Dribs and Drabs

Posted on September 5, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I have a bunch of small updates:

Bobcat
• In the four weeks before the LolaBobbie incident, I hadn’t seen any bunnies in the neighborhood, aside from the parts left on our front walk. A week and a half after installing the motion-activated sprinkler, I saw two, an adult on the front lawn (still not afraid of me) and a little one bounding through the alleys.
• For two days after installing the motion-activated sprinkler, it went off between 7:30 and 8:00am and again between 3:30 and 4:00pm. Y’all. Bobcats have schedules. Lately, the sprinkler has been going off at different times during the day, sometimes when I’m outside watering the new sod. I’m pretty sure that birds are what’s triggering it, but I have started talking to myself out loud when I’m in the front yard just in case.
• I wonder how many rabbits LolaBobbie has to eat each day to survive.

Cold brew coffee
• The day after I posted about how huge a pain in the ass the ATK recipe is, I got a call from “CI ATK” – Cook’s Illustrated America’s Test Kitchen. I know the timing was a coincidence and that they were calling to sell me something, because
Continue reading →

Posted in food, life | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mensches and Mitzvahs

Posted on September 2, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about how Facebook makes people feel lonely and disenfranchised, and I have friends who dismiss social media as being unproductive or a time waster.  I love Facebook, though.  Even if I’m only seeing people at their curated best, it allows me to keep up with treasured friends and be inspired by the things they’re doing.  One of these friends is Heather Kelly.

Heather and I met around fifteen years ago when we worked at the same law firm in Washington, DC.  Neither one of us had a good experience there, and we both left, me for consulting and Heather for another firm.  Despite good intentions, it’s hard to stay in touch with friends you don’t see every day, even if you live in the same metropolitan area.  Heather and I saw each other every now and then and exchanged occasional e-mails, but then I took a job that had me traveling 80% of the time and exacerbated that by moving back to Texas.  I haven’t seen Heather in person in years, but we found each other on Facebook, where I learned that not only is Heather smart and funny and pretty, she is
Continue reading →

Posted in life | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Jessica Fletcher, Badass

Posted on August 29, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I love watching television.  I try not to do too much of it because my taste in TV tends to fall into the lowest common denominator category rather than the subversive, intelligent category (think NCIS and Grey’s Anatomy rather than 30 Rock or anything on HBO and Showtime).  So when I watch television, I can’t make the argument I’m doing anything productive like making myself smarter.

I fell out of the habit of watching TV earlier this year when I had a friend move in for a few months while her house was being renovated.  The only working TV and cable connection is in my bedroom, where there is barely enough room in the mess for me to watch alone.  We did manage, after shifting massive piles of clothing and paper, toward the end of her tenure as my housemate to watch the entire series of Veronica Mars in preparation for the movie we both funded.  It was effort, though, and not comfortable for either of us.  So for the most part, while she lived here, I forwent my mindless habit because I felt guilty that I was the only one who could engage in it.

I started up again

Continue reading →

Posted in life, who am i | Tagged | Leave a comment

Throwing Stones

Posted on August 26, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I read this article on CNN.com a couple of weeks ago:  “Twin baby girls rescued as China maternity hospital trafficking probe continues.”  Apparently, there’s at least one obstetrician at this hospital who has lied to new parents for years that their babies are dead or have congenital defects or a fatal disease.  The OB convinced the parents to leave the babies at the hospital and just go home.  Once the parents left, the doctor sold the babies.

The story is horrifying to begin with and what I imagine is in the top three of parental nightmares.  Something about this story stuck in my brain and nagged at me.  The CNN article makes it clear that the loss of their children devastated the parents, but I thought about my friends who are parents.  I know that they wouldn’t leave their baby with congenital defects or a fatal disease at the hospital and go home.  It troubled me how effective the doctor’s use of defect or disease was in making the parents in China go home.

Then I remembered a time when a friend, A, told me she was pregnant.  Because of her age, the doctor considered A’s pregnancy to be high-risk
Continue reading →

Posted in life | Leave a comment

More Online Dating Tales

Posted on August 22, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

My executive coach and I looked up what Native Americans consider significant about a bobcat appearing in your life.  Among other things, bobcats teach lessons about being alone but not lonely.  I’ve also had some grackles show up in the backyard, and I saw a squirrel eating a pear from our tree.  Native American interpretation of this is basically that I need to get out and have fun.  (If you want specifics on what the significance of a particular animal is, do a search for “[animal] medicine totem.”  Very interesting and enlightening.)

All of this combined into enough momentum for me to check what was happening over at OK Cupid.  The e-mails I get on OKC make me question my own judgment – am I being too picky?  Would spending time with one of these guys be better than being alone and cooking or reading or infusing liquor or writing?  I think the answer is no.  You read and be the judge.

