Quodlibets

Update

No cavities.  My teeth must be rocks.  Almost two years without a cleaning, and my teeth are still okay.  I can hear my siblings and mother growling at my genetic good luck.  (Thanks for the teeth, Dad.)  However, I feel like utter crap.  Here's how you can tell how icky I feel:  I'm listening to Nick Drake.

I've also been trying to push out some sort of blog entry about South Dakota, and how South Dakota apparently thinks women are incapable of any sort of informed decision, which basically makes us not human, right?  but all that I get is a shitload of anger and several analogies that make no sense.  A byproduct of the anger, I'm sure.  I hate for my cold to be a cop-out, but my head feels heavy and incapable of any intellectual heavy lifting right now.  I feel like curling up on the couch and watching bad TV.  I can't even find any motivation to read.

I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again.  Some people are really good at taking sickness in stride and doing what they have to do.  I'm just not.  I'm a baby when it comes to sickness; I find it hard to function at all if I don't feel good.  And I don't feel good right now.  I am at work, however, which is pretty much of a victory where sickness and I are concerned.  However, I feel like laying my head down on my desk and sulking with Nick Drake in the background.  That's pretty much right in line with my normal sickie behavior.  I'm sure S would be happy to corroborate.

And I'm sure I'll leave work early.  If only to nap for a little while before I have to get in the car and drive to the big city to eat a meal I may or may not be able to taste.  I was, before the illness made me feel like a great big blob, going to shower and iron as well, to try to get myself to the height of presentableness (that is totally not a word, but oh well.  I just don't care.), but now I don't know.  A shower might make me feel better; it also might make me more sleepy.  And I'll at least have to drive into the city, though I might draft S for the drive home.  It's easier for me to help him get home than for me to help him get into the city. 

Okay.  I'm boring myself with my whining.  I'll stop.

Old habits (and diets) die hard

When I am getting a cold (and I may have written about this in earlier posts, but I can't remember, so if I have, oh well) I NEED miso soup.  It's like, the mother of all compulsions.  I get it into my head that miso soup is the only thing that will make me feel better, and if I don't have it, I will get sicker than I might have.  I don't even really like miso soup.  It's okay, but I just find the seaweed floating around in it icky.  I hate seaweed, and I don't understand why you'd want to eat it.  But nevermind the seaweed.  I am, as you all know, currently incubating a cold, and so the first thing I thought, when I realized what was going on, was:  "Well, that's that.  I'm having Japanese for dinner."  This thought occured as early as eight this morning, even as I pretended to myself that I didn't want to eat Japanese food, no way, no how. 

It was a fruitless exercise in self-delusion, because around three, I think I just gave in and told S that I wanted Japanese for dinner, and would he please go pick it up for me.  Because the other thing about miso soup is that I have to eat vegetable tempura with it.  I can't eat one without the other.  And it is the nature of tempura to be fattening.  Which might explain part of the internal battle to resist the Japanese.  Obviously, I wasn't successful, and obviously, my diet is down the tubes.  I am unable to eat well when I don't feel good.  I want to wallow in cookies and easy food.  And vegetable tempura and miso soup.

Incidentally, it was very, very delicious, even though it definitely included eggplant tempura.  I didn't eat those pieces, but you never can tell what will happen.  It's possible that not only will I be going to the dentist with a snuffley head cold but also with a body full of hives.  I think at that point, and if there are cavities (oh sweet god of teeth, I hope not.  I've never had one and I'm terrified of getting a filling, mostly because of the novocaine), I may bow out of work tomorrow.  Hives, cold, cavities = much unhappiness.

Does everyone know what a sore throat means?

Yes, I'm coming down with a cold.  It was only a matter of time before being out in public again with actual people would catch up with me;  my boss had a disaster of a cold last week.  Add to that S's recent mini-cold, and I think what we have here is a whopper headed straight for, well, my head.

This is disastrous for many reasons.  Some of them:  I have a dentist appointment tomorrow, I have a birthday dinner for my poodge at a very expensive, delicious (oh, sweet taste buds, still function tomorrow, please...) restaurant, I have to go to work, I have to clean the house today before the gross-ness overtakes S and I, and lastly, I have a birthday dinner for my mom on Friday at a very delicious restaurants AND tickets to Second City for her birthday so if I am not better by then I will be very, very pissed off.  I know I won't be better by tomorrow, but my body better start kicking this cold's ass right now.

