So here we go. My food for the day. Click on the photo (I dare you) and you’ll be whisked over to Flickr where you’ll be able to not only view a larger version but you’ll be able to download the photo for use as a screen saver, tee-shirt transfer, wall-size mural for your family room, or a body tattoo. I’ve also provided a written record of the day’s food there as well in case anything looks a little suspicious. Nothing fancy today but you never know when a tureen of foie gras braised in a passion fruit horseradish glaze might be turning up.
Over the years in losing 150 pounds I’ve learned that keeping a food journal is one of the most important tools, not only in losing but in maintaining weight loss. Most of the people who I know personally who’ve lost a significant amount of weight and have kept it off have made it a regular habit to journal their daily food. I’ve found there’s a bit of magic in keeping a food diary because without fail, when I journal my food, I eat less and I eat better, and when I don’t journal my food, surprise surprise, it only takes a short little while before the numbers on the bathroom scale start getting a little plumper along with my behind.
Writing down my food everyday keeps me both aware of what I’m eating and honest about what I’m really eating rather than just what I want to remember. I tend to be a grazer with the food. I don’t feast. I nibble and grab. One bite here and just a taste there all through the day, and soon I’ve snacked and noshed so many little bits and bobs during the day that I’ve forgotten all I actually did ate. The action of logging my food remedies my amnesia by keeping me fully aware (and conscious) as to how much I’ve consumed and that awareness in turn keeps me honest. I can’t play ignorant with myself as to why I’m not losing weight when the sum total of everything I’ve eaten is right there in front of me.
But here’s the catch. Even though I know how important it is for me to do, after a few days of food journaling I get bored and complacent and eventually stop and I’ve tried everything to keep myself motivated and interested. I’ve bought every kind of hard cover journal and soft cover notebook. I’ve used the online food journals at CalorieKing, Weight Watchers, and Spark People. I’ve tried computer software and iPhone apps. I even went through a long period of time when I called someone every morning to tell them exactly what I was going to be eating that day. The thing is that everything I tried was great….until I stopped. I know. Go figure.
Now with a new year (plus ten days) comes a new idea. Take two things I love like photography and blogging and combine them with keeping a food journal and see what happens. So let’s see what happens and if, by chance, you want to play along by keeping a food journal of your own while I’m keeping mine, by all means, join me!
Oh. And exercise wise it was 30 minutes this morning on some cardio torture device at the gym followed by 50 minutes with my personal trainer which among other sweat initiators included push-ups, crunches, and lunges. Should you wonder, I am NOT Julie Andrews and those are NOT three of my favorite things.
I don’t start my New Years resolutions on January 1st with everyone else. I wait a couple weeks. In doing so not only am I claiming my individuation from the masses but by now since nearly everyone else has already crashed and burned on whatever wonderfully lofty commitments they’d begun with such firm resolve a couple weeks ago I’m not just about the only one in town who when asked, “How are your resolutions for the new year going?” can answer with my head held high “Great! So far I’ve kept every single one!”
There’s a method to my madness people.
So here we go.
This was my breakfast yesterday morning. Scrambled egg whites and beans. Not exactly as glamorous as cake balls dipped in white chocolate and brushed with gold luster dust, but there you have it. Real food for real life and it’s time we get a little real around here because the brutal harsh reality is this girl (pointing to self) can’t live on cookies, cake pops and cupcakes, not if I ever stand a chance of staying in my size 12 jeans because right now these bad boys are a wee bit snug. They aren’t lay horizontal while holding my breath snug but they are definitely coming close to the button, zip and do a series of denim stretching calisthenics snug. Changes are coming. In fact, they’ve already started and I’m bringing you along on the ride.