OKC rates Potential Suitor 4 (PS4 – for more on PS and PS2, click here; PS3 is still in the works) as 65% Match, 59% Friend, 15% Enemy.  What’s totally weird about this is that these numbers look pretty low Continue reading →

Posted in life | Tagged | 1 Comment

Lessons from the Universe: Picky Eating

Posted on August 19, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I’ve turned into a voluntary picky eater.  (You might think that all picky eaters are voluntary, but you’d be wrong.  My friend wrote a whole book about it.  The upshot is that picky eaters should be pitied and not disdained or reviled because they can’t help it.)  I don’t like raw celery or cilantro, which makes me want to open my mouth and refund all the cilantro-polluted food in it, but other than that, I love food, and I love to eat.  Because of this, before I read Stephanie’s book, I didn’t have a lot of patience or sympathy for picky eaters.  In fact, one time I was throwing a dinner party, and for a variety of reasons, people started dropping out, and the only guests left who were still coming were the pickiest eaters of my friends.  I canceled the dinner party.  I’m not proud of this.  Now, the universe has taught me a lesson by denying entire classes of food to me.

I went for a physical last year in November, probably my first one in a decade (sorry for the additional parenthetical, but before you get on me about my health, I do go for my women’s

Continue reading →

Posted in food, life | 1 Comment

Cold Brew Coffee: Kitchen Torture

Posted on August 15, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I cheated on my Nespresso machine earlier this week.  Oh, I know that it doesn’t care, because it’s an inanimate object.  Also, it’s only been here for a few weeks, so it hasn’t had time to get as attached to me as I am to it.

I cheated with cold brew coffee.  When I’m away from home and forced to choose among all the commercial options out there, if cold brew is available, I jump on it.  In the absence of a Nespresso machine, cold brew coffee is as close as you’ll get to the perfection of Australian coffee:  dark and rich and round without any weird sour flavor and just enough bitterness to assure you it’s coffee.  Not everyone gets it right.  Zombie Runners in Palo Alto and Roy’s in San Jose are the best I’ve ever had; the Texan in me is sad to report that Central Market’s is not that good.

I came across a recipe for cold brew coffee at home in the America’s Test Kitchen DIY cookbook.  I bought this cookbook primarily for the tofu and cocktail bitters recipes, but it’s teeming with all sorts of yummy things, including a recipe for cold brew coffee.  Continue reading →

Posted in food | Tagged , | 9 Comments

With Facebook Friends Like These…

Posted on August 12, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

Uploading photos of a bobcat snoozing three feet away from you to Facebook is an interesting Rorschach test for your friends.  Reactions among my friends (on FB, in person, and on the phone) fell into four categories:

Sympathetic and Appropriately Alarmed

“Ummmm… That’s a little big for a regular cat…” – CCE, Coppell, TX.

“omfG, is that a bobcat?” – CCI, San Francisco, CA. [Editrix’s note:  I particularly appreciated the capitalization of the G in this comment.]

“Holy Crap! It’s a Bob Cat! What do you do when there’s an active carnivore roaming the neighborhood?” – SHE, Midlothian, VA.  [Editrix’s note:  this one was actually comforting; if SHE is concerned about a bobcat in the neighborhood, then I’m not just being an indoor child pansy by freaking out.]

“HOLY SH*T.  I TOLD YOU SO.  WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” – BJC, Memphis, TN.  [Editrix’s note:  this is my sister who first sighted the bobcat and has great sympathy for the bunnies.]

“Ok. Wow. Just wow. (and yikes!)” and “HOLY … !”  – HJK, Washington, DC.  [Editrix’s note:  HJK is a nature lover and frequently posts pictures of birds and flowers and puppies.  This was also comforting.]

“OMG. CC, thats a tiger! How does animal

Continue reading →

Posted in facebook | Tagged | Leave a comment

Neighborhood Serial Killer (of rabbits)

Posted on August 12, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

I am not an outdoor child.  I never have been.  As a little girl, my preference was to go to the public library, not to play outside.

I’m not an animal lover.  I like them ok, and I love certain of my friends’ pet dogs and cats, but my general attitude toward nature is that we’re in a war for survival that I will ultimately lose.  I don’t like to see any animals mistreated, and I hate the idea of killing a healthy animal for no good reason.  I’m an omnivore, so I do consider meals to be a good reason.

Over the past few years, since I’ve moved back to Dallas, I’ve had some disturbing encounters with urban wildlife.  Once, I was driving my parents’ SUV to the grocery store, going about 50 mph, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bird start to cross my path.  As time slowed, I could tell that the truck would crash into the bird, and I yelled at the bird to fly faster or change course.  It did neither.  When I got to the parking lot and steeled myself to scrape the carcass off the car, I was Continue reading →

Posted in life | Tagged | 1 Comment

WRITER’S BLOCK, Pan Sauce, and Pool Thoughts

Posted on August 8, 2013 by travelfoodandlife

Well, y’all.  It’s happened.  The truth is I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.  I have writer’s block.  I have been racking my brain since Monday, trying to figure out what to post today, and obviously, I didn’t come up with anything good because here we are.

I wrote about 650 words on my recent dietary restrictions, but oh, my gosh — how painful for you to read.  So today, I’m going to post the “recipe” for my favorite pan sauce because I have finally perfected cooking steaks at home, and I’m going to post the random things that I have been thinking at the gym while I swim because I finally went back after an absence of four months.

My favorite thing to do in the kitchen is to chop 15-20 vegetables into tiny dice for minestrone (if your vegetable pieces are not tiny enough to have a shot at getting every vegetable in each spoonful, the Italian chef I know says you’re doing it wrong).  My second favorite thing to do is to deglaze the fond from a pan and eat the delicious sauce.  Here’s what I do after I brown my steaks on the stove, finish them in Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment