 more goal down!

N
p.s. the title is from "The 40 Year Old Virgin... in case ya'll were confused."

More than just Beyonce...

2008-12-05T21:50:00.003-05:00

November was a good month for music… I discovered a new “genre” of music, a couple new artists, and am slowly working on my Beyonce annoyance issues… (Although this “scientific evidence” still cracks me up). So let’s get to the music shall we…

New discovery this month: Grime. I was scrambling to find a couple new songs to download on October 31 when I saw my friend from high school’s status update on Facebook talking about the new “Dizzee Rascal” album. I’d never heard of Dizzee Rascal, but the fact that he had an album would indicate that he’s music of some sort, so I looked him up… and discovered a whole new subset of rap/hip-hop; Grime! If you want to learn more about the “genre” then feel free to check out Wiki, but essentially it seems like electronic based underground hip-hop that also draws from reggae and other world music… the beats are “choppy” and it’s not particularly danceable… but it’s interesting which, to me, makes it great ipod walking music.

I downloaded 2 songs from artist Dizzee Rascal…. Hmm Dizzee is an interesting fella.. I don’t know what area of London he’s from, but his accent is horrendous. He sounds like he has a big wad of fish and chips stuffed in his yap… and a really big swollen tongue. I guess his delivery is part of what makes him popular, and I would agree that it’s interesting, but I’m really glad that he made it in music, because I don’t know what he could have done with his life with that accent…

Anywhoo… I downloaded 2 songs from his 2003 debut CD “Boy in Da Corner”- “

I Luv U”

“Fix Up, Look Sharp”

I likes them! Great walking music. Interesting lyrics (from what I can hear)…. Obviously not anything of substance, and I’m not sure if I’ll be downloading any more, but trying to discern Dizzee’s mushmouth definintely kept me occupied for at least a few train rides to work… and for that he gets a solid B

The other song I downloaded this month was Greenlight from John Legend… another singer who I generally don’t have positive words for…. His “crooning” just works my nerves… “Weee’re just ordinary peeepollll-raaa! We don’t know which waaay to Goooo-rra!” No Johnny. Just stop it. But I have liked a couple of the songs he’s done with other artists as of late. He has a nice duet with Estelle on her album “Shine” called “You Are”. I happened to catch the video to his new song “Green Light” on Thanksgiving (in between the 65 and 66th replay of Beyonce’s Single Ladies video) and I loved that song. I had kind of heard it a few times in passing, but I dismissed it because it was John Legend BUT the song was featuring Andre 3000 who I LOVE. And the song is pretty hot. It’s not Johnny’s usual rat pack wanna-be crooning and honestly Andre 3000 is so charismatic it’s hard not to like anything that he does. (I even loved that ridiculous Fonsworth Bentley video with him and a very uncomfortable looking Kanye West). Anywhoo great song. Great beat. Very danceable… Perfect song to put on when you’re drinking Grey Goose and getting ready to go out for the night! Take a listen- Green Light - John Legend feat Andre 3000 I give this song a solid A-

Oh I also downloaded Beyonce’s entire CD…. Yeah…. I can’t say that I love it… I do like a few of the songs, and she’s always good for up-beat gym songs.

November anyone.....

2008-12-05T21:47:00.001-05:00

Well given that I did my October wrap up on November 20th, there’s not too much to write about for November, so this is going to be short…

I didn’t accomplish too much in November, but I’m trekking along with a couple of my easier goals.

New Recipes: I tried 2 new recipes in November: Spicy Chicken Stew with Lemongrass and Butternut squash with Apples and Leeks. I put in a lot of effort taking pictures to document my Butt nut squash preparation… I should really blog about that…..

New songs: My 2 new songs per month goal had to re-start in November, because I didn’t download my “October” songs until November 1. Oh well… 2 new songs this month and I’m back on track.
Eating new foods: I had 1 new food in November; Kobe Beef. I love Kobe beef….. and I love Tao restaurant… Shout out to Keith for opening my eyes to both, and actually sharing his Kobe beef with me. :-p

Um yeah… I’m not going to go into all of the things I didn’t do. I don’t want to dwell on the negative…

Mobile paternity tests and other ghetto nonesense..

2008-11-28T15:19:00.002-05:00

Just some randomness for the day... So I was walking home from the train last week... as many of you know, my walk from the train is about 10-15 min through the Bed Stuy, so there's always something interesting to see... So I'm minding my own business, slightly annoyed that my headphones broke and I was ipod-less, and what do I see? A blue van with a BIG ass picture of a white, blue eyed, blond baby on the side and 2 young black guys driving... so I had to take a closer look. On the side of the van it said "MOBILE DNA AND PATERNITY TESTING" and right by the baby was written "He's got his father's eyes.... or does he?" HAHAHA Really... really.... really Bed Stuy? We have to do better. I was so mad. I wish I would have had my camera to take a picture... So mad that there's really a market for this type of "service". Maury would be so proud.

In other ghetto news, I was WAY uptown in the Monistat capital of NYC i.e. Washington Heights (don't be mad... those chicks wear their pants hella tight...) yesterday for Thanksgiving. The Heights is just as ghetto as my neighborhood just more Daddy Yankee than Lil Wayne... anyway, Juan and i were walking down the street and we came across a car who's side mirror had been knocked off (pretty common), but WHY did these fools tape a hand mirror (yes just like this one ---------------------------> )

into the space where the side mirror should be... handle and all... Really.... really? Ya'll couldn't have at LEAST broken off the handle before doing that shit. We have to do better people! necesitamos hacer mejor!! (Thanks Steph!) Ugh... our people....

just a little nonesense for your Friday :-)

Beyonce... I can't even hate....

2008-11-28T14:41:00.005-05:00

Beyonce.... I can't even be mad at her. I know a lot of you think that I'm a Beyonce hater. And I think that is TOTALLY UNTRUE! I have ALWAYS liked Beyonce's music. I thought her first CD Dangerously in Love was AMAZING (by far her best CD in my opinion). My main issue with Beyonce was that she always seemed so controlled in interviews and there is never any life behind her eyes in pictures.... She's an amazing performer, pretty good singer, but ugh her pictures and interviews just annoy me.... I just want to shake her! But recently I've started to think that the Beyonce Android may have come to life... I mean would Android Beyonce ever let herself be photographed like this... -------------------------------------------------->

Maybe her marriage has given her some strength to break out and be more free, maybe she's just growing up... (or maybe I'm just growing up and becoming less of a hater :-p). Whatever it is, I'm liking this Beyonce chick these days. I especially love her new single "Single Laides (put a ring on it). I decided to adopt this as my anthem for my relationship life.... "If you want it then you should(a) put a ring on it." Until then all is fair game. I loves it. In addition to that... girl is WORKING OUT in the video. I mean DAYUM! I mean...DAYUM LOL. That video is sick! My friend Juan and I decided that we would try and learn the dance yesterday... We got through about 7 seconds. heh heh... I don't care if the dark skinned person in the video is a dude, she was working it out.

I also caught a replay of Beyonce's performance at the AMA's... She's a force of nature! I mean all the other folks had sets, explosions, 50 dancers, crazy costumes, live animals, pyrotechnics... and Beyonce had 2 dancers, a leotard, a bike ramp and a horse tail weave and she worked that shit out. Best performance of the night. Hands Down. Even that crazy pose at the end... Sasha must have taken over her body or something.... I can't even hate.

But one thing I CAN hate on is the Pussycat Dolls member Melody Thorton.... She needs to take a note from the Destiny's Child handbook of what to do when you have a mistake on stage (remember when Michelle fell on her ass and Beyonce and Kelly just kept right on dancing?) ... Well watch the black chick on the on the far left when the start working on the poles.... priceless...

Ok... so for now the Beyonce hate is on hiatus.... for now... :-p

Off to the pumpkin patch…

2008-11-20T15:05:00.002-05:00

What up y’all…

Fall has fallen upon us… like a cold, windy, dreary brick… but never fret, what Mother Nature taketh away in terms of weather, she giveth back with a bounty of tasty fall produce! Heh heh I’m corny…

I have a few staple meals that I make a lot in the fall: butternut squash soup, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted vegetable soup, Asian yams… This fall I decided I should branch out a little bit more and try cooking with fresh pumpkin.

This fall was only my second time cooking with fresh pumpkin… much to the chagrin of my friends, and pumpkin connoisseurs, Janet and Curtis. The first time I cooked pumpkin was last year. I tried to roast some pumpkin and add it to my roasted vegetable soup…. Unfortunately I used a carving pumpkin... Carving pumpkins are not for eating... they have no taste, a really thick flesh, and are just all together nasty... The picture demonstrates how I felt about eating pumpkin after my first experience.

I think I mentioned my disdain for fresh pumpkin to Janet ‘I love pumpkins!’ Tang and she quickly schooled me on pumpkin types that were more suitable for cooking. Instead of buying the mammoth carving pumpkins, she told me to try the smaller pumpkin varieties because they have a sweeter flesh and are better for baking. I also learned that the “pumpkin” in canned pumpkin is actually not pumpkin! Canned pumpkin puree is usually made from one or more kinds of winter squash like butternut, Hubbard, or Boston Marrow, which are less stringy, sweeter and have a richer orange color…. But before anyone tries to get their money back from Libby’s for false advertising, there’s a pretty fuzzy line between what is called a pumpkin and what is called squash… so just calm down and enjoy them…

ANYWAY I digress… So I went out and picked up a little sugar pumpkin to make cookies with. Cooking with pumpkin, just like cooking with fresh butternut squash, is pretty labor intensive. You have to first roast the pumpkin, then scrape out the flesh and then puree the flesh. You use the puree the same way you would use the canned pumpkin. Janet had warned me about the pumpkin puree being more watery than the pumpkin puree you get in the can, and the excess water may affect the texture of the cookies. Fortunately I’m pretty lazy and let the roasted pumpkin sit in my fridge for a few days before I pureed it. By that time the flesh had dried out considerably and wasn’t watery at all.

One of the things that I noticed when looking up cookie recipes is that most pumpkin cookies call for oil or shortening instead of butter…. I just couldn’t write my brain around cookies made with shortening or oil, so I found this Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe on the foodtv.com that used butter only. The recipe called for chocolate chips, but I liked Janet’s suggestion of using butterscotch chips, so I used those instead. The batter for the cookies was REALLY runny and more like cake batter than cookie batter. The cookies baked up to be really soft as well, but they were tasty... it was just hard to keep them from sticking together.

The recipe called for a few spices, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, but I couldn’t really taste the spices too distinctly in the cookie. I took the cookies to my friends birthday party and people seemed to like them. Someone even asked me for the recipe. I made another batch of cookies for my friend, and fellow pumpkin lover, Curtis. He had been at my house when I was making the first batch and was mad that I only gave him one. He had mentioned that the ginger was a bit strong in the first batch so I cut the ginger down in this batch and upped the nutmeg a bit. He seemed to like them better that way, but I honestly couldn’t tell the difference.