I’m going to be kicking off my 2011 Kick My Butt in Gear Tour right here, beginning tonight. Here’s how it’s going to roll. I’m going to be photographing every SINGLE bite of food I put into my mouth. I mean everything including the nibble, bite, handful, and taste that somehow, mysteriously, when I’m not looking, enter my mouth. Now like a criminal in custody every meal and random bite of food will be photographed and then after a day of snapping (photos) and smacking (my lips) I’ll be posting the photos. Rather than uploading 3 or 4 OR 27 food photos everyday I’ll probably put together one or two photo collages showing all the food for the day. There will be no beverage photos though since my beverages everyday are pretty much the same; four shots of espresso on ice with an ample splash (1/4 cup) of whole milk, and 60-80 ounces of water or no-calorie fruit-flavored water. Dana brings me a cup of coffee every morning as well but I only take a couple sips. I want to be a grownup and since everyone knows that grownups drink coffee in the morning, there you go. Does it diminish the fact if there’s an adorable little ceramic turtle in the bottom of the mug?
I know I know. Forget all those foodie blogs you’ve been following with their luscious, scrumptious, gorgeous photographs of crusty round artisan breads, cupcakes hidden under towering mounds of rich buttercream, and platters of steaming pasta glistening with brown butter, and topped with imported parmigiano reggiano and pan-fried strips of pancetta. Forget all that because right here, right now, at no personal expense to you, you’re going to have the chance to savor the beauty that is an egg white scrambled in an old scratched Teflon pan and covered in black beans left over from last Friday’s Mexican Salad. Other bloggers hold contests and give away prizes to keep their readership numbers growing but not here. It’s all about quality content that keeps ‘em coming back for more.
In addition to the spine-tingling photo journaling of my food, as if that wouldn’t be enough given that I’m providing this all free of charge, I’ll also be documenting my physical activity for the day. Did I just hear you gasp?! I’m telling you people, it doesn’t get better than this when it comes to blogging so call your friends and neighbors or risk their anger when they learn you knew about all this and never told them. On that day, I would not want to be you.
So that’s my plan Stan and I’m sticking to it. At least for a week that is. Oh. I did mention, didn’t I, that my New Year’s Plus 10 Days resolutions are only valid for one week at a time with an option to renew at completion? I mean seriously, do you think I’d actually commit to photograph and blog everything I eat for an entire year? Are you out of your mind?
Makes me wonder just who I’m hanging out with and how you got here in the first place.
Anita
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P.S. I’m just playing with you. You know I love ya.
Pomelos are only in season from mid-January until mid-February so my citrus maximus binge has just gotten away for the 2011 season! If you’ve never had a pomelo but like any other variety of citrus fruit then make it a goal to have at least one pomelo in your life. Just don’t buy your produce where I buy mine or there’s going to be a problem. And don’t be embarrassed that you’ve never had a pomelo, never seen a pomelo, or don’t even know what a pomelo is because I’ve yet to push my grocery cart laden with pomelos to the check out stand without at least a couple people stopping me to ask, “What are those?” The oddest follow-up question I’ve heard after identifying the large green orbs rolling around in my cart, and I’ve been asked this inane question by more than one person is, “Well, what are you going to do with them?” While a snide “Oh. I dunno. Maybe use them to knock down a few pins at the bowling alley” is the first thing that hits my cerebral cortex I just smile and say, “I’ll eat them.”
What are you going to do with them? Really? That’s the question you want to ask a complete stranger in possession of something that looks a whole lot like fruit in a grocery store where of all things they sell FOOD?!?!
Since there are people living just down the road from the pomelo bin who are clueless about these massive cannon balls of citrus honey let me tell those of you living in Missouri, Wyoming, and the backwaters of the Bijou a little bit about the succulent, juicy goodness of the pomelo.
Pomelos are the largest of the citrus fruit in the world and being native to Southeast Asia, the Chinese have the big love for this equally big fruit. They’ve even made pomelos an essential food during the celebration of the Chinese New Year. Chinese tradition says that taking a bath with pomelo peels in it during the New Year will drive away evil spirits and because it also signifies family unity, Chinese families share a pomelo together as a family as a wish that like the pomelo they would be whole and united through the coming year.
