pstyl'n

There comes a time in a woman's life (in, a very special kind of woman) when she realizes she has to stand up and take matters into her own hands. When she can no longer sit down and be content with the status quo. I am of course talking about when a woman realizes she wants to stand up like a man, and pee.

You might ask, why would I want to do that when I could sit down on a lovely chair designed for this purpose? Besides you think, I already have three options - hover, squat and sit, what more do I need? Well, I'm tired of unquestioningly sitting down to pee. Getting my pants around my ankles in all sorts of filth, and exposing my butt to all sorts of tics and voyeurs. Not to mention the possibility of peeing on my shoes.

Oh course, I can't just lazily whip my junk out and pee freely like a man might, but I can do a lot better than nestling down into insect filled grasses.

Still though, where on earth did I ever get such a strange idea? On the lovely Lunapads website I found something called a pstyle. The pstyle is a great little plastic device which allows you to easily pee while standing. It even comes in pink! I read about it and researched it and put it on the back burner of my mind until I went to Seattle - and was forced to use an incredibly nasty porta potty. Then and there I decided - I'm going to buy that thing so neither my butt nor my pants will ever have to get any closer to this grime again.

If your interested, there are a lot of websites out there with information on different devices to help one pee standing up, or even a tutorial on how to do it all on your own. I'd suggest doing that in a skirt though, the benefit of the pstyle is that your pants stay on, and stay clean. Krista's cups has a lot of useful tips on using the pstyle. Another great benefit of the pstyle is that it eliminates the need to try and find a clean leaf to wipe away drips - it does it for you!

My only complaint is that it is a bit bulky - not when being used, but if your hiking with just some snug jeans and nothing else, where to put it? There is another option out there that folds flat, but I think I will just hike with a mini backpack instead.

So, was that tmi, or did I just blow your mind?

Obama's Speech to Students

Just watched Obama's highly controversial speech to students. Why it is controversial, I do not know - other than the fact that whatever he does it will upset someone.

Two thoughts went through my head as I watched the video. I felt very inspired and proud of our president, I too was inspired to try and work harder. On the other hand, I was disappointed - but in the audience. The camera would occasionally show an image of a student rolling their eyes, or slouching over or just looking obviously bored. I hope that their parents see them in this video, and smack them upside their head when they get home. The speech lasted less than 30 minutes, and they can not sit up straight and be respectful for that long? How many of those people will the message reach, if they are not open? Of course, if they act like that, chance are they were taught it or never taught properly by their parents. I ashamed for the President, and wonder what he must think as he gives this speech to a bunch of students who will not even make the effort to listen. I will have to keep a look out, and see what the response to the speech is, hopefully more people will be positively affected than those that shut it out.

wild aniamls

I know a man who is like an animal I might find in the park.
If you are gentle and kind and offer it food, it would approach you and you might think it is tame. It would follow you home and sit on your lap or even sleep in your bed. But, if you go to shut your door, it would run outside back to it's nest. The next day, or the day after, it would be back again, scratching at your door, begging for food. Once again, it would curl up with you, but it would always eye the door. It might even bring a nut or a some bedding from it's nest to your house, but definitely not all of it. It could be comfortable for several nights on end, but out of the blue it would bolt. Perhaps it perceived the door was closing, it missed it's wild home, it had to cleanse itself of the scent of domestication.
But always, it would come back.

Ratatouile?

What does one do before one leaves on vacation? Survey the perishables, and figure out how best to use them up. I had in my refrigerator three zucchini, a container of baby bella mushrooms, half an onion, and a new bunch of celery to be used up. Plus a can of black olives that had been stepped on, a bell pepper, a fairly full jar of Newman's Own veg salsa medium and some Vodka spaghetti sauce. I was trying to figure out how to use up the zuch, 'shrooms and celery when it dawned on me. Ratatouille!


Now, as far as I can tell, what I came up with is still ratatouille. It is a cheap peasant dish, and I'm sure most peasant dishes arouse from trying to use up the perishables.

Since I do not have a large saute pan (none of my pans comfortably fit a tortilla) I cooked all the ingredients individually in my cast iron skillet. It took more time to cook everything separately, but I think I was better able to cook them and get the best flavour this way.

So, my recipe? I burnt (too high!) some pepper flakes, (turned down the heat) added some garlic then half an onion and sauted it for... awhile. I set my mushrooms in whole, but the onions were getting too hot so I scooped those out and set the rest of the mushrooms in - there was just enough room for all of them. After those were well browned on both sides I added those to my "cooked" bowl and added one loosely chopped red bell pepper which I cooked until it was a little black on one side and softened. Those came out and in went three celery stalks, some more crushed pepper, and dried oregano and basil.

Next the zuchini went in. After awhile got bored waiting for the zuchini to cook so I dumped everything back in with the addition of the remainder of the Vodka sauce and Newman's "Farmer's Garden" salsa. The lid hardly fit on so everything then went into my stock pot to simmer away.... With the addition of a bunch of collards that had to be used up! I used a pair of scissors (scissors are your best friend in the kitchen) to cut out the midrib and rough cut them into the pot. I brought it to a boil and let it simmer an hour or two more. I figured it was done when the collards were finally wilted.

Voila! I got two 2Cup and one 4 cup archer glass container full, plus one small cereal bowl out of that. Now bad huh? Flavourful (from my spices or the sauce?), healthy and vegetarian, what more could you want?

Lies, all lies

We need more truth in advertising and.... cliches.