All in all I give the cookies a solid B. They were a little soft for my liking... I like my cookies to be chewy on the inside with a bit of a crisp crust. I think they would make REALLY great muffins with a little recipe tweaking... maybe with a nice crumbly struedal topping... Oh well... I honestly don't know if I'd make these again for myself but other people seemed to enjoy them. Maybe I'll try one of the ones that use oil or shortening? Maybe the stability of the shortning will produce a denser cookie? I'll keep ya'll posted b/c I KNOW you're just as interested in this as I am. :-p

October Wrap up (otherwise known as Nana is a loser)

2008-11-20T13:56:00.002-05:00

So…. If anyone has been checking my blog within the last month you might have noticed that there has been no activity. I really don’t have any good excuse for this, other than just the simple fact that I’m a loser and let life get in the way of keeping up my blog. I’m sure the dearth of new posts has left a serious void in the lives of my readers (all 1.5 of you :-p) and I vow not to leave you hanging for this long ever again.

Since it’s already November 20th, I guess I should post a re-cap of my October goals…. This is gonna be short… heh heh.

Goals that I actually worked on in October:
Adopt a pug: - DONE! YAY for Leroy. He’s so freaking cute… I actually feel really bad that I haven’t been blogging about him… Keeping all his cuteness to myself is really selfish.

Acquire >2 songs per month for 6 months (1/6)
Ugh I was doing really well on this in September, but I just couldn’t think of any songs I wanted for October… I ended up downloading 3 new songs on November 1st, but that doesn’t count for October, so it looks like I’m starting again in November and I’m still at 1/6

Make 100 new recipes (4/100)
I tried 2 new recipes in October; pumpkin butterscotch cookies and Moroccan spiced butternut squash stew. I could have gotten 2 solid blogs out of these meals, but I’m lazy… I’m going to try and at least do one detailing both of them because I need numbers. New recipes are up to 4/100

Try 50 foods or types of cuisine I haven't tried (4/50)
Tried Gator and Amaranth. Now up to 4/50

Blog on my 101 90% of the days (27/901)
I really sucked this month… but I’m still up to 27/901… umm… Yay?

Create my wardrobe database
I did start on this one…. I started listing all of my clothing in a table…. That’s as far as I’ve gotten…

Ok… Now for the goals I’ve totally slacked on….
Watch all the movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive. (13/29)
None have been watched. Still at 13/29

Read 6 non-fiction books (0/6):
None have been read. Still at 0/6

Be on time or early for everything for a month (0/30):
Still annoying my friends and disgusting myself with my habitual lateness…

Take multivitamins every day for 3 months (0/90):
Didn’t even try….

Do 15 minutes of abs 3 times a week (outside of a class) for 1 month (0/12)
Still as flabby as ever…

Complete 50 military push-ups
Please see above re: my flabbiness…

Go the gynecologist and dentist once per year (0/4)
Still totally delinquent on my medical care

Start retirement planning:
Nope… no planning… did some spending though :-p

Set a budget and stick to it for 2 months (0/2)
Not doing so well with this either…. I tried the budget challenge with Alex in October, but it kind of fell off… I tried to start another one in November, but that kind of fell off as well… December is obviously out. I guess this will re-surface in January

Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months (0/60)
Still dehydrated…

Go to the gym 400 times (0/400)
Don’t want to talk about it… still flabby…

Do 400 "no spend" days (1/400)
This will never happen. I might as well just pay myself my penalty and be done.

October sucked... at least blog wise. Life-wise October was a really great month... I spent most of it transcribing or playing with my puppy.... Now that my current transcription job is done and I'm getting into a routine with Leroy I'll, hopefully, be able to keep up better with the blogging... we'll see....

Later 'Gator.... I'll see you on the other side...

2008-10-16T16:25:00.007-04:00

So I tried another new food last night- alligator! My good friend Juan was having a dinner celebrate his 25th birthday and we went to this Creole/Cajun place called "Creole" in east Harlem. The place is actually really nice. The space was cute, there was live music, the food was excellent, and the mixed drinks were apparently good judging by the number of drinks that my friends were downing.. I just had a glass of Pinot... I'm classy like that. :-p

Anywhoo... back to the gator meat. Like I've mentioned before, I'm a pretty adventurous eater, and alligator didn't really sound that exotic to me (not like blood pudding or head cheese or something). The others at the table seemed a bit more dubious than I. One of the main concerns people kept voicing was, "Where did they get the alligator from?". My response was, "The NYC Sewers", but I figured they probably got the gator from a gator farm. I assume all "exotic" meat (ostrich, deer, rabbit, snake) is farmed just like regular meat... It's not like people are going into the forest to trap deer and rabbits or wrestling alligators to provide wholesale meat to restaurants.... although that would be funny :-p

The alligator I ordered was prepared in an etoufee and was served with 2 sides (I chose Mac and Cheese and green beans). The etoufee itself was really tasty. Etoufee is a creole/cajun stew that usually has crawfish, shrimp and chicken. The etoufee at Creole was spiced really well, and --despite the addition of the gator--seemed to be a fairly traditional (spices, and the holy trinity of Cajun/Creole cooking- Green Peppa, Onions and Celery)... I thought that most etoufee's have tomato, but according to Wiki apparently some people think an Etoufee ceases to be an etoufee once tomatos are added... Whether the dish was authentic or not, it was really good.

The gator meat tasted pretty much like I assumed it would... I figured it would taste like turtle (sorry Steph)... which is kind of chewy and usually takes on the taste of whatever it's cooked in. That's pretty much what it tasted like.... It was a little chewy, but not in a bad way. I actually really liked the texture. It wasn't sinewy like chicken and it wasn't as solid as beef... The only meat I can think to compare it with is turtle.... or maybe calamari. It seemed like the gator meat was cut into chunks and browned prior to adding it to the stew. I can't really describe the taste of the meat as it didn't taste like much.... It wasn't gamey and it didn't have a "seafood" taste... i just took on the taste of the etoufee.

All in all I really enjoyed my gator experience. I liked how well it took on the taste of the dish really well and it had a very appetizing consistency. I don't know if I would seek it out specifically because it didn't really have a distinct taste, but I definitely would not reject a dish because there was alligator in it. .

All in all I give alligator an A

Wow, so much has happened

2008-10-15T08:48:00.005-04:00

Hey Ya'll..

so much has happened in the last week!

First of all I want to thank everyone who sent their well-wishes, prayers, positive thoughts and energy for my mom's surgery last week. The surgery was long and arduous, but she came though it like a champ! Exactly like I thought she would. The morning after her surgery she was sitting at the hospital vanity table putting on make-up and apparently she's walking up to half a mile now... less than a week after her surgery! (Yeah I told her to slow down on that... I know they said walking was good... but I think they meant walking around the house, not power-walking around the 'hood...) I love my mom. She's been such an inspiration throughout this entire ordeal. MMMMMMMMMMMMM! That was a cyber hug for my momma :-)

Secondly, I got a puppy!! I decided I'd had enough with pug rescues telling me that I would be an unfit mother for a puppy and decided just to purchase one. I had been looking for a breeder in Indiana for a while, and I decided to go with a hobby breeder named Marci at Farnsworth Farms. Marci breeds boxers and pugs and she had 4 puppies currently available. All the puppies were SOOOOO CUTE! I had been reading up on puppy temperment testing, and I selected the puppy that fell in the middle... not too shy and not too boisterous. Thinking back on it, I think I got fooled. I think Leroy was just REALLY tired when I administered my test, so he seemed a lot more laid back than he is.... He's really completely nuts.... but I love him! I named him Leroy, of course, and he's 3 months and 5.9 pounds of crazy. He spends most of his time currently chewing on everything, sleeping and humping his bed. I got a dog walker for him, who is going to come in 2x a week and walk him/play with him for 30 min during the day. I also walk him/play with him outside for 30 minutes in the morning and evening. Hopefully that will help him expend a good amount of energy so he can spend most of the day peacefully chewing his toys or sleeping. So far so good.... It's been SO hard to get pictures of him b/c he's always in motion. I'll try to take and post some video.... but for now GOAL 1 IS COMPLETE BIATCHES!!!!!

Whew! Other than that all my other goals have fallen by the wayside.... I'll have to ramp up again this weekend.

Peace folks!

Hot off the presses.....

2008-10-09T16:33:00.004-04:00

I might buy a puppy today.... Everybody keep their fingers crossed for me!

Awww Bruno I'll miss you!

2008-10-07T08:29:00.007-04:00

So... Bruno, my first foster pug, Bruno has gone off to his "forever home"... His adoption happened really quickly. As many of you know I had to go home to Indiana for a week to be with my mom/family for my mother's surgery. My plan was to drop Bruno off at a PPRA foster's house and then pick him up again when I got back to NYC. He had a few people interested in him last week, but they fell through, and because it seemed like Bruno wasn't going to get adopted too quickly, I thought I'd have a least a week to think about what I wanted to do... I guess the universe had other plans.

As many of you know, I agonized about the decision of whether to keep Bruno or allow him to be adopted out. Here were the pro's and cons that I came up with...

Pro (keeping Bruno):
1.) He is SUPER sweet! He's never growled at me or showed any aggression towards me or anyone else (except an annoying Yorkie... but I don't blame him). He was always happy to be petted or picked up and he always wanted to be next to you.

2.) He was a VERY mellow pug. For the most part when I was at home he was asleep. He got very excited when I got home and was happy to go on our walks, but after he was fed and he would generally chew a little of his bully stick and then jump up on the couch with me or just go to his bed and go to sleep. This was good for me because other than feeding and walking him, he really didn't impact my life too much. I was able to work (transcribe), or play on the net or blog, etc etc without feeling like he needed me to play with him or needed a ton of attention.

3.) He had a lot of personality. Although he was mellow, he still made me laugh and had a defined personality. He was stubborn and smart and funny. During the 3 weeks he was with me, he learned 2 commands, "sit" and "down" and got VERY good at them. I always made him sit for me before I put his collar on for a walk or fed him and after a while he would just sit down for me without me having to say anything. Or he would sit and look at me expectantly.. .and then he would lay down and look at me expectantly.. and if I still didn't give him what he wanted he would sit back up like, "Damn! What you want woman!" heh heh... Another funny thing he always did was that he would throw little tantrums sometimes when I would tell him to sit... especially right before a walk. I would say sit, then he's start whining and walk around me in circles and finally he would sit down, usually behind me, with an audible "plop" and make a noise that sounded very much like he was saying "HUMPH". Heh heh..he was so cute.

4.) He was generally a good dog... I didn't have any issues with him marking or trying to show dominance. He liked everyone who came over. He didn't bark. He walked like a DREAM and people really liked seeing him waddling down the street. All in all just a super calm, chill dog.

Cons (reasons to have Bruno adopted out)
1.) The main thing that bothered me about keeping Bruno was that he had severe separation anxiety. Every time I would leave, or even start getting ready to leave he would get really upset, barking and howling to the point where it sounded like he couldn't catch his breath. That broke my heart. It made me really sad. I know I'm always talking about how I hate rescues because they don't adopt dogs to working people because the dog will get lonely, I have to say that I really would have prefered that Bruno go to a home with elderly people maybe, or another older/calm dog to play with.

2.) Bruno didn't really care for/about other dogs. Bruno was DEFINITELY a people pug. When we would encounter dogs on the street he would just ignore them. He wasn't agreessive or scared.... he just walked right passed them like they weren't there. He would let them sniff him, and check him over, but he just wasn't interested in playing. One of my plans for keeping my pug happy and occupied was to have a pug of my own and then foster pugs that he'd be able to play with. The fact that he had really bad separation anxiety AND he didn't really like to play with dogs made me worry about how his health while I wasn't home.

3.) Bruno was 7 years old. Maybe this sounds bad... (don't crucify me ya'll), but I just wanted my first dog to be a younger dog who had a little play left in him. Bruno was super calm and sweet, but he had no interest in toys or playing with people. He just wanted to be pet and then left alone. I want a dog that I can play with, and watch him tear the arms and legs off of stuffed toys and play frisbee fetch with. Bruno wasn't that dog. I would be completely happy adopting an older dog later in life, but at this point I really wanted the experience of a younger dog.

So after weighing the pro's and cons I decided that Bruno might be better off going to a home where there were more people or where he had at least another pug to co-exist with. I met his adoptive on Sunday morning. His adoptive parents were a young couple that live in New York (not in the city... I don't remember where they live). They adopted a 8 year old, blind pug a little while ago and wanted a calm black pug to keep him company. Essentially they wanted the black version of their fawn pug. They saw Bruno's add and were sold. They emailed the PPRA with a complete application, pictures of their house, and all their references. All the references checked out and they seemed genuinely excited to be adopting Bruno.

The couple seemed nice. The guy seemed like a guy's guy. He kept on talking about how he plays with Nitro (their current pug) but just hitting him on the face and startling him and then he'll start to play. Uh.. I don't really think Bruno would go for that, but who knows... He just seemed like a guy who talked a lot, a really nice guy, but a guy that talked a lot. :-) The woman seemed really sweet and loving towards her current pug and Bruno. She seemed interested in hearing what we had to say about Bruno and when she just seemed SOOO excited about getting him.

The only thing that I worry about is them keeping up Bruno's exercise regime. I walked Bruno twice a day for at least 35 minutes each and during my care he's lost a pound and a half. Their pug was extremely large. They said that while he was with them he's only gained about 2 pounds. 2 pounds is a HELL OF A LOT of weight on a 15-20 pound dog. Bruno's breathing had gotten a ton better during his time with me. Because he hasn't lost a ton of weight, the breathing improvement is probably a function of him getting more exercise, not necessarily losing weight. It worried me. I have to admit. I was worried about him getting fat. I was worried about them being committee to his exercise regime.

At the end of the day I think the Bruno will be happy in his new home. It was really hard for me to give him up, because I know that he loved me and was happy with me, but it made me really happy that the adoptive parents seemed so genuinely happy about getting him. I just kept on thinking how happy I would be if a rescue org. actually responded to one of my 40+ applications and actually agreed to let me adopt a dog. I know I would be beside myself, and I was really happy that she was so excited about Bruno.

So that's it. I'll always love you Bruno.. I hope you have lots of pleasant sleep and chewing time in your new home.

I might be getting a pug puppy this week.... stay tuned...

Amaranth Cakes with creamy mushrooms

2008-10-03T23:56:00.004-04:00

Hey Ya'll...

It's time for recipe number 3 y'all! My friend Curtis came by tonight for dinner and our monthly Scrabble game. Curtis is a vegetarian, so it's always a bit challenging to come up with creative meals that aren't just a bunch of side dishes masquerading as an actual meal.

When I'm looking for veggie meals, the first place I check is the Vegetarian Times website. They usually have some good recipes and they aren't necessarily a rigid, super health conscious vegetarian site (ie they're vegetarian, but not hippy, dippy, crunchy granola)... it's more about the taste and using interesting and innovative ingredients. So I was looking through the site and stumbled upon this recipe for Amaranth Cakes with Mushrooms.

Amaranth is another one of those grains that most people don't really know about or cook with. Amaranth Grain (according to Wiki) is a very hardy grain that was a staple food among the Incas, Aztecs and other native peoples of Mexico and is also cultivated in Guatemala, Peru, India and Nepal. Amaranth grain is becoming more popular in developing nations because it is inexpensive, easily harvested and, much like quinoa, Amaranth is complete protein , and is a good source of fiber and a variety of minerals.

Ok... that's enough with the history of amaranth. .... You make the amaranth cakes basically the same way as polenta is made. You cook the grain down into a mush in a broth of mushroom juice, shallots and some spices and then you fry into like pancake type things.

In order to make the broth, you had to soak some dried mushrooms. The mushroom water would be used as broth and the reconstituted mushrooms were chopped up to be added to the amaranth mix before cooking. I was being cheap when I bought the mushrooms, so I didn't buy the dried porcinis that were $5.99 for like 2 ounces at Whole foods... instead I bought some Nameko Mushrooms... which were like $3.99 for a big pack. I actually had never heard of a Nameko mushrooms, but on the back of the bag it listed a website like, "www.greatporcinis.com" or something like that, so I just figured they were a type of porcinis.... i think I was wrong... I don't think they were porcini's, but they were definitely nasty. Bleh. I soaked them in boiling water for about 20 minutes and just tasted the water... it tasted like musky dirt... like bitter, musky dirt.... and you were supposed to cook the amaranth in the mushroom juice so that the amaranth cakes would take on the taste of the mushroom... Being that the mushroom juice tasted like ass, I wasn't too keen on cooking the amaranth in it or chopping up the reconstituted mushroom (which also tasted like ass) to go into the amaranth mix. I thought about cooking the amaranth in some broth, but I only had chicken broth on hand, which wouldn't work with a vegetarian meal... so I went ahead and cooked the amarnth in the smelly mushroom juice... I figured I could always just add some salt... salt makes everything better!

So while the amaranth/musky dirt water mix was simmering I went about making the mushroom topping. The Veggie Times recipe included the recipe for the mushroom topping, but I decided to use the topping from an appetizer I had made for a holiday party. The mushroom topping was basically shallots, garlic, lots of mushrooms, heavy cream, fontina and parmesean cheese. MMMMMHMMM! I also added some sherry, which is always good with mushrooms.

After the mushroom mix was done it was time to fry up the cakes... I tried the amaranth/dirty water mix... it tasted a little bitter, but not as bad as I expected, so I just added some salt and lots of thyme.. and little sherry. .. i wasn't quite as nasty then. The frying didn't quite go as planned... he cakes kept on falling apart in the oil, butI got a couple nice ones... I think next time I'll use a metal spatula.

I also roasted up some carrots and made a little zucchini to go with the mushroom cakes.

All in all it came out really well! Curtis seemed to really like it! The topping was delicious and the creamy, savory mushrooms were actually a really good compliment for the nutty/dusty flavor of the amaranth cakes. The only change I would make if I were to make it again would be to grind the amaranth before cooking them so the mixture would be more polenta like and less graand zucchini made the meal look better on the plate, but it would have been nice if theiny. I would also buy the right type of mushrooms, or maybe use some dried Shitaakes from China town... Also I think the mushroom/cake could use a little more color. When the mushrooms cooked down they looked like purple/brown mushroom mush... not too appetizing. The carrots re was even a small sprinkle of color in the mushrooms.

Overall I give the dish a solid B. I'm not sure if I would make it at home for myself, but with the above changes I think it would be a viable option for another vegetarian meal.

Month Numero Tw-o!

2008-10-02T23:46:00.003-04:00

So... many of my goals from September were ongoing and will stretch into October... and probably FAR beyond October. But here's a quick listing of the total things I'll be working on for October. The goals that are totally new for October are at the top

Watch all the movies that have won Best Picture since I’ve been alive. (13/29)
I know i've watched 13 of these films for sure. There are a bunch of others that I'm pretty sure I've seen (Kramer vs. Kramer, Terms of Endearment, etc), but I honestly don't remember them, so I will watch them again. If anyone feels like watching any flicks with me, let me know :-) The full list is below.

1979	Kramer vs. Kramer	1989	Driving Miss Daisy	1999	~~American Beauty~~
1980	Ordinary People	1990	~~Dances with Wolves~~	2000	~~Gladiator~~
1981	Chariots of Fire	1991	~~Silence of the Lambs~~	2001	~~A Beautiful Mind~~
1982	Ghandhi	1992	Unforgiven	2002	Chicago
1983	Terms of Endearment	1993	Schindlers List	2003	Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
1984	Amadeus	1994	~~Forrest Gump~~	2004	~~Million Dollar Baby~~
1985	Out of Africa	1995	~~Braveheart~~	2005	~~Crash~~
1986	Platoon	1996	The English Patient	2006	~~The Departed~~
1987	The Last Emperor	1997	~~Titanic~~	2007	~~No Country for Old Men~~
1988	~~Rain Man~~	1998	Shakespeare in Love

Read 6 non-fiction books (0/6): I don't love non-fiction books, so I don't read them... honestly I think I have adult ADD... I oftentimes start a non-fiction book, but I honestly think the only one I've finished in recent memory is "Blink". I've got a bunch on my shelf and even more that have been recommended to me, so I'm going to have to get to reading. I think I'll start with Freakonomics. Anyone else have reccs please let me know.

Be on time or early for everything for a month (0/30): I've become one of those habitually late people that I HATE! It started when I moved to Brooklyn. At first I blamed it on having to walk 10-15min. to get to the train... then I blamed it on having to re-calibrate my time approximations from what I was used to in Harlem.... but really that's no excuse... I should be able to add 10-15 minutes onto my travel time... because I'm not an idiot. I've just gotten lazy and used to being late. I've even turned into one of those people that others EXPECT TO BE LATE. I hate it and it must stop. I'm really serious about this one... Let's see how this goes once I get back from Indy.

Take multivitamins every day for 3 months (0/90):

I need to start taking a multi-vitamin. Now that I've gotten better about swallowing pills I think I'll be able to handle it... Maybe I'll add a hair and nail vitamin too... just because. :-p

Do 15 minutes of abs 3 times a week (outside of a class) for 1 month (0/12)

This is pretty easy... I've just gotten out of the habit of doing ab exercises at home. I like to share workout tips, so I'll post some ab stuff too :-)

Complete 50 military push-ups

I just thought this would be a fun goal. I think I can probably do 15 military style (or man) push up's right now. I bet I could get to 50 by the end of the month or at least by the end of November if I tried.

Go the gynecologist and dentist once per year (0/4)

I'm pretty bad about my routine medical care... I don't even have a primary care doctor! Even though it's not on the list I think I'll work on getting a PCP as well as making sure I do the routine gyno and dental once a year.

Create my wardrobe database

I'm a dork. I'll just put it out there so I don't get 50 comments telling me that I'm a dork... but I love making databases, and I think creating a database of all my clothes will help me utilize more of my wardrobe because I'll actually KNOW what I have. I have big plans for this database... I think it could totally revolutionize dressing as we know it... Ya'll can make fun of me all you want, but I PROMISE you'll want one when I'm done. :-p

Start retirement planning:

I need to start seriously planning for retirement. The fact that the economy is going to hell is helping spur my actions along, but even before the sky started falling I've know that I need to start making a serious plan. I currently save each month, but not specifically toward retirement. This month I'd like to open a retirement account and/or start utilizing the retirement resources through my employer.

Set a budget and stick to it for 2 months (0/2)

In order to jump start my home savings and retirement savings... and just better budgeting in general I've decided I need to seriously learn how to stick to a budget. I don't think my spending is out of control now, but I have been known to impulse buy... a dollar here and a dollar there... and i really want to reign that in. So I have created a budget that I think I can live with (I created it using the information I've been summarizing with Quicken over the past few months) and I have to stick with it for 2 months. Thankfully my friends need to stick to their budgets as well, so we've started some budget challenges. In October I'm in a challenge with my friend Alex to see who can best stick to our budget... This is going to be a hard one, because Alex lives a quite posh life (just kidding Alex... kind of) and she spends lots of money on "incidentals" that I don't (nails, hair, massage, personal concierge services...:p Ok maybe I'm exagerating with the last couple :-p). I originally threw a tantrum because it's so much easier to stick to a budget when there's a lot of non-essentials in it (ie if you're over budget it's easy to cut out a manicure, but it's hard to cut out food... and utilities)... but I'm not going to be a baby about it... I'm in it to win it

The rest of the goals are things that are hold-overs from September...

Adopt a pug:
Acquire >2 songs per month for 6 months (1/6)
Make 100 new recipes (2/100)
Try 50 foods or types of cuisine I haven't tried (2/50)
Blog on my 101 90% of the days (19/901)
Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months (0/60)
Go to the gym 500 times (0/400) *UPDATED*
Do 400 "no spend" days (1/400) *UPDATED*

Wish me luck y'all!!!

One month down...September Recap

2008-10-02T22:43:00.003-04:00

One month down...

So it's been 4 weeks since I started this little 101 goals in 1001 days.... and I think I'm doing a helluva job! So far I've fully achieved 1 goal, and I'm pretty much on target for most of the others (except for the water and the no spend days... ) Let's re-cap my goals for September

Ongoing Goals:
1. Adopt a pug:
Ok so this is still in the works... I still have Bruno, my super adorable foster dog. I'm pretty much coming to the conclusion that rescue groups will NOT adopt a young dog (<5 st="on">Indiana next week and will hopefully be taking a trip out to a breeder who lives in Alexandria, IN to look at the 4 little black boy pug puppies she has available. If I don't do that, I will probably just keep Bruno... decisions decisions..

2. Make 100 new recipes (2/100):
Two (2) down, 98 to go! This month I made a tasty Chicken Millet Skillet and some Shrimp with roasted tomatoes, basil and Feta. I've already got a few recipes on tap for next month... stay tuned...

3. Try 50 foods or types of types of cuisine I haven’t tried (2/50)
Two(2) down and 48 to go. The "new" foods for this month were pretty weak.. but whatever, I had never had them, so they were new to me. The new foods were heirloom tomatoes (which are NOT nearly as tasty as they sound) and Millet, a very tasty and versatile grain. I am next in line to pick the restaurant for the monthly/bi-monthly dinner club that I belong to. SOMEBODY (ahem Janet ahem) suggested that my foodie card be revoked after looking at my 100 foods to try before you die list, so I want to pick some sort of far out cuisine that will stretch and challenge my palate... any suggestions (a-hem, a-hem Andrea K.? :-p)

4. Blog on my 101 things blog 90% of the time (19/901):
I think I'm doing stellarly on my blogging, but not meeting the target of 27 blogs per month...

5. Do 500 “no spend” days (1/500):
Ok so I'm changing this one... I don't know what was going through my head when I created this goal, but 500 no spend days pretty much equates to not spending every other day for 2.74 years... that's not going to happen. So the new goal is 400 no spend days. This equals to about 3 no spend days a week for the entire 143 weeks of the challenge. I have some making up to do, but I think I can do it. Because I changed the goal I will have to pay the $10 (the fee for failing the goal), but I will still have the bragging rights :-p

6. Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months:
Oh Lord... it might take me the entire 2.74 years to achieve this goal. Drinking is annoying. Liquid makes you pee. I don't really see the point of ingesting liquid unless it wakes you up (coffee) or makes you happy (liquor) ... I don't drink juice or any other stuff because of the empty calories... but I also don't drink water because I don't like to walk down the hallway to the bathroom. Drinking sucks. I'm going to give it a shot again starting in October... I'll be at home in Indiana for a week where the bathrooms are MUCH more convenient.. hopefully I can build some peendurance (that's pee endurance) during this time. :-/

7. Make the earring holder that I’ve been putting off:
DONE! And very nice if I do say so myself :-p

This one's for you Ms. Jackson...

2008-10-01T00:12:00.005-04:00

.... and all of the others who were entirely too excited about possibly shooting me in the face with my staple gun..... I finished my earring holder biatches!!!!

This is what it looks like ------------------------------->

I got it done around 11:45 on September 30th... YAY that's one goal down.

Here's what it looks like in it's regular place in my room

Ok…. The lazy, sloth-y, flabby, ridiculousness must stop

2008-09-25T21:38:00.010-04:00

I am a disgusting mess right now.

My stomach is all squishy…. My butt is shrinking away to nothing, and my arms have completely lost the Angela Basset (circa 1993) quality that’s I’ve grown to love.. just flabby flabby flabby…

Case in point.... Check out the guns last year's B-day.. ------------>

<----- Check out the squish from this year's B-day

This is unacceptable! I’ve been slacking off pretty much all summer…Full Discloser: I’ve been off my workout game since after my birthday in April. I tried to convince myself that it was ok because flowy summer dresses hide the bumpies and lumpies, and that I’d be back in shape by the time tight jean season rolled around (Fall/winter)… It’s fall now and the lumpies are definitely taking over… and lumpies wrapped in tight denim is NOT what’s hot in 2008.

It’s time for a serious plan of attack…. I have to get back on my game. I refuse to let myself go and gain the I-go-to-work-every-day-and-come-home weight. I just refuse. The flabbyfying of Nana will stop. Effective now!

It’s been a little bit difficult finding time to get to the gym recently because I have to walk my foster pug directly before and after work….granted I’ve only had the pug for 2 weeks, but I plan to get a dog in the near future so coming up with a workout plan that works into my schedule is of utmost importance. So it seems the best times for me to work out are lunchtime and weekends. Thankfully I work near my gym(s) and have gotten into the habit of going to the gym at least once a week (for this GREAT total body fitness class on Tuesday afternoons)…. But working out 1-2x a week isn’t enough. So here’s the plan of attack: I am going to go to the gym at least 4x per week and do an outside of the gym workout 1x per week. Here’s the plan

Sunday: [Rest/Make Up]
Monday: [Rest/ Make Up]
Tuesday: Total Body class (lunch)
Wednesday: Circuit Training at the Park in the AM
Thursday: Legs and Abs (lunch)
Friday: Circuit training and focus on arms, chest, shoulders and back.
Saturday: Leg day

So that’s the plan. Instead of doing 3-4 long workouts during the week I’m going to try and do 5 shorter workouts during the week with each workout lasting about 45 min.

I actually really enjoy working out and sharing workout tips, so I’m going to try and post 1 or 2 “Moves of the Week” videologs. If there’s a specific body part you want me to focus on please let me know.

GOOOOOO TEAM FIT!

Heirloom tomatoes? What's so special about them?

2008-09-23T00:33:00.003-04:00

So... as I mentioned on my 100 things you eat before you die posting, I've never had heirloom tomatoes. I LOVE tomatoes so I figured that would be a pretty easy thing to mark off the list. I picked on up when I was at Whole Foods tonight getting my stuff for the Millet Skillet.

According to Wikipedia there are a few different ways people define "heirloom". One school of thought bases it on the age of the seed, stating that the seed must be over 100 or 50 years old. Another way of defining heirloom is that an heirloom is a "cultivar that has been nurtured, selected, and handed down from one family member to another for many generations."....hmmm I'm not sure what the means. Another category of "heirlooms" are commercial heirlooms which were introduced a long time ago and the seed company dropped the line of tomato or went out of business...

I think my tomato fit the last definition because it was bland as hell! If I were a tomato producer I would have dropped that line too! The flesh of the tomato was quite dense and chewy... kind of like chewing raw zucchini, and it didn't have the vibrant taste of a beefsteak or vine tomato. Also the skin and the flesh right around the skin tasted kind of like the white part of a wedge of watermelon (is that the rind?). All in all it was bland and chewy and rindy. I can't say I "hated" it... I don't know if I could actually form the sentence "I hate a tomato", but I definitely wouldn't buy it to snack on.

I could possibly see how it could be good in a salad that needed a milder background flavor to showcase more intense flavors... I think they would be good in salads with mint or feta... but unfortunatly it was not good in my mouth this evening so I'll give the heirloom tomato a C.

Skillet Millet! Delicious, Nutritious AND Catchy!

2008-09-22T23:57:00.005-04:00

What up everyone....

I made the 2nd of my 100 new recipes tonight- Chicken-Millet Skillet! I was having a serious craving for kale this afternoon, but I didn't want to just braise it like I usually do.... so I did a quick search of epicurious.com to see if I could find a some sort of recipe with kale. I couldn't find anything on epicurious that I hadn't made before and didn't contain sausage (apparently pork is the yin to kale's yang..), so I kind of gave up on the kale idea and decided to look at Whole Food's website to see if they had any type of in-store specials and the picture of the Chicken-Millet came up. EUREKA! I had some millet that I had bought a few years ago when I was on a grain kick (quinoa, amaranth, millet.. all that good stuff) and I had never used it AND the dish had greens in it. So I could mark the millet off of my list of foods I've never tried AND I could mark another new recipe off. YAY!

Millet, for those of you who haven't heard of it before, is a grain that is similar to wheat... before it's cooked it looks kind of like cous cous, but there are little holes in the center (like little cous cous donuts :-p). You cook it similar to cooking rice or other grains (I think it's 1 part millet to 2 parts liquid) and when it cooks it gets to a porrigey consistency. Actually I think I originally bought the millet for breakfast food on the advice of my sis. Millet is fairly high in protein (11% protein by weight), but it's not nearly as high in protein as my favorite grain, quinoa (which can have up to 18% protein by weight).

Anyway.... the dish was basically prepared by browning some chicken thighs, toasting the millet with onions, mushrooms and garlic and then cooking simmering everything in chicken broth, white wine, rosemary and thyme.

I have to say it was hella tasty! The millet aquired a bit of a creamy consistency (kind of like polenta) and really took on the flavor of the chicken broth and spices. I added some fresh corn, just because I thought it would be tasty, but other than that I made the recipe exactly as it was written. The only minor issues I had with the dish is that it could have been spiced a little more heavily... maybe some parsely and definintely more salt, and it could have used a little more color. The green from the wilted kale was nice (although the color wouldn't have been nearly as vibrant if I'd cooked it the 10 minutes the recipe suggested), but everythingn else was pretty beige. I think carrots or perhaps red pepper would be nice in the dish. Also I think it would have been better to use cut up chicken breast or boneless chicken thighs instead of the thighs with bones as suggested in the recipe. Anywhoo this is what the dish looked like.... I need to figure out how food photographers make everything look so tasty... I promise this tasted WAY better than it looked :-p

Overall I give this dish a solid A- It was healthy, really tasty and I will definintely make it again!

New Ish* Fo Yo Ears (September)

2008-09-20T23:01:00.008-04:00

What up folks!
Here's the first installment of New *ish for your ears in which I will be sharing the songs the 2 or more new songs that I acquired during the month (Goal #4)

The September edition consists of songs from Little Dragon, Magic System and Beyonce's little sister.

Little Dragon- Little Dragon's music is kind of hard to explain... The group is from Sweden and the music is usually labeled as "electronic" or "electronic pop". I first heard the song "After the Rain" on ProjectVibe, which is the online radio station I listen to at work. I thought the song was really odd the first few times I heard it, but then it started growing on me and I decided I liked it and wanted to see what the rest of the CD was like. I really like the CD. It's good ambient type music to listen to when you're in a chill mood and reading or writing, etc. Here's a few selections
After The Rain - Little Dragon
No Love - Little Dragon

The second piece of "new" music I acquired this month was from the group Magic System, a music group from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. I'm pretty sure this song is really old... I've heard it numerous times before and really liked it. I was at my apartment watching BET Jazz (I think?) with a friend and it came on so I asked him what it was and downloaded it on the spot. Apparently the style of music is called Zouglou and it's popular throughout Africa, the West Indies and France.
Magic System ~ Premier Gaou - Magic System

The last song I downloaded this month is STRAIGHT pop, but I'm not ashamed because I like it. It's the new song by Beyonce's little sister called, "I Decided". I like some pop music (as many of you know), it's great for working out or improving your mood. I hadn't really heard much about Beyonce's little sister up until a few weeks ago when this song came out. I really liked it! I listened to the rest of her CD... not so much. I wasn't sure why I liked this song so much, but I did some research and found that it was (written?) and produced by the Pharell... I like the majority of things that little ferret produces so I wasn't shocked that I liked this as well... Plus I sing about as well as this chick does so it's a GREAT karaoke song for me!
I Decided - Solange

So that's it for September.... Look out for next month's post!

Bruno goes to the vet

2008-09-20T20:38:00.006-04:00

So Bruno had a visit to the vet bright and early this morning. We went to the vet with another PPRA volunteer who also had to get her new foster pug (a very cute, svelte 3-4 year old black boy pug) vetted due to the large ulcer on his eye. The newly surrendered pug was adorable! He was really playful/happy, but he had a big cone on his head to protect his eye, and he kept banging it into everyone. Bruno is not very keen on other dogs... he isn't aggressive towards them, he just seems to not care about them one way or the other.

So we packed the dogs into the back seat car and were off to the vet. Bruno was sitting calmly for a while, but then started to get a bit anxious (and a bit irritated at the hyper cone-head he was sitting next to) so he came up and sat on my lap. He did really well in the car from that point on... calmly looking out the window, or at me, and trying to crawl over the glovebox into the lap of the driver when we hit a red light. :-p

The visit to the vet was pretty anti-climactic. The vet assistants weighed him. He still weighs 23 pounds damnit! The vet told me that I should start mixing his food with Trader Joe's High Fiber O's instead of giving him a full serving of kibble. So, from now on I will give him 1/8 cup kibble and 1/8 cup Fiber O's twice a day. I was told that it takes 2-3 months for a dog to lose even 3 pounds so I might not be able to see the fruits of my labor before he's gone, but I want to try and get him started on the right path. I also think I'm going to have to find more nutritious treats for him. I'm going to try the carrots tomorrow. He wasn't that interested in them last week, but I'll try steaming them a bit and dunking them in low fat/sodium chicken broth to see if that helps.

The other main issue that I wanted the vet to look at were his eyes. Since the very first night he's been with me I've had a feeling he had vision issues. He looks up "at" you when you speak to him, but never directly in your eyes and when he gets tired he has a tendency to bump into things, and run into curbs and miss steps. The vet looked at his eyes and concluded that he has exposure keratitis and he was 90% blind. Apparently breeds of dogs with the big protruding eyes are prone to this problem. Because of the protrusion of the eyeball, often times they are not able to close their eyes completely which causes the eye to get very dry and eventually the corneas will get irritate which oftentimes leads to scaring of the cornea and changes in the pigment of the eye.... all this leads to decreased vision. So apparently that's the cause of Bruno's vision issues... The vet gave me 2 ointments to put in his eye. One is an immunosuppresant and the other is just to lubricate his eyes. He will have to have them put in his eyes (the immunosuppresant 1x/day and the lubricant 2x/day) for the rest of his life. I've been putting antibiotics in his eye every day until this point and he's really good about letting me do it.

So Bruno was given a, pretty much, clean bill of health! YAY BRUNO!

The other PPRA pug's eye prognosis wasn't quite as good. He had a huge ulcer on one of his eyes. The young woman surrendering the dog was told that the ulcer was probably due to a infected scratch that he got at some time. Pugs stick their noses in everything and since their eyes protrude so much it is easy for them to get scratched/injured. Turns out one side of the pup's face was actually partially paralyzed and most likely the ulcer formed as a result of the paralysis and not an injury. Because that part of his face had no feeling he no longer had any need for the cone. He was much happier when he left the vet without the cone, but unfortunately he will have to be back soon to have the eye removed, and be neutered. He was a really sweet dog. I might be interested in taking him once I have an idea about his personality post snipping.

So that was our day at the vet. I have a feeling Bruno is going to be ready to go pretty soon. It makes me sad b/c I know he's growing attached to me (and vice versa). :-( ... but I guess I'll cross that bridge when it comes...

Over all it was a great day for both of us and Bruno is back to doing what Bruno does best...

What do congealed pig blood, head cheese and sea urchin gonads have in common?

2008-09-19T23:09:00.007-04:00

They are all "foods" that I've never eaten before. I just came across this list of 100 foods you should eat before you die... I consider myself a food connoisseur, and thought I'd have a hard time finding 50 new foods to try (goal 13)... but it seems I am not as food adventurous as I thought. I haven't tried 43 out of the 100 foods on this list... Looks like I got some eating to do... (the foods I haven't tried are in red)

100. Venison-I’m pretty sure I’ve had deer jerky before, but I’ll leave it on the “never had” list until I’m sure
99. Nettle tea-I’ve had lots of types of tea, but never Nettle…. It’s supposed to have some sort of medicinal value… I actually think I have some nettle in my medicine cabinet that I used for a hair concoction... I bet it’s nasty, but I’ll give it a try.
98. Huevos rancheros
97. Steak tartare- Raw seasoned beef…. Not sure if I’m going to be able to do this one.. it sounds hella nasty and a little dangerous.
96. Crocodile-”Crocodile meat is said to have a delicate flavor; some describe it as a cross between chicken and crab.” Sounds tasty to me! I wonder where in NYC I can get it?
95. Black pudding-Ok black pudding sounds extra nasty. How do people come up with these things? Pudding made out of congealed pig blood…. Get it together 17th Century British people. I won’t be trying this.
94. Cheese fondue
93. Carp
According to wikipedia “Carp is a common name for various freshwater fish. It is low in fat, firm in texture, and mild--though it can be muddy, especially the farm-raised variety--in flavor.” Muddy fish… that doesn’t sound too appealing, but I would be willing to try this…
92. Borscht
91. Baba ghanoush
90. Calamari
89. Pho
88. PB&J sandwich
87. Aloo gobi
86. Hot dog from a street cart
85. Epoisses- ”Epoisses de Bourgogne is a pungent unpasteurized cows-milk cheese. A washed-rind cheese (washed in marc de Bourgogne, the local pomace brandy), it is circular at around either 10cm or 18cm in diameter, with a distinctive soft red-orange colour.” I love Cheese. I’ll def try this…
84. Black truffle-Oooh truffles… I’ve never had those.. I need a truffle in my life. How can I be a true foodie/epicurious without ever having tried a truffle?
83. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
82. Steamed pork buns
81. Pistachio ice cream-I see this everywhere, but I never really eat ice cream that isn’t chocolate…. Maybe I’ll give it a try?
80. Heirloom tomatoes-Can you believe, as much as I love tomatoes, I’ve never had a Heirloom tomato?!? I will definitely be trying one of these before summer’s end..
79. Fresh wild berries
78. Foie gras
Another one of those things that my palate needs to experience before I can call myself a true foodie…. I don’t quite understand the concept though…. Liver of a force fed duck or goose? Again… who thinks of these things? Wht do you put Foie gras on? Accordint to the description it’s buttery…. Maybe it would be good on a biscuit? Popeyes perhaps?
77. Rice and beans (why is this on the list?)
76. Brawn, or head cheese-This sounds so flucking nasty… “Head cheese or brawn is in fact not a cheese, but rather a terrine of meat from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow). It may also include meat from the feet and heart. It is usually eaten cold or at room temperature as a luncheon meat. Why would someone ever eat something like this? I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to go here yet….
75. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper-The Scotch Bonnet pepper is one of the hottest peppers in the world…. I’m not sure why anyone would eat one of these raw… it wounds like something an idiot frat boy in Indiana would do… incidentally, I have a really funny (if funny=tramautizing) story that involves a Scotch Bonnet pepper, bare hands and removing contacts…. I don’t think I’ll be trying this one… I’m sure it would be as uncomfortable coming out as it is going in. :-
74. Dulce de leche
73. Oysters-I think I’ve had cooked oysters… and oyster sauce (not sure if that’s made of oyster?) but I’ve never had a raw oyster…. I’ve heard they’re an aphrodisiac though… :-p
72. Baklava
71. Bagna cauda-I’ve never heard of Bagna cauda, but apparently it “is a warm dip made with garlic, anchovies, olive oil, butter, and in some parts of the region cream. The dish is eaten by dipping raw, boiled or roasted vegetables, especially cardoon, celery, cauliflower, artichokes, peppers and onions.” Ok I don’t know about the dippers, but I think it would make a great dipping sauce option for Papa John’s breadsticks.
70. Wasabi peas
69. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
68. Salted lassi-I’ve had mango lassi, but never salted lassi… I can’t imagine I wouldn’t like it though… water, salt, pepper and ice and spices… what’s not to like?
67. Sauerkraut
66. Root beer float
65. Cognac with a fat cigar-I’ve definitely had Cognac, but never with a fat Cigar… maybe something to save for my 30th birthday in a few years?
64. Clotted cream tea- Never had clotted cream tea, but I have had scones and clotted cream at my friend Anabela’s bridal tea. It was EXTRA tasty… I’ve also had tea before… so I think I’ll mark this one off the list.
63. Vodka jelly/Jell-O shot
62. Gumbo
61. Oxtail
60. Curried goat