Nationally pomelos are grown in Florida and here in California we grow a variety of the pomelo called the Chandler. I love you Chandler! The pomelo is similar to a grapefruit only much bigger. How much bigger? Today I put a grocery bag with four pomelos on the passenger seat of my car and drove all the way home with the seat beat alarm going on and off. That should give you some idea. They’re big. Like a grapefruit on steroids or me after two months of baking cookies, cupcakes, and cake pops.
The other striking and beautiful difference between a grapefruit and a pomelo (other than I love one and hate the other) is that pomelos have none of the bitterness. The meat is super juicy and super sweet.
While it’s true that pomelos don’t come cheap (I’ve been paying between 3.50 and 3.99 each for them) you have to consider that you’re not only buying something to eat but you’re buying entertainment for the afternoon because peeling a pomelo is right up there with cracking crab. So, if you get your hands on a pomelo and again, not from my neighborhood grocery store, let me share Anita’s Procedure for Pomelo Procurement.
1. Use a knife to make a slice all the way around the top circumference of the fruit and then peel off the top cap. You can then begin to slip your fingers in between the peel and the pith to remove the rest of the outer peel.
2. Next use your fingers to peel away as much of the pith as you can and I’m telling you, there is one thick coating of pith surrounding the fruit. The good news is the thick skin and pith of a pomelo keeps it lasting longer than other citrus fruit so you can either go to a Chinese grocery and look for pre-peeled pomelos (and yes, you actually can buy fresh peeled pomelos) or you can pull up your big girl panties and get to work. What works for me is to use the edge of a knife to scrap down the sides of the fruit and loosen the pith from the meat.
3. Now all you have to do is remove the sections of pomelo meat from the segment membrane and because the membrane is so thick it’s actually easier to get it to release from the meat than were you trying to do the same thing with a grapefruit, though why you’d bother to peel a nasty bitter sour grapefruit is beyond me.
After all the work of freeing the center of the pomelo from captivity (I’m exhausted just thinking about it) you’re going to have two to four cups of sweet juicy fruit which is more than enough to share with a couple people (or an entire Chinese family) unless you’re like me because then you’ll opt to hunch over your bowl of pomelo, wrap your arms protectively around it and gobble up every last bite all to yourself except for the big prime unbroken segments you end up handing over to your spouse who’s looking at you with those eyes that take away your will to resist like the Siren’s Song. Okay, so that’s how it goes down in our house anyway.
For those who care, and don’t we all, a cup of pomelo has 72 calories and enough Vitamin C to keep the scurvy away if you’re a pirate. You also have to take into account that you actually burned up calories carrying that gargantuan thing around the store, schlepping it home and then peeling it. Who knows but that you might have a caloric deficient when all is said and done and eaten.
Pomelo. It’s a food. It’s a form of entertainment. It’s a cardio workout. It just doesn’t get better than that.
So anyway, here it is. After the last two butter stained posts I thought it was time to provide you with a more healthy option to consider for the new year. Finally in closing I want to leave you with this photo that captures a few of my favorite things along with an actual YouTube video that in a mere 4:41 minutes demonstrates how to cut and peel a pomelo; the best part of which is the most insanely curious choice of music imaginable for citrus slicing. Enjoy.
Though I haven’t been posting on my blog for the past couple months I’ve been uploading my baking photos regularly to Facebook and one of the comments I most often receive is “How do you fix all these yummy things and not gain weight?! You must be so disciplined!” To these comments let me offer a collective, “Oh you dear sweet naive soul.”
Okay, now skip this paragraph if you’ve been following my blog and already know my story. For those who haven’t I’ve been on one ride of a weight loss journey over the past ten years that you can read about on The Journey to Finding Me. The Cliff Notes version of that story goes something like this:
1999: 325 pounds, miserable, sad, hopeless, desperate. Gave my will and my life over the will of a loving gracious God, worked a program of recovery, and lost 125 pounds. Gratitude, joy, and more gratitude.
2008: Felt the time had come to lose the last of the excess weight I was carrying, participated in a medically-supervised fast, continued to bust my behind at the gym, and lost another 70 pounds. Thrilled, amazed, and more gratitude still.
