Foodie Neediness

It’s May! Which means, of course, summertime. For many people, “summer” has connotations of sunny days, playing outside, going to the beach, and all that other goodness from the song in “Grease.” However, if you’re a woman from 25 – 45 (I was going to put “from 18” but really, what do those young bitches have to complain about?), and I am, then the prospect of summer means one thing: bathing suit obsessiveness. The opportunity and dread, the anxiousness and preparation.

It’ll be good to be old and let all my extraneous parts go to all points of the compass except North, but until then, I will fight off my thighs’ exploration and colonization of new space as mightily as I can, which, being me in the 21st century, always starts with a Web search. Well, it starts with panic, which engenders a Web search. In the course of a Google word-association thread (“bikini fitness,” which makes me think of “DVDs,” then “Tracy Anderson,” then “people who hate GOOP,” [me!] then “detox diets,” then, inexplicably, what was the name of that “Alicia Silverstone movie with Benecio Del Toro” [Excess Baggage], and so it goes), I discovered two disturbing trends and one pretty cute one.

Disturbing Trend Number One: People who simultaneously, compulsively blog and diet
I’m all for blogging. I’m all for dieting—well, I’m all for eating in a mindful way. I get the concept: you go on a diet/change your lifestyle and you blog about the process and your progress. But the people who post about what they’re eating, how they’re feeling, how good/bad they are, what they believe their self-worth to be, sometimes multiple times a day—it’s painful, honestly. It is, essentially, reading their diaries. It’s the tone of guilty confession coupled with seeking approval that just gets me. (A similar trend is the compulsive workout DVD reviewer—people who try out different exercise DVDs, and write about them, though in each review is always something like, “I had run five miles and done a pilates class that day and that 3-hour yoga DVD was a good cool down,” or “I had to do the whole DVD three times in a row just to break a sweat.”) The worst part are the product pushers, who send these bloggers their DVDs or diet supplement or free juice, encouraging them to continue the compulsive blog/diet cycle. Yuck.

Disturbing Trend Number Two: Taking pictures of everything you eat
I’m torn about this one. I don’t trust people who are indifferent about food, and I have several beautiful food memories, so I like the idea of commemorating a beautifully plated dish of yumminess. But some people photograph everything they eat. Everything. Cereal. Snacks. Breathmints. Here’s an article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07camera.html

Holy eating disorders! Maybe I would just feel better if they didn’t post things, then I could pretend bad food relationships don’t exist. And now:

One Pretty Cute Food Trend: Cupcakes
They’re smallish. They’re cute. They’re much more mobile than a whole cake. You don’t need a fork! You can buy just one! Sometimes, you just want a little nosh. Cupcakes. They’re practically the stuffed animals of the culinary world. And my friend Mary Ann has a shop:
http://www.cutecakeshawaii.com/about.html

Hey, you crazy kids

I’ve recently figured out that, pop culture-wise, I’m in a weird demographic: too old to define what’s cool, too young to be the thing youth rebels against, not enough money to buy anything significant, and I have small children, which makes it difficult to be underground or alternative. Being in this non-space does afford the opportunity to observe what’s around you, much like how the girl with the “good personality” can make all kinds of snarky observations as boys hit on her cheerleader friend. I actually lived that, though I didn’t have any cheerleader friends. But back to my point. When nobody’s talking to you, you can do a lot of observing.

Case in point, the term du jour: “newest Internet craze,” or “newest craze sweeping the Internet.” I love that it sounds like Ed Sullivan, Fox News, a medical condition, and Perez Hilton all rolled into one. FYI, bed jumping (http://www.hotelsbycity.net/blog/bed-jump/) is just one Internet Craze: please hold onto something, lest you get swept away.

further asparagus anxiety

So, we moved. Which means I have to start all over, garden-wise. We made beds, chicken manured the soil, and planted: eggplants, basil, mint, green onions, swiss chard, kale, leeks, and of course asparagus. Anyone who lives in Hawaii will recognize I planted the produce that's the most expensive in the grocery store--because I'm savvy like that.

At least, until something started nibbling at my basil. This something eventually chomped the whole basil, all my kale seedlings, and all my swiss chard--and that something is sleeping in my bed! My garden bed, that it. I think it's a rat. Apparently, it realized it was much more convenient to live in the garden than commute, so there's a hole in the middle of what used to be a glorious row of swiss chard.

While my husband figures out what it is and how to kill it, I of course am fretting about my beautiful, fragile asparagus fronds, and making blood vows to tear the face off the little burrower if it gets anywhere near my asparagus. Damn it, all this asparagus planting and no pay out! It's like car insurance. Pay, pay, pay.

It's Either this or Valium...

Instead of self-medicating, I’ve been self-educating.

Since college is starting soon, I started to feel the pang of nostalgia: the bygone years of studying too hard, partying too hard, great friends… and onions. Slice ‘em, dice ‘em, sautéed, fried: sweet, sweet onions, make ‘em cry:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/14/AR2009071400684.html?sid=ST2009071402785

A Holga may look like a cheap, plastic camera, but what it is really is an exercise in embracing uncertainty and accepting the limits of what you can and can’t control. Very Zen, right? The only thing blocking your path to Enlightenment is the %$(ing cost of getting the film developed and printed. So, digitally cheat you way to Nirvana:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atanguay/sets/72157594165111190/

The Japanese: so familiar, so foreign. American food in Japan: also familiar and foreign:
http://www.mangajin.com/mangajin/samplemj/japnfctn/japnfctn.htm

Thomas Jefferson was not an inventor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_jefferson

And something pretty cool my boss sent us:
http://videos.komando.com/2009/06/18/african-thunderstorm/

Equal... and powerful

Bragg's Liquid Aminos = Patis for Hippies

Asparagus update-conundrum

So I have the lacy ferns and a couple asparagus-like shoots are coming out. I don't know what to do next. Do I eat them? What if I need them for later? What if, when I harvest them, I'm actually killing the plant? What if the first couple are poisonous? How many aspargus will eventually come out? I only have three seedlings--what if that only makes three asparagus? And then I'll have three asparagus a season for fifteen years. Strangely enough, I can't find the answer online. I know, right? I even looked in a--get this--book. No dice. I've found that, a lot of times, written materials only pretend to be instructional, when actually you have to know something about the subject matter to use the information. If I knew, I wouldn't need a book, now would I? I'm probably going to have to buy one of those The Complete Ignorant Asshole's Guide to Asparagus, though first I'll have to get past the feeling of complete ignorant asshole-osity that attends needing a book like that.

Thoughts I had while not blogging

1. I was wondering about the people who complained, during the Presidential campaign, that Barack Obama was too smart to be President. They wanted a President who had an intelligence level more like them. I for one am glad President Obama is much smarter than I am. I can't even reconcile my check book on Quickbooks properly; someone close to my intelligence level would deal with the current economic crisis by minimizing the window and checking out celebrity gossip. So yeah, where are those people now? Probably selling oranges on the side of the freeway, missing the Hamptons and regretting that they never Googled "ponzi scheme."

2. I was listening to commercial radio, and there seems, nowadays, to be a lot of songs serenading the stripper. Rappers who love strippers and the strippers who love them. Who knew that the booty bounce could make someone fall in love with you? And that men like being relationships with women whose job it is to take off their clothes and tantalize other men--because it makes the woman financially independent? The logic is fascinating and mind-boggling.

3. Can you ever be "whelmed" or "undated" or offer "thank"? Just one thank, when you're only marginally grateful. Don't want people to get big-headed just because they held the elevator for you.