59. Whole insects-Hmm… I heard they’re pretty good dipped in chocolate and stuck on a stick…..
58. Phaal-I thought I’d tasted, or at least heard of, all Indian dishes, but I’d never heard of Phaal… apparently it’s one of the hottest forms of curry regularly available, even hotter than the Vindaloo…. I’m down to try this one…
57. Goat’s milk
56. Single malt whisky-I’m not sure of this one…. I’ve definitely had whiskey, but I don’t know what the “malt” was…
55. Fugu-Oh lord… the infamous poisoning Japanese puffer fish…. Apparently the pufferfish is lethally poisonous if prepared wrong, and it considered a great delicacy in Japan. I wouldn’t mind trying this…. Maybe they have some at that ½ price sushi place in the east village?
54. Chicken tikka masala
53. Eel
52. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
51. Sea urchin- Hmmm I’m not sure if I’ve had sea urchin… I didn’t really know people ate urchins… unlike most sea creatures, the roe of the sea urchin isn’t what it’s harvested for… apparently people love to eat the golden gonands of the hermaphrodite sea creature. I have always been fascinated by the hermaphrodites…. But this might be too much…. Maybe….
50. Prickly pear-The fruit of prickly pears, commonly called cactus figs, Indian fig or tuna, is edible, although it has to be peeled carefully to remove the small spines on the outer skin before consumption. If the outer layer is not properly removed, glochids can be ingested causing discomfort of the throat, lips, and tongue as the small spines are easily lodged in the skin.
49. Umeboshi
48. Abalone- I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of Abalone… apparently it’s a mollusk that is considered a delicacy in certain parts of Latin America (especially Chile), New Zealand, South East Asia, and East Asia (especially in China, Japan, and Korea).
47. Paneer
46. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
45. Spaetzle-This is a German egg noodle or dumpling. I don’t really see how this one differs from any other noodle (it’s made of eggs, flour and salt…. ) but I’ve never really tried German food (except for the Americanized dishes) so maybe I’ll try it out.
44. Dirty gin martini- I love liquor. Maybe I’ll make one of these next Friday when I’m at home alone. :-p
43. Beer above 8% ABV- Beer is gross… and 8% alcohol still seems really low compared to wine and other spirits… I’m not really sure what the point is of this one, but for those of you who are interested the beers that have the highest ABV are Vetter 33 (10.5% abv), and Swiss beer “Samichlaus” with an abv of 14%
42. Poutine- French fries covered in fresh cheese curd and gravy…. Why haven’t I tried this?!?!
41. Carob chips
40. S’mores
39. Sweetbreads- LOL I really thought they were talking about dessert! Apparently sweetbreads are the thymus glands of lamb, beef, or pork. According to wiki “typically sweetbreads are soaked in salt water, then poached in milk after which an outer membrane is removed. Once dry and chilled, they're often breaded and fried until crisp.” I wonder if we’re going to start seeing these at the Indiana state fair… I think everything fried is fair game.
38. Kaolin- According to wiki, this isn’t a food, but a clay product that’s used in some cosmetics and stuff… I eat a lot of my cosmetics, so I’ll just assume I’ve ingested Kaolin at some point or another.
37. Currywurst-Wow the Germans have a curry dish? I’m starting to think curry should be the national dish of the world! (yeah I know that didn’t make sense…) Do any cultures NOT use curry? But then again I guess “curry” is just a word for a mixture of spices….anywaym surrywurst is a German dish consisting of hot pork sausage cut into slices and seasoned with curry sauce (ketchup or tomato paste blended with curry)
36. Durian- Never heard of this fruit, but according to wiki “the durian, widely known and revered in Southeast Asia as the "King of Fruits", is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. Regarded by some as fragrant, others as overpowering and offensive, the smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust.” Hmmm… maybe this is the source of the strange smells in Chinatown? I will have to investigate?
35. Frogs’ legs
34. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
33. Haggis- Yuck yuck yuckity yuck…. BLEH… sheep heart, liver and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, and boiled in an animal's stomach for approximately three hours.
32. Fried plantain
31. Chitterlings, or andouillette-Never had chitterlings…. Never even smelled them being cooked… but I think I’ll pass.
30. Gazpacho
29. Caviar and blini
28. Louche absinthe-I think absinthe was just re-legalized in the U.S. I don’t have any idea what absinthe tastes like, but the preparation of the drink sounds interesting. “Traditionally, absinthe is poured into a glass over which a specially designed slotted spoon is placed. A sugar cube is then deposited in the bowl of the spoon. Ice-cold water is poured or dripped over the sugar until the drink is diluted to a ratio between 3:1 and 5:1. During this process, the components that are not soluble in water, mainly those from anise, fennel, and star anise, come out of solution and cloud the drink. The resulting milky opalescence is called the louche. The addition of water is important, causing the herbs to "blossom" and bringing out many of the flavors originally overpowered by the anise.”
27. Gjetost, or brunost- ”Brunost is a brown Norwegian whey cheese, also popular in Sweden, where it is called mesost.” Whey cheese? I really didn’t think they used whey for anything other than muscle milk…
26. Roadkill- Really…. No… really? That’s just nasty…
25. Baijiu- Another liquor to add to the list “Baijiu is a Chinese liquor that is 80 to 120 proof, or 40-60% alcohol by volume.
24. Hostess Fruit Pie
23. Snail
22. Lapsang souchong- Another tea I haven’t tried…. I swear you can get half this list in Chinatown….
21. Bellini
20. Tom yum
19. Eggs Benedict
18. Pocky
17. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant- Aw sounds like a great date activity…
16. Kobe beef-I’m not sure if I’ve ever had Kobe beef… I need to rectify that…
15. Hare
14. Goulash
13. Flowers
12. Horse- Hmmm… does gelatin count? Isn’t that made from ground horse bones? Apparently horsemeat is still exported by the United States? I hope we don’t export it to China… you know it’s going to show up in a baby toy somewhere…
11. Criollo- Peru's coast and capital city of Lima are the heart of Criollo dishes, which are a combination of African, Spanish, Andean, Asian and Pre-Colombian influences.
10. Spam
9. Soft shell crab
8. Rose harissa
7. Catfish
6. Mole poblano
5. Bagel and lox-Hmm.. I’m not sure if I’ve had lox… I’ve had a bagel and smoked salmon, but maybe not lox. Looks like a trip to the upper Westside is in order…
4. Lobster Thermidor-Sounds tasty, but never had this either…
3. Polenta
2. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee
1. Snake

2008-09-17T22:47:00.002-04:00

Hey Ya'll,

I just wanted update everyone (all 3 people who read this blog :-p) about my progress with Bruno's goals. Bruno was initially REALLY hyper/anxious, but since last Saturday he has been quite a lot calmer and a generally more chill dog. When I'm at home now he usually is sleeping (he didn't sleep that much the first week) or chewing on his bull penis stick. We've been working a lot on the little goals I laid out for him so that when he gets adopted he will be an even better pup. :-)

Ok so my major goals were
1. Put him on a workout/diet plan to lose some weight.
2. Get him to confidently sleep in his own bed.
3. Help him deal with the separation anxiety.
4. Teach him some basic commands

So far Bruno is doing FABULOUSLY with all of the goals. We have been walking 2+ times every day. We usually walk about 40 min in the morning and then 40+ min when I get home at night. I'm not sure what Bruno weighed when he came (they said 28 pounds?), but he weighed 23 pounds on Friday night when I weighed him. His breathing/snorting/ewok sounds have gotten MUCH better.

Re: the bed... Bruno has been sleeping in his own bed since last Thursday. HOORAY!!!! the first night was a little rough. He woke up every few hours crying and trying to jump on my bed. It was actually a little funny... I have a high bed, so his little head would pop up on one side... then he would scurry over to the other side and his little head would pop up there, and then he'd scurry back.. heh he... ok it's not funny. But every night has been consistently better and as of last night his little head popped up once and I told him "off" and he took his little paws down and went to his bed without a sound... ok he sighed really loudly, but no crying or whimpering! YAY Bruno

The separation anxiety stuff is coming along too, but slowly. This morning I think we had a bit of a breakthrough. Usually when I leave for work Bruno howls and cries and scratches and the door and paces and yelps... I've been doing the technique of ignoring him for 10+ min before I leave and 10+ min when I return so that the act of me leaving will seem more normal and not so jarring (ie if you pick your dog up and hug him and say, Ooh snookie wookums Momma be back soon, then you're exciting your dog just to turn around and leave him). This morning I quietly walked out of the door and down the stairs. I waited at the bottom of the stair to see what would happen..... silence.... a few whimpers.... scurrying feet... 1 or 2 Roow-Rooooooow's.. and then silence. No scratching, no more howling.. YAY Bruno! Also when I'm in the house there are times when he's NOT right beside me. Yesterday he was laying on the floor in the living room chewing his bull penis stick and I decided to go lay down on my bed... no Bruno... He didn't even notice I was gone! This may seem silly to some people but I was really proud of him and his new found independence.

The last goal was to teach him a couple commands. He's gotten the hand of sit and down... Stay is going to be a bit tricky since he hates to be more than 2 feet from me at any time (unless he's asleep), but I'll see what I can do and post a videog.

Ciao for Niao!

N

New Recipe 1- Shrimp with Roasted Tomatoes, Basil and Feta

2008-09-16T23:04:00.002-04:00

Hey Ya'll...

Falls here! Yay! I can start cooking again. My summertime "cooking" is usually relegated to salads, sandwiches and other cold things... Now I can get back to making some more fun stuff.

My first "new" recipe is actually a recipe that I've eaten before, but never made. I had this really tasty shrimp dish last Easter when I was visiting my brother Ekow and sister-in-law Marie Mensah in Cincinatti. Marie served this shrimp dish for dinner with a simple salad and some tasty "take and bake" bread. To make the dish you basically roast fresh tomatoes and then add shrimp, parsely, lemon juice and feta. I didn't have parsely so I used basil. The freshness of the lemon with the sweetness of the shrimp and saltiness of the feta mesh really well and it's a REALLY easy dish to prepare. I asked Marie for the recipe a while back, but never had a chance to make it.

I treated myself to some "take and bake" bread from Whole foods to go with it tonight, but from now on I think I'll probably have it with whole wheat pasta, or just skip the starch all together.

Here are some pics of my entree numero uno.... i am not a food photographer... but I promise it tasted MUCH better than these pictures make it look. :-)

Here's an extreme close up of the tender shrimp swimming in the garlicy, lemony, basily sauce... MMMMM

Blacks and dark videos....

2008-09-16T22:38:00.003-04:00

Hey ya'll... sorry about the super dark videos. For some reason when I upload them they come out much darker than they do in their original files... I guess we (Bruno and I) are just too darn black for our own good... kind of like Michelle Obama...

Anywhoo sorry for the dark vids.. hopefully you can see better on your computer.

Bruno and the Bully Stick...

2008-09-16T22:24:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone....

I learned something quite disturbing yesterday.... When the woman from the pug rescue brought Bruno to me she gave me a few supplies, food, a leash/harness, treats and a bully stick. Well I've talked about this bully stick in a previous post, but to reiterate, Bruno is OBSESSED with it. he can sit and chew that thing for hours and hours. He pretty much chewed through the stick that came with him so I emailed the rescue lady to ask her where I can get another one. She told me they are called "Bully Sticks" and I can get them at any pet store. Me being me, I decided to look online and see what everyone else was saying about bully sticks. I came across a wikipedia article with this ADORABLE picture of a pug chewing a bully stick and the following words "A bully stick, also known as a "beef stick" or pizzle, is a dog treat made from the large tendon of a bull's penis and dried. They can be braided, smoked, or formed into a ring, as well as shaved to form thin strips for smaller dogs."

. . . . .

Really? No... really? Who thinks of these things? Was someone really sitting on their farm in Texas pondering over the issue of surplus Bull penis? How they hell did they figure out dogs would like it? There are lots of really distrubing pictures going on in my head about dead dried up bull penis and ranch dogs.... but I will spare you my musings on that and present to you a cute little video of Bruno chewing on his own Bull penis piece. Watch the end to see how annoyed he gets when I distract him. :-)

"Sit and Down" featuring Bruno the pug

2008-09-16T22:05:00.004-04:00

Hey Ya'll..... This is my first videolog... yes videolog... that's a combination of video + blog... for those of you who.... well for those of you who aren't too bright... Just kidding! Now honestly what isn't too bright is my lighting for this videolog, but that's ok.... the way I'm looking tonight it's probably better for all involved if you don't see my face too well...

**Edited to add: I took out the part with me talking.... you could only see my eyes, I was ashy, and seemed to have a lisp.... **

anyway, without futher ado here is Bruno doing "Sit and Down"

Back to the grind...

2008-09-15T17:06:00.005-04:00

Ok it’s been a little over 2 weeks since I started this project and the only thing I’ve really blogged on are my adventures (or misadventures) in pug-land… So I’m back to the grind. Bruno and I are settling into a nice routine so hopefully I’ll be able to re-focus my energy this week on the few easy goals I wanted to start with. These were the goals that I wanted to start in September

Ongoing Goals:

1. Adopt a pug

I won’t bore you with anymore pug posts… right now. :-p I will probably take this off of the ongoing list until the spring, because I decided that I really would like to adopt a puppy and I can’t really do that until it gets warm again.

2. Make 100 new recipes (0/100)

It’s still pretty hot here…. Which means I haven’t been doing much cooking. I just did the math and it seems that I have to average about 3 new recipes a month to stay on track with this…. But so far my count is still zero. If anyone has any tasty recipes (or recipes that you're not sure about and want someone to try first) please let me know.

3. Try 50 foods or types of types of cuisine I haven’t tried (0/50)

This is going to be a bit of a hard one… I’m a fairly adventurous eater so there’s not THAT much that I haven’t tried… I see quail and ostrich eggs all the time at whole foods… I’ve never tried either one of those, and honestly looking at them makes me a little nauseous… the throw-up spit is forming right now…. Here is a picture of a cute little girl holding an ostrich egg… apparently 1 egg can fee up to 12 people. Maybe that will be my strange food for this month? The quail eggs make me want to throw up a little bit less… apparently you can use them just like any other eggs… deviled, boiled, poached… pickled… ok the spit is coming back… moving on….

4. Blog on my 101 things blog 90% of the time

I don’t think I’m doing too too badly on this. I’ve blogged 6 times in September (this will make 7). According to my calculations I have to blog about 27 times a month to make this goal… I think I’ll be able to do this. I spend all day at work on the computer and I have a lot of random thoughts to share….

5. Do 500 “no spend” days

LOL I think this one may have been a bit ambitious, no? 500 no spend days means I pretty much have to not spend ANY money every other day…. I might change this one to a more manageable number and then just take the $10 “didn’t complete goal” penalty as a loss.

6. Drink 1.5 liters of water per day for 2 months

Ugh… this is going to be a hard one. My water/liquid intake is HORRENDOUS. I generally drink a cup of coffee in the morning and then don’t really drink anything else until I get home from work. Sometimes I’ll have a bottle of bubbly water, but that’s about it… Water is pretty much all I drink, with the diet coke with my Subway lunch occasionally, so it’s not like I don’t like water… I just don’t like the feeling of liquid in my belly and I don’t like having to go to the bathroom more than once or twice a day. Yes I KNOW that’s not healthy… geeez! So I’m going to give it a shot. 1.5 liters really isn’t that much water. It’s only 3 of those small bottles…I went about 4 days last week and then I missed a few days… so I have to start over. But I’m in it to win it with this water thing… even if it takes me all 1001 days to make it 60 consecutive days.

7. Make the earring holder that I’ve been putting off

I’ve been planning on making this cool earring holder for like 2 years. It’s really just mesh and a frame…. You attach the mesh with a staple gun. That’s it. It’s not that hard. If I don’t finish this goal this month then someone please take my staple gun and shoot me in the face.

Ok that's it... look out for more non-pug related blogs in the very near future. :-)

Whew... this little ewok is exhausting!

2008-09-14T21:07:00.002-04:00

Wow things sure happen in strange ways… For almost 5 years I’ve been obsessed with pugs… I’ve joined pug online groups, gone, pugless, to pug play dates in the park, wasted countless hours stalking them on the street… and suddenly there’s one snorting and grunting away in my living room!

I got my first foster pug Bruno on Tuesday and I really haven’t had a moment at home to write you all about it…. So now it’s 1:14 Saturday morning, (actually now it's 9:09 pm Sunday evening) Bruno is asleep at my feet and I have a moment to breathe and share the goings on of my week..

So…. Where to start… Bruno came in on Tuesday night. The pug rescue woman brought him to me around 8:00. He’s a 7 year old, morbidly obese, black pug (this fool is really fat!) The first thing I noticed about Bruno was that he seemed to have some vision impairments… he walked into my “coffee table” and when we were talking to him, he looked in our general direction, but really didn’t know where to focus. That didn’t surprise me too much. Pugs tend to have a lot of problems with their little bug eyes, and if their eyes get infected and are left untreated it’s pretty easy for them to lose vision. The rescue lady left him with me with some ointment that I was supposed to squeeze onto his eye (yes the ointment goes directly on his eyeball) and instructions on what to feed him, and how to clean his little face, etc etc.

As much as I love pugs, this is the first time I’ve ever been around them for a prolonged period of time. I don’t want to equate my Bruno’s behavior/personality with that of all pugs, but one that I did learn about them is that they are NOISY. LOL They pant constantly, wheeze, snort, gurgle, snore and make really strange Ewok/wookie type noises I know that Bruno is a particularly bad case because of his weight, but it was definitely interesting to find out, first hand, about pugs “special” noises.

Now on to Bruno’s personality….. He is an EXTREMELY needy and anxious dog. Pugs have the reputation of being “Velcro dogs” (ie a dog that needs to be right next to you at all times), but I think Bruno’s Velcro-ness comes more out of severe anxiety…. He CANNOT stand being left alone for even a second. When I go into the bathroom he scratches the door and cries. When I get into my bed he cries and cries and barks and howls and manically runs around the bed trying to see if he can figure out a way to get up. When I leave for work all hell breaks loose… He scratches at the door, throws his little body up against it, and barks and howls. I don’t really know how long he stays at this, but judging by how much he whines even when I’m at home in the bathroom, I’m going to assume this goes on for a while during the day.

When we’re at home alone he doesn’t know what to do with himself… he’s up and down and just restless… and he whimpers all the time. He doesn’t really know what toys are—it’s pretty obvious he’s never had any—but he knows what treats are so I got him a kong that’s you can stuff with food for him to figure out how to get out, and the rescue people gave him a chew stick (a “greenie” I think). He’s obsessed with the chew stick. He lays on the floor chewing manically for hours… he doesn’t even look like he’s enjoying the stick… he’s always crying/whining when he’s chewing and the more he chews the faster and more manic it gets… honestly it’s really strange to watch him chew the greenie… I usually end up taking it way from him because it makes ME anxious just to be in the same room with him when he’s chewing it.

On the good side, he’s an AMAZING walker. He’s great on a leash… I think that’s mainly because he always needs to be right behind his human. So he always stays right with me. He pees and poo’s outside and only had 1 accident inside (his first day). Additionally he’s just a really sweet dog, that seems like he was never really given attention, so when he gets some he really doesn’t know what to do with it or himself. He reminds me of the dog I had growing up. We weren’t very good to that dog. He was by himself most of the time in the garage, or dog run or behind a gate, so when he was let out to be with the family he went nuts, if we tried to pet or play with him he went nuts with excitement, which we would see as him just being hyper and spastic and then he’d be put back in the garage/dog run… I really feel like that’s what’s going on with Bruno…

So… you all know I like a project, so the quirks with this dog don’t “really” bother me. I’m very curious to see if I can help him work on them. Right now my main goals are

1. Put him on a workout/diet plan to lose some weight. I have been walking him at least 40 min in the morning and when I get home, and he doesn’t get any table scraps. I weighed him on Friday night. He was 23 pounds. When I got him on Tuesday they said he was 28… I think they lied… so I’ll say he started at 23 pounds.