2009: Had corrective surgery to remove the excess skin. Ouch. Slowly had weight plateau about 20 pounds above post-surgery low. Full physical revealed in excellent physical condition or to quote my doctor, “If I didn’t know better I’d assume you were a conditioned athlete.” More gratitude.
And then came the Fall and Winter of 2010 filled with cake pops, cupcakes, and cookies. There were tables of goodies prepared for hospitality hour following church on Sundays. There were high fat dinners and sugar-saturated desserts loving made and shared with my brother (ALS requires that he eat to keep as much weight on as he can); foods filled with childhood memories and staggering levels of calories from cans of cream soup and cubes of butter. All of which brings us to the orange clad still sweaty faced from a workout Anita in the photo montage at six o’clock.
And here we are. Up thirty pounds from my lowest weight and a solid ten to fifteen pounds from where I’d ideally like to be, and once again sporting a muffin top. You know the muffin top; that squishy belt of chub that resides just above the waistline. This little muffin-top, which in my case would more fittingly be called a cookie-top since cookies are largely responsible for it’s reappearance, stands (or jiggles as the case may be) as witness to the virtuousness of my self-discipline over the past two months of blitzkrieg baking.
Honestly, I don’t know how they do it, and by they I mean those incredibly creative cookie bakers whose blogs I’ve been stalking following for the past few months. Unless their profile photos are actually a “cut and paste” JPG of a model from “Women’s Health Magazine” then clearly these women have established a reasonable level of sampling and taste-testing that’s not pushing past the perimeter of their pants.
And then again, maybe they aren’t all compulsive overeaters with no moderate set point as to how much is enough and how much is too much. I came broken from the factory. My dial is set to one more. One more bite. One more taste. One more plate, one more serving, one more dozen. These are just the facts of me and my relationship with food. I don’t make the news people, I just report it.
I can’t draw or paint or sculpt but decorating cookies is like creative expression for me. I love mixing the dough and decorating the cookies. Giving something from my kitchen is a natural and easy way for me to show care and love to my family and friends. Every time I put on one of my Etsy-acquired vintage aprons it ties me back to times I spent with my grandma making batch after batch of snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies. And with risking sounding like I’m taking it over the top, there’s something about spending time baking that restful and calming to me. Dare I say meditative? And here’s the really amazing thing; it seems I’m a more than respectable baker. I can turn out some awesome groceries with a few ingredients and an oven set to 350. Something I bake can make someone smile. How cool is that? For all these reasons I don’t want to give up baking but neither do I want to find myself in a dicey place when it comes to being around all that yummy goodness.
So what’s a girl to do? Well, I have a couple big cookie commits coming up soon but for the time being my focus is going to be
Less Baking and More Biking
Less time searching Saveur and time exploring Eating Well
Warning to Readers from the Management: This post is a summary of my baking adventures of the past three months. It’s long. Really long. Do not blame me if dizziness or doziness ensues, and by all means, do NOT operate heavy machinery for three hours after reading this post and/or before the ingestion of liberal doses of caffeine. Proceed at your own risk.
Bears hibernate in winter. I bake. And this winter was like none other, inspired by the creative baking brilliance and ridiculously awesome blogs of Angie (Bakerella) and Bridget (Bake at 350). This duo of baking babes are doing incredibly things with the simplest of ingredients; Bakerella with cake mix and candy melts, Bridget with unbleached flour, sugar, eggs, and then more sugar. Lots more sugar.
If imitation is the best form of flattery then this winter has been my humble attempt to sing these women’s praises as well as to learn a new skill in the kitchen by practicing, practicing, practicing, and copying, copying, copying ideas I’ve seen on their blogs. The photos below are my rough around the edges copies of what they and others doing what they do have already done. Give credit where credit is do.
In early October I provided food for a gathering of about 40 people who were coming together to learn how they could provide spiritual, emotional, and tangible support to my brother Randy and his wife as they navigate life following his diagnosis with A.L.S. Along with the savory snacks, there was a dessert plate on each table with an assortment of home-baked cookies surrounding a jar of Introductory Cake Pops 101 in the green of my brother’s A.L.S. support team.
While they weren’t all that good looking they were crazy good tasting and so when Halloween came around I pulled out my beautiful new copy of Bakerella’s Cake Pop book and made a go at a couple of her monster creations.
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The red velvet and chocolate fudge cake pops were a favorite of kids and adults alike but when it was all over there hardly anything left of the spider-web deviled eggs with “spider egg” black salt, salami witch hats and cheese pumpkins, dark rye pumpkins filled with black olive cream cheese, orange bread owls with orange zest cream cheese, and harvest caramel candy corn.
The hit of the day with the littlest ones by far was the brownie graveyard with Milano cookie tombstones, marshmallow ghosts, candy bones and chocolate pebbles.
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There were Nutter Butter ghosts and pumpkin Oreos and black cat Oreo lollipops co-inspired by Bakerella’s cake pop black cat and our little Simbakitty boy. We thought they looked just like him, right down to his Halloween kitty bling.
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So with my Bakerella monster cake pops a smashing success I ordered a boatload of colored candy melts and scoured local candy stores for little sweet decorating doodads and then . . . wait for it wait for it . . . I stumbled into the world of iced cut-out cookies when I stumbled onto Bake at 350. So it seems I’m a little slow on the uptake when it comes to trends because the last time I gave much thought to decorated sugar cookies was back in the days when that meant a roll of refrigerated cookie dough and red and green sprinkles. Who knew it had blown into a new edible art form?
As it happened I came across an Italian flag cookie of hers on the day before my weekly Italian language class and since making it required nothing more than 3 colors of icing and a rectangle shaped cookie I thought I’d give it a go. Bridget’s cookie is on top and mine is on the bottom. But I didn’t need to tell you that didn’t I? Could it be the bumpy, cracked icing and shaky handwriting that gave me away?
Even though I wanted more practice before putting my cookies “out there” for others to see (judge, mock, ridicule) when Dana asked me to make a dessert for a co-worker’s baby shower I decided to take a chance and follow Bridget’s awesome and easy directions for making monogram cookies, which I sent along with milk chocolate cupcakes filled with coconut-pecan icing and topped with milk chocolate and white chocolate buttercream. Yum.
Next on the calendar? The hospitality hour at church on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. And here we go!
It was so fun to see everyone’s reactions to the “giving thanks” cookies and especially the little hearts with the names of the children of our church on them. Along with the cookies I thought it would be fun to provide a little taste of everyone’s upcoming Thanksgiving dinner so I lined mini pie crusts with cream cheese and filled them with turkey I’d roasted the day before topped with fresh cranberry sauce and a sprig of rosemary. They were adorable and a wonderful savory, creamy, sweet bite.
Oh. And then there were the Turkey Cake Pops that I spent an entire day making and no one ever saw. Oh sure, they look great in the photo I took a few minutes after finishing them but within two hours every one of those little birdie poops pops cracked in half and were a total mess. Apparently I compacted the cake too tightly when I mixed it together with the cream cheese. Bakerella suggests using a spoon for combining but smartypants me reasoned if a spoon was good, a standing mixer would be better. Not so. Once the cake mixture thawed from having been in the fridge it expanded in the candy shell and disaster followed.
I not only learned from my mistake but I also learned that Oreo truffle pops are easier than cake pops! My new go-to sweet on a stick, like these I made as a hostess gift for our friends, the wonderful innkeepers at the Joshua Grindle Inn in Mendocino.
Around mid-December I traveled up to my brother and sister-in-law’s in Oregon to spend the week baking cookies for an open house party to celebrate her daughter’s recent marriage.
I practiced and experimented until I came up with a selection that included Oreo Truffle Balls brushed with gold luster dust, ginger sandwich cookies filled with lemon cream (Oprah’s December issue), chocolate shortbread dipped in white chocolate and crushed peppermint, miniature wedding cakes made from a stack of vanilla cookies layered with rolled marzipan and decorated with royal icing and fondant flowers, and at the bride’s request my triple chocolate chunk cookies that are so over the top good they’d make your momma cry.