I was cleaning a jar out with some baking soda and vinegar earlier today, and I left the jar and lids with vinegar sit, and guess what I found floating in the vinegar? Flies, nats, little flying insects. Formerly flying. Flies. In. Vinegar.
I know what your thinking, this is not a valid experiment, I need to set out an open container of honey. But really, do I need more flies? I do not need more proof, I am convinced. My nice days are over. Now that I know I can catch flies with vinegar, I have no need of honey. If I find I need more, I'll resort to the nice.

What other proverbs are deceiving me? Do early birds get the worm? Is all this haste making waste? Is fear the only thing we have to fear? Really? Not influenza or economic decline or rising global temperatures perhaps?

I go out a little wiser, and little less naive, and a little saddened.

New Toy = delicousness!

So, I got a new toy. I've wanted this for quite awhile, and finally went ahead and bought it. When I tell people "I got a cherry pitter!" They say "do you pit cherries often?" That, is not the point. The point is that I can. For $15 I can pit a bag of cherries relatively quickly with an all but one success rate and little mess whereas before I've had to slowly go through and cut each one - creating a mess and getting bloody looking hands in the process.


And, what does one make when cherries are reasonably priced at the grocery store and you have a new cherry pitter?

Cherry Cobbler! Which I've also been craving (cobbler in general really. I've got to get to the peaches before they're gone). I have epicurious on my iphone and I wanted to get started when I got home, so I searched around on there for a recipe and found this one. I also followed the advice in the reviews and substituted in the recipe for the topping from the plum cobbler with cinnamon biscuits.

The best part about the cherry recipe was having to get a bottle of Lazzaroni Amaretto (made from an infusion of cookies?) which is a delicous addition to a cup of black tea. Mmm, or licking the cherry syrup in the pot (if I had a bigger pot I'd stick my head in it).

The only substitution I made was replacing the cream in the biscuit recipe with whatever "dairy" I had on hand, which happened to be Almond Milk. Oh, and I misread "1 tsp vanilla" for "1 tbsp" but no problem either way. I also don't know how many cherries I used. A bag and most of another from the store, however much that was.



The only difficult part was figuring out how to mix the dough, how to get it into the pan, and how to get it off my fingers!

Oh, I almost forgot - the real problem arose when I heard a sizzling sound from the oven and I realized that my container must not have been a 2 quart dish (or, too many cherries? too much biscuit?). The only thing I could do was to stick a cookie sheet under it and watch it boil over..




The end result was great and the spices really stood out. The biscuits were fluffy, the cherries were soft and... how do you describe that cherry feel? And of course, you can't have cobbler without vanilla ice cream.

The only thing I will do differently is to put it in a much larger container and lower the ratio of biscuit to cherries. In one review someone suggested using extra dough to make a separate biscuit, and I think that would be a good idea (they were definitely good enough to stand alone).

You may be asking yourself, really though, a $15 cherry pitter for the occasional cherry cobbler? Of course not! I perked up some plain non-fat yogurt by tossing in some pitted cherries, pureeing with my immersion blender, adding some more cherries whole, a bit of honey and had a quick, easy, and healthy ultra yummy snack.
And that's not all! Yes sir, this little gem will soon be working its way through a jar of kalamata olives! So delicious, yet so frustratingly filled with seeds! I salivate at the thought of some Greek inspired kalamata olive filled dish... (stay tuned!)

Congee

Yeah! I finally made congee/chao. For those of you who are in the dark, congee is a soupy rice dish served in (probably) every Asian country. Congee is the Chinese word for it. In Vietnamn its chao. My dad's Okinawan wife makes it for him when he's hung over or sick for some reason. My brother had a variant of it in Thailand for breakfast. Its sick food, comfort food, and food thats good for you when your mouth hurts.

One of the nutty Vietnamese guys I work with keeps saying "that's easy, any child can make that". Well, yes, it is easy, but any soVietnamese child was raised on it. Thats one reason its so great - it's so easy it was no problem to cook it up even though I was feeling lazy. I browsed around on the net for some basic ideas, and winged it.

Basically, here's what you do;
I guess I used too much rice - I used 2 cups jasmine rice and 8 cups water (you really want the rice to break down) but I could have used 1 cup rice and 6 cups water (so Hung tells me). I suppose that would have been enough too - I kept having to add more water, so who knows how much I ended up with. And it was still thicker than I've had it elsewhere.


I had about a pound of chicken thigh meat which I cut up (literally! who needs a cutting board?!) which I heated up a few pieces at a time in my beloved cast iron skillet before tossing them in the pot (perhaps this helped? I don't know).
I also cut off and peeled a nub of ginger which I thinly sliced and tossed in. I also threw in three cloves of garlic, thinly sliced. The only other spices/condiments I added were a few good pinches of kosher salt, a dash of soy sauce, some fresh ground pepper, a dash of crushed red pepper flakes and a light drizzle of sesame oil at the end. That sounds like a lot of flavouring, but its really not. Its very subtle. I think what you taste and smell mostly is the ginger and the jasmine rice. It not quite bland (which is good when your stomach is upset) but not spicy either.

Just before dishing it up I chopped up some green onion and tossed it in.

The giver of cast iron skillets has had a terrible sore throat lately and has been feeling very sick, and this is just what was needed.

It was filling, satisfying, mostly healthy (I wonder about that chicken thigh meat) and soothing. Besides all that, it was simple. A few cheap ingredients and very little prep work. Just toss a bunch of stuff and cook some meat on the side if you so desire. For a bit more work I've read that it is often served with a bunch of condiments like chopped cilantro, peanuts, chilies etc.

If you have any other congee suggestions let me know! I think I'll have fun playing around with this.