2. Get him to confidently sleep in his own bed. Bedtime was a NIGHTMARE the first few nights because he would NOT go to sleep if he wasn’t on my bed. So I put down a blanket to cover my sheets and let him sleep with me the first few nights. I knew I wasn’t going to be comfortable with that in the long run so I’m working on getting him to sleep the entire night in his own bed, without whining or carrying on.

3. Help him deal with the separation anxiety. There are lots of tips and tools that people use to help dogs deal with separation anxiety. I’ve got an action plan laid out and I’m going to start executing it this weekend.

4. Teaching him some basic commands- sit, down and stay. It’s sad that a 7 year old dog has never been taught any commands. Oh well… better late than never.

So that’s the general plan. I’ll update his progress….

Uh can I borrow a dollar... or $150,000?

2008-09-08T22:53:00.005-04:00

So I recently made the decision that I’m probably not leaving NYC any time soon. As many of you know, I've been talking about leaving for years, but honestly I'm tired of starting over in new places. I really don’t want to have to re-build a social network and enter into a brand new scene as a single woman... that might sound petty, but I just don't. If I move somewhere it’ll be with (or possibly for) a partner or maybe an awesome career opportunity, otherwise I’m just gonna stay my ass in Brooklyn.

That being said… I need to buy a place. I haven’t really given buying property in New York because, frankly, I thought anyone who bought an apartment/building in New york was completely out of their mind. Coming from Indiana where you can get a decent house for 150,000 it just seemed completely insane to spend 300-500,000 (minimum) for a tiny 1 bedroom apartment. Even in my so-called “up and coming” area of Bedford Stuyvesant (if an area with the nick name “Do or Die Bed Stuy” can really be considered up and coming…) a 2 bedroom condo is selling for 450-500,000 and a brownstone around the corner from me is selling for more than 800,000.

So what’s a damn-near 30 year old single gal to do? She’s gonna start saving her pennies and buy an apartment, that’s what!

So a friend and I (and possibly another friend) have starting putting together a plan to purchase a brownstone in Brooklyn in the next year or so. For those of you who aren’t familiar with NYC real estate (forgive me if there are brownstones in other places. I’ve been in New York for 5 years and I think I’m suffering from a little New-York-is-the-center-of-the-universe syndrome) a brownstone is essentially a multiple family home (they used to be one-family homes back in the day). Usually one person owns the entire brownstone and rents out units. I currently live a brownstone. The owner occupies the basement and 1st floor and rents out the top 2 floors. I love brownstones. They are really the quintessential Brooklyn residence (or at least it seems so to a Non-native like me).

So….. now that that is decided, the hard part is going to be coming up with a 20% deposit on a 750,000 building (yes… that’s 150,000 for those of you that are slow)… The likelihood of us being able to save the full 20% down is… well pretty much impossible, so we’re shooting for having 10% down, which is %75,000. If all 3 of us go in on it (ie splitting up the brownstone into units and buying it like a condo of sorts) that would be about 25,000 per person down…. Still quite a lofty goal. But I guess that’s what needs to be done if I’m dedicating myself to staying in this God forsaken yet beautiful place.

Wish me luck ya’ll. If anyone has any expertise in home buying or saving, or programs… or if anyone just wants to GIVE me 20-30,000 for a down payment, please do let me know.

Breaking news... my first foster pug comes tomorrow!!!

2008-09-08T21:15:00.003-04:00

Hey all...

So goal 1 is in full effect. I just got word from the folks at Precious Pugs Rescue and Adoption that they have a pug that came in in a rush and they need a foster ASAP. His name is "Brutus" and he's a 7 year old black male. I got the email this afternoon around 4:00 and they said that they might be bringing the pug over as early as tonight!?!

Turns out the pug has been at his first foster mom's house for about a week. She has her own pug rescue (or works with a pug rescue.. I wasn't really clear) and she saw a posting on craigslist last week about a woman who was trying to get rid of her pug. From what the PPRA person told me, the pug was in bad shape- his face folds were all dirty (you have to clean pugs face wrinkles or they get all grody), his nails had grown into his little paws, his eyes were infected (pugs also have a lot of eye issues), and he was just in generally bad shape. Poor little guy...

So she took him in and contacted PPRA to see if they could take him. They said they could, but apparently there was some miscommunication; the PPRA folks thought she would call them when she was ready and the rescuer thought PPRA was going to call her. So today she called PPRA and said she really needed someone to take the pug tonight. She has a lot of other pets and she thought that he just wasn't getting the attention that he deserved.

So around 4:00 I get an email asking if I can take a foster tonight! CRAZY! I said yes of course (because I'm crazy) and I went out to get some supplies. He was coming with a harness and a new leash. I bought him a few toys, a water/food bowl, and a little doggie bed. Turns out he won't be coming until tomorrow evening, which is great for me so I can prepare myself (mentally and my apartment).

so.... YAY! Look out tomorrow for pics and updates about Brutus

N

Is 8 really enough?...

2008-09-05T13:28:00.001-04:00

Apparently not, when it comes to me getting a pug. I just completed my 8th application to adopt a rescued pug. The great majority of my applications were done on pugs I found on petfinder.org. Out of the 7 applications I turned in I got 2 responses- 1 was for a pug, 'Percy' that I applied for out in Delaware (very close to Philly). He is so freaking cute! He was REALLY REALY wrinkly and when they found him he had a really bad skin condition (y'all know I'm a sucker for a sad story) but he was ok now and so freaking cute... but apparently his story wasn't sad enough for them to agree to adopt him out of state.... REJECTED!

The 2nd response I got was from another out of state rescue... I think this one was in Rhode Island. They were willing to consider me for the adoption of a very cute little pug puppy 'Ernie' but they were asking for $700 for the puppy AND a $200 deposit before the application was even reviewed... It all sounded a little fishy to me, plus I could go out and get a dog straight from a breeder in Indiana/Kentucky for $700

I saw 2 postings on Craigslist in New York for young pugs that people were trying to "re-home" because they didn't have time to spend with them. I sent impassioned pleas to both.... no response.

Today I applied for my 8th pug 'Owen'.... This pug is in Vermont and I made sure to check that they do in fact adopt out of state. They do... AND I'm supposed to be going to Vermont later this month/early October for leaf-peeking and a visit to my sis/nephew so we'll see if it all works out. I had to HAND WRITE this application and put it in the mail... yes the mail.. with a stamp.. They better at least respond to me after all that effort damnit!

Oh and for all of you who were wondering about these wack ass names that the pugs have... no worries, I will promptly be changing my pugs name to Cletis or Leroy...

I think I'd have an easier time adopting a child...

2008-09-03T23:15:00.000-04:00

I think I’d have an easier time adopting a child…..

So anyone who’s had more than a 5 minute conversation with me knows about my ridiculous, insane love (obsession maybe?) for the pug…. I mean how can you NOT love them with their little squashed faces, floppy tongues and googly eyed, short-bus expression. I don’t care what anyone says, they are adorable and just seeing their little chunky bodies trotting down the street always makes me smile.

That being said, I have been very hesitant to get a pug because of my work schedule and all of the things I’ve read about what happens to pugs when they are left alone for long period of time… apparently they either flip out, turn into mini-rottweilers and chew up all your sh*t, or they get really really depressed and need to be put on doggie meds (true story). I love pugs and I didn’t want to make my little puggie depressed or angry so I just always figured I’d wait until I was married, engaged or at least had a long-term, serious partner who would help me take care of my pug… Well anyone who knows me knows I’m not exactly an expert at relationship maintenance, and as I stand here staring 30 in its cold, lifeless eyes I realize that I just can’t wait around anymore, because honestly, who knows when, if ever, any of that stuff will happen.

So here I am. I initially wanted to adopt a puppy, but as I read more and talked to more pug owners it seemed that adopting an older pug from a pug rescue would be a good option for me. Older pugs would have more well-developed bladders and would be physically able to hold their pee longer than a puppy. An older dog would have an already developed personality so there wouldn’t be any surprises in that department, plus saving a dog that may otherwise be put down or being able to give a dog that has been mistreated or used and abused a second chance at a good life makes me feel good about myself.

So I’m currently in the process of trying to adopt a rescued pug. Breed specific rescues are notoriously difficult to adopt from because of all the criteria you have to meet and hoops you have to jump through in order to adopt. At a bare minimum they require an extensive application, conduct a home visit, call 3 personal and 1 vet reference, and worst of all they greatly, GREATLY prefer to adopt to families or to single people who don’t work outside the home. Because of all of this, I am a really really unlikely candidate for adoption… So I’m putting operation pug into effect. The first thing I did was talk to the people who run the 1 NYC pug rescue about becoming a foster family. Most rescue organizations don’t have an actual physical shelter, the dogs they take in are place with “foster” parents who house them until a “forever home” is found. So right now I’m an official foster mom for the pug rescue in NYC… I’m just waiting on my first foster pug. In addition to that I have been scouring petfinder.org and applying for all of the pugs I can… I think I’ve applied for about 5 so far. I haven’t heard back from anyone… Now I’m onto craigslist.org. Sometimes there are pugs on there…sometimes there are not. So who knows how long this is going to take, but I’ll keep you updated on my status as I go.

Later

Nana's 101 goals in 1001 days... day 2

2008-09-02T21:42:00.001-04:00

Hey Everyone!

Thanks for visiting my 101 goals in 1001 days (and other musings) page. This idea started when my friend Cynthia and I were sitting on a big rock in Central Park, (after giving up on the long @ss line for the "Mad Fools in the Park" Summerstage show...who woulda thunk Madfools were so popular?!?)... anyway, we were having a really deep and substantive conversation about life and goals (ok.. we were probably talking about Boys and frozen yogurt... but moving on..) when Cynthia told me about the 101 goals in 1001 days project. Bascially what you do is create a list of 101 goals that you'd like to complete within the next 1001 days (about 2.75 years) and document your process via blog for all the world to celebrate your successes... or mock your failure. I thought this would be a great idea for a few reasons...

1- there are a TON of little things in life that I always talk about doing, or places I want to go, or changes in myself that I'd like to make, but I just haven't had the structure within myself to make them happen.

2- I love writing, but have fallen out of the habit during the past 10 years. Creating this list and this blog will create specific topics for me to write about and hopefully get myself back in the habit of writing.

3- If I don't complete ANY of the goals on this list I will have to add $1010 to my savings account. If I complete all of them I'll add$505.. so either way I'm going to save some money :-)

So here goes... hopefully ya'll will joing me as I document these 2+ years. If you look at my list you'll see that this isn't about me doing monumental, life-changing things (ending world hunger, patching up the ozone, getting Bristol Palin some NYC Condoms..) this is more about me doing little things for myself and my friends and hopefully ending up a better and more fulfilled person when I end this journey on May 30th, 2011.

So let the games begin!