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These two photos professional photographer Mark Galligan took really classed up all those platters of humble little cookies.
We now interrupt this nightmarishly long baking post with a photo of bespectacled me and my dashing brother Randy. So it seems that Mark’s photographic magic works as well on people as on cookies.
Halloween, then a baby shower followed by Thanksgiving and a wedding celebration, at now at long last we’ve reached Christmas, complete with a church table buckling under the weight of holiday goodies from iced cookies inspired by Bake at 350, Cookie Crazie, The Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle and other cookie rolling, baking, icing fools to cake pops and even a Nutter Butter Baby Jesus or two. The following photos were also taken using my new table light box that’s the coolest thing since forever. I’ve provided this series of cookie photos commentary free. Feel free to write your own captions.
With the cookies and cake pops all done for the year, I headed up to Portland to spend Christmas with family. I baked an apple cranberry citrus pie for my brother. I roasted a crazy big 24 pound organic turkey for Christmas Eve dinner. And then on Christmas Day under the watchful eyes of my brother and sister I made crispy fried rosette cookies just like our Grandma use to make every holiday when we were young. While my rosettes tasted just like the ones Grandma we were all reasonably certain that her pile of failed attempts was significantly smaller than my towering pile of crumbled burnt bits.
Whatever the case, it was a fun baking season thanks to all those fabulous baking bloggers out there and to my grandma who passed along her passion for baking to her youngest granddaughter . . .along with a cardboard box full of old cookie cutters and baking sheets!
Five years ago when I stumbled across a stoneware gingerbread house mold among my ever-expanding inventory of kitchen gadgets and gizmos I had an idea. Bake a few houses, buy a little candy, whip up some royal icing, and spend a Saturday morning in December decorating houses with the kids at church. Easy enough I thought until I started doing the math and realized that with one mold it would take me approximately one hour to make each house since every house required two molds which meant 44 minutes of baking time plus the time it too to fill, cool, remove, fill, cool, remove.
Again, that’s all easy enough when making one gingerbread house but did I mention 18 children signed up that first year? 18 houses. 18 hours. In the kitchen.
But at the end of the day, that being the day of the party and not the day of baking which I don’t remember all that fondly what with all the time on my feet and the three inches of dried spicy sweet dough that required nothing short of a high pressure power washer to remove from the entire working surface of our kitchen, the effort had all been worth it. The kids had a blast, the parents were thrilled, and as I walked around the room and kept overhearing conversations filled with laughter and and words like “next year when we do this….” I knew as a community of faith (and fun) we’d just created a new annual tradition.
And so that’s what we’ve done for the past five years. Sometime around the end of summer/beginning of fall I pull my stoneware molds out of storage, empty our freezer of freezer-burned fish fillets, and then bake, package, and store gingerbread houses. The 18 houses of that first year became 23 houses the second, 28 houses the third and four years and this year, our gingerbread housing development expanded to a record high of 38, which is coincidentally the maximum number of houses our Kenmore split door freezer/refrigerator can hold
Here’s a little photo montage from the Great Gingerbread House Decorating Party of 2010.
It all begins with the gingerbread house assembly the day before the main event when along with a couple hours and a vat of royal icing the sides of the houses come together. In case you’re wondering, it takes a total of 34 pounds of powdered sugar to make enough royal icing to decorate 38 houses or about a pound of sugar in icing per house alone.
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And then there’s the candy. Piles and piles and buckets and buckets of candy I order in bulk from Candy Direct and Candy Warehouse, along with the occasional must have Christmas candy novelty purchase at Target. I’m a deer in headlights when it comes to the Christmas section at Target each year. I stand. I stare. I grab.
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With the houses constructed, the royal icing mortar dry, and the candy laid out like some hideous altar to childhood obesity (can you possibly resist the urge to chastise me for all this candy if I tell you I also provide a snack table of cheese, fruit and granola bars?) the children arrive and do what they do best. Have fun. The following photos serve as evidence.