Off to take Cold-eeze.

PS

Can I just add that I think Rod Blagojevich looks like the biggest tool in the world whining petulantly that he didn't know that The Daily Show was a comedy show?  What cave do you have to live in to not know that Stewart and Co. regularly skewer politicians?  Osama bin Laden probably knows that John Stewart isn't running an actual news show, but a parody of one.

Two thumbs down, Blago.

Friday Random Ten (The 5000 step edition)

1. Caught by the River -- The Doves
2. I Wish I Never Saw the Sun -- Beth Orton
3. Devil Song -- Beth Orton
4. 83 -- John Mayer
5. Recovering the Satellites (Live) -- Counting Crows
6. Failure (Alfie Remake) -- Kings of Convenience
7. Tenderly -- Rosemary Clooney
8. Lose You -- Pete Yorn
9. Drive In, Drive Out (Live at Red Rocks) -- Dave Matthews Band
10. Green Grow the Rushes -- R.E.M.

I only listened to four of these songs all the way through: Caught by the River, Recovering the Satellites, Lose You, and Green Grow the Rushes. 

The 5000 step reference is per my new pedometer, which I am, in typical Manogirl fashion, obsessed with.  In two weeks, I won't be obsessed with it anymore, and then I'll probably stop being so anal about wearing it.  But what's become clear in my compulsive checking of the thing is that most days I end up walking at least 5000 steps.  Yesterday, not so much, but the four days three days before that, yes.  In fact, on Wednesday, I walked 6900 steps, which exceeded what I even thought I would hit without working out.  (Because, in fact, I've been AWFUL as far as working out goes.  Haven't done it in ages.  I need to start again.  Next week.  Or maybe this afternoon.)

"I'm sorry for getting sick"

Check out this older article by Adam Gopnick and Malcolm Gladwell.  It's a very, very interesting read about health care.

I find it interesting mostly because one of the things my sister and I have both had to deal with (her more recently than I, but not by much) is the purchase of individual health insurance.  Me, because my COBRA benefits ran out, and Katie because she quit her job to go back to graduate school. 

What you are essentially looking at here is two very privileged young women who can afford to pay for health insurance out of our own pockets, because of some very generous family members, including parents and grandparents.  I only could afford my COBRA benefits because of family help; without it, I would have been insurance-less.  As so many of my peers are unable to purchase insurance if they're doing unusual non-insured jobs, or going to graduate school, or working two part-time jobs to make ends meet. 

I'm very unhappy with the state of medicine in this country, only not in the sense that medicine itself isn't working, but the way we're working it isn't working.  Too many damn people can't afford any care at all.  Too many people can't get small illnesses taken care of because they can't afford the drugs or the doctor visit.  It's sort of a pivotal issue for me, and I think both parties in Washington haven't done enough to make this work better.  I could reasonably be expected to vote for any candidate who promises to work hard on this, to make people's lives better, to make so that my REQUIRED yearly visit to the ob/gyn wasn't looked at as a "specialist" and thus subject to higher bills.  We need change.

Update:  Interesting how things change.  Gopnick and Gladwell wrote that debate six years ago.  This morning, on Malcolm Gladwell's blog (that I only just found this morning), the man himself wrote that he pretty much agrees with Gopnick now.  Funny how six years and a bad presidency or two can change how you feel about things.

Why not?

Okay, now, since you've all done Janet's, and my sister's, you have to do mine too.

Update:  Now you have to do my Nohari window too, just because.  Like my sister, I found it easier to pick my bad qualities than my good ones, but I found it way harder to choose her bad qualities than her good qualities.

Pick your poison

First, I was going to write about the deficit that Bush is handing to my generation.  Then, I thought I'd focus on torture, and how, point blank, it's bad.  Or, I could discuss the stupidity of the MSM focus on the veep's shooting mishap.  Then I thought I'd discuss the disgusting oil companies that are making millions off of us, as the economy sags.  Or perhaps, I could discuss the disgusting pharm. companies that are being assholes and denying cheap and effective drugs to millions of patients around the world because of their lame insistence on upholding the copyright of their AIDS/Malaria/etc. drugs.  But then I thought, nah, I should discuss the shameful way the government has handled the Katrina debacle, not taking care of those poor people, displaced and impoverished by nature.  Oh wait, I'd also like to discuss the NSA spying problem.  And the ridiculous spectacle in Europe that is jailing a man for his beliefs (and this should go without saying:  I find this man's [Irving] beliefs sick and sad.  I find them offensive.  But for GOD'S SAKE, in a democracy, people don't go to jail for expressing opinions.).  And then, this afternoon, I saw that the Supreme Court was going to consider the ban on late-term abortions, the one that doesn't allow for the mother's health (that will UNDOUBTEDLY kill women), and thought about the two new justices on the court--men, Republican men--and thought, "Fuck, it's starting."

Except that looking at that paragraph, I'd say it started a long time ago.

In which I get my barley on

My dinner tonight was SCRUMPTIOUS.  For the first time ever, I made a dinner experiment that I knew from the get-go that S wouldn't eat.  For some reason, lately I've been wanting to eat barley.  It's not like I've eaten barley that often, so I didn't have some fabulous dish in mind (though I'm fairly certain that my mom once made a chicken and barley dish...am I right, mom?).  And I had a hunch that even if the barley dish I chose had no vegetables, S still wouldn't come near it.  So I thought, why the hell not throw in some veggies?

Searching for recipes with no limitations is a lot harder than searching for recipes with limitations.  First of all, you can't just offhandedly toss one out because it has green peppers or onion or something.  No, no, you have to consider each recipe on it's merit, which takes A LOT longer.  And opens up entire new sources, like Epicurious, which previously I found hard to use, because those recipes abound with veggies.  So anyway, I finally zeroed in on a good recipe that was short on ingredients, and long on things I liked.  I'm not going to explain the recipe, I'm just going to post it, because I liked it THAT much.

1 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onions, chopped (I used a sweet onion)
1/2 cup pearl barley
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1 cups canned vegetable broth (plus a few splashes from the can)
3/4 cup small bow-tie pasta, freshly cooked
Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté until deep brown, about 15 minutes. Add barley and stir 30 seconds. Add mushrooms; sauté until barley browns and mushrooms begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add broth. Bring mixture to boil. Cover pan; reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer until barley is tender and broth is absorbed, about 25 minutes. Mix in pasta. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.

I changed the quantities in this recipe.  Almost everything was double, but I cut it down since it was just for me, except for the pasta and the mushroom quantities.  My thinking is, you can never have too many mushrooms, and 1/2 cup of pasta just didn't seem like enough.  I also added the splashes of vegetable broth because I thought (as it cooked) that it seemed a little dry.  I think, all in all, that I used at least 3/4 of the can of veg. broth.  I also used gray salt at the end, and that was a fantastic addition.  If you can get your hands on some gray salt, I urge you to try it in things.  It's so worth it.  (I got mine from Penzey's; beware, however, because Penzey's is addictive.  I love love love their Chip and Dip spice mix, and their sandwich sprinkle is perfection on a salad with some vinegar.  I also use the Northwoods seasoning on chicken, and the Greek seasoning as an all-around good sprinkle, on salads and in sauces, as well as on chicken.  I cannot get enough.  I'm a cerifiably insane spice fiend.  Now, I just need a simple spice rack so that my pantry isn't taken over by the spices.)

Anyway, this meal is 100% vegetarian, but I suspect that it would make a nice accompaniment to baked or broiled chicken.  I ate it by itself, but that's because I'm counting points.  (It's pretty low point for one serving--somewhere around seven points.)  And I have to say, it was beautiful.  I should have had S take a picture.  Its deep brown color (from the onion, I presume, and the browned barley) stained the pasta, and it almost looked too perfect to eat.

Tidbits

Did you know that if you heat up a skillet on high heat for ten minutes, and then throw a hunk of butter in it, it creates a billow of smoke so vast you can't believe that it's for real?  And then, if you put that under cold water, it burns the pan irretrievably, and the butter doesn't really melt? 

S meant to turn on the back burner tonight to boil water for pasta, and put the skillet for his browned butter on the front burner.  Obviously, as you can see from the above paragraph, that didn't work out so well for us.  He ruined a skillet and filled the apartment with icky-smelling smoke.  I think that while I was cooking my chicken on the other front burner, I noticed that the other front burner was on, and that the water wasn't heating, but clearly, it didn't strike me as odd, because I didn't stop him in time to stop us from having to open the patio doors and let the zero degree or less air in the house, and let the smoke out.

Oh, and there's no new recipe for this week.  I have some new recipe ideas for next week, so we'll see what happens.