And in case you think it’s all silly sugar-coated fun, take a gander at Alden’s detailed blueprint he prepared and brought with him.
Fall and baking. The perfect combination, and so I decided to start off the new fall season of baking last Sunday because we Lutherans like our after worship hospitality hour.
Nothing fancy. Just delicious. Starting with Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies. That would be white chocolate chunks, dark chocolate chunks, and M&M’s Harvest Blend. 1 – 2 -3.
Harvest Blend M&M’s.
It almost sounds…
healthy….
organic….
natural goodness.
I love creative marketing.
But not as much as I love my new cookie jar! Dana and I found it at our local “gorgeous stuff we don’t need but we’re weak and we can’t resist” gift shop. It was love at first sight. I loved everything about it…the warm colors, the pinecone design, the shape, and oooooh….this baby can hold a seriously massive batch of cookies. Swoon.
Then there were these pumpkin-pecan cakes that I made with this awesome fall cakelet pan from Williams-Sonoma, and then sandwiches together with a cream cheese frosting flavored with pure maple sugar, glazed with a maple-infused simple syrup and then frosted with sugar. Big hit with the Lutherans. Big.
And finally to round out the table, I arranged three paper bags of fall-themed candy into a miniature apple basket. Yep, more of the M&M Harvest Blend, the ever-popular sugar-busting candy pumpkins, and some fall-colored Jordan Almonds I found in the Halloween section at Cost Plus World Market, right between the gummy bloody fingers and chocolate eyeballs.
Oh. Did I mention I’m in charge of the hospitality hour again on Sunday, October 31? Those chocolate eyeballs are sure going to come in handy is all I’m saying.
For those following in RSS feed, this post is better viewed at it’s original location at The Passionate Plate.
I woke up this morning with a need to confess, to rid myself of a secret shame I’ve been carrying for far too long. They say we’re only as sick as our secrets and so today is the day I begin to get well. I only hope you don’t love and/or worship me less once you’ve been exposed to my deep, dark secret.
I love Starbucks. No. It’s worse than that. I ❤ Starbucks.
6 Signs I ❤ Starbucks. .
1. I have a personalized gold Starbucks card.
2. I track my gold card star credits regularly on my Starbucks iPhone app.
3. I collect Starbucks cards. 374 cards at last tally.
4. I spend time posing and stacking my Starbucks cards. Just for the fun of it.
.5. When I see a Starbucks on every corner I get just a little teary.
6. I’m blogging this post from one of three Starbucks where they welcome me by name and know my standing order.
Wow. It’s true. Confession is better for the soul. I do feel better. I’m just so glad the brutal ugliness of my revelation didn’t send you running…..
Hey! Wait! Come back!!!
I wasn’t always like this you know. There was a time in my life when I didn’t ❤ Starbucks. There was a time when I turned my nose up at the idea of drinking caffeinated swill from an automated push button espresso machine. There was a day when the only places worthy of feeding my espresso thirst were eclectic, hip slick and cool places like
and
and
and
and
Where you stand among the huddled, yearning masses in a dimly lit cave and wait . . .
. . . for guys sporting tattooed arms, nose piercings and wool caps in summer (don’t so much as think of calling them baristas) . . .
. . . to make you a real espresso in a real cup and saucer in a way that elevates a simple beverage into art.
Oh yes. There was a day when that was how I rolled, but that was before the international incident that took place in the summer of 2008 that changed my life forever. It happened in Greece.
Greece. The country of milky iced frappes served in chilled glasses at a sidewalk cafe.
Greece. The country where a mid-afternoon espresso is savored overlooking a valley of olive trees.
Greece. The country where the espresso is so thick and so strong it would best served with
a knife and a fork rather than a spoon and a biscuit.
Greece. The country where in record-breaking heatwaves offers only one smoke-free, air-conditioned, and WIFI-accessible oasis in which the sweaty traveler can flee to escape temperatures of 115.
Greece led to my ruin. This is the tormented tale that led to my downfall, that brought me to where I am today. Yes, it’s true. I ❤ Starbucks and that my friends, is the greatest Greek tragedy of all.
This is from our Christian wedding on April 6, 2002. Six years later we were granted a legal marriage license by the State of California. Today Judge Vaughn Walker affirmed our relationship under the law, not as a same-sex marriage but as nothing more and nothing less than a marriage. Plain and simple.
The beautiful woman on the right is my wife.
We are what some people fear.
We are what some people hate.
Wife and wife, united and bound in love for life.
She’s a gift of God to my life for which I will ever be grateful.
I love you my dear, my sweetheart, my wife.
To the moon and back again, to infinity and beyond, forever and ever.
This is the little piggy that went to market…and then was devoured by a hungry horde in the shadowy depths of a forest of redwoods. The plot for a blood and guts slasher movie? Perhaps. Or a Slow Travelers picnic in the Oakland hills? All the better.
But first, let’s go back to a time before the little piggy. . .
Last Saturday a number of us who’ve met online in the Slow Talk Community gathered together for their annual picnic. Now, I’m not sure how many years they’ve been meeting without me but now that I know all about their clandestine pork-fueled, wine-drenched summertime soirees just try to keep me and mine away. Seriously. Just try. Dare you!
L’amore della mia vita and I had a wonderful time meeting and greeting with folks who love traveling, food, photography, and iCrap as much as we do, and who apparently love all things fermented, bottled, and corked even more. I’m estimating the ratio of wine bottles to attendees was approximately 1:1, excluding small children and people like myself for whom all wine, whether domestic or foreign, poured from a tinted bottle or tipped from cardboard box tastes like red wine vinegar. Cheap red wine vinegar. And here we are, planning to spend two weeks on a vineyard in Tuscany. Go figga.
But let’s return to our shared appreciation for the culinary arts. Blest be the tie that binds. Amen. Just how much do I love a cheese platter with name tags? “Hola! I’m Buenalba from España.” “Well Hola yourself Buenalba! I’m Camellia from America!” Happy cheese. Happy me.
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And don’t even get me started on Mark’s World Famous Zucchini and Cheese Red Peppers, which I’m reasonably certain were never considered a finger food until I was set loose on them. Heaven calling, God wants his vegetables back.
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But who are we kidding? Let’s get back to the real heaven….hog heaven that is, where pig is king and Eden (the pig bearer) is the saint who crowned him! Indulge me while I recount King Pig’s entrance. There we were, gathered in the dewy shade of a grove of redwood trees when a uniformed park ranger comes driving up in a golf cart with the pig laying in the back of the open bed, the sun breaking through the trees casting a brilliant glimmering light on his crispy-skinned goodness. I weep at the remembrance. Give me a moment to collect myself.
I now have an admission to make. More than eating the pig and a tasty little swine he was, I loved tearing that bad boy apart. I don’t know. Maybe it’s one too many viewings of “Chainsaw Massacre” but I had a blast! It was like carving the Thanksgiving turkey only bigger and porkier.
And no sooner did I finish up and wander away than a gaggle of people even more disturbed than I swarmed in and picked Porky clean. How clean you ask?
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Just try to find a morsel of meat on those rib bones. Dare you. Double dare you.
What can I say other than these are my kind of people. Each and every one. Thank you Judy for organizing a fantastic event. Thank you Chris for the most divinely-inspired salted chocolate chip cookies known to exist on this earth (I’ll share her recipe in the next week when I bake them for church). And thank you Susie for sharing your gadget geek husband with me.
A wonderful report and more photos of the day and the pig can be found over at Eden’s Wanderings and Wonderings. Eden. The Pig Provider. The Saint of Pork. The Lady of the Lechon.
I see the world through mental snapshots and enjoy taking digital photographs of what my eyes have seen to share with others. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are my original work and requesting permission to use these images elsewhere would be greatly appreciated.
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And in Italian...
Il Piatto Passionale:
Gustandosi la vita a bocconi!
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