Chop!

I'm kind of impulsive about my hair.  It grows back and grows out after all, so why fuss?

I walked into a random hair place today and when the girl asked me what I wanted I shrugged and said, "eh, cut it all off."

So she did.

I like it.  It's kinda Roaring 20's-ish.  Now I just need to redo my color.

Green Tomato Harvest

My tomato season this year sucked.

It did so for the same reason our local apple, squash, corn, and everything else-growers had a bad season: too much water.  I planted six big boy red tomato plants in the spring and got precisely eight edible, ripe red tomatoes this summer.  Eight.

I also planted dill and cilantro which both died a watery death.

I admit I’m a bit of a craptastic gardener but that’s lame even for me.

On the upside my basil plant absolutely thrived.  Apparently those buggers are aquatic.  So soon, I will be doing a final harvest and making lots and lots of fresh pesto sauce.  Yummers.

The only thing that made my growing season worthwhile was today, when I harvested about four or five pounds worth of hard little green tomatoes before ripping the sad, waterlogged plants out and giving them the toss.

I made green tomato gazpacho (recipe courtesy of my guest-blogger, Jo) and Turkish green tomato soup.

The first year I did a green tomato harvest I went the traditional cinematic route and fried up a big plateful of fried green tomatoes.  Boy howdy, those things are nasty.  I’ve been making tasty soup ever since.

So – here we go…

Turkish Green Tomato Soup

3 lbs. of green tomatoes, cut into chunks.

Box of chicken broth.

8 oz. container of plain Greek yogurt.

Generous palm full of fresh dill.

Crumbled feta cheese.

Salt to taste.

Cover the green tomatoes in chicken broth and simmer until thoroughly soft, about twenty minutes.  Add yogurt, salt and dill and blenderize the crap out of things with an immersion blender.  Garnish with feta.

This soup can be served hot or cold and is tasty either way.  It doesn’t look that fantastic, like a big container of foamy green stuff – but here’s a picture.

 Next up…

Avocado and Green Tomato Gazpacho

3 medium-sized (3-inch diameter) green tomatoes, cored and diced

1 small (or half a medium) orange or yellow bell pepper, cored and minced

1 medium-sized (7-inch) cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced

A handful of flat-leaf parsley

A handful of cilantro

1 medium-sized ripe avocado, peeled, pitted and diced

1 medium clove garlic, minced or pressed

1/2 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar or light-colored honey

1 cup cold water

Black pepper and cayenne to taste

Up to 4 tablespoons fresh lime juice (to taste)

Combine everything in a blender and hit “chop”.  Easy easy easy is part of what I really like about this recipe.  That and the fantastic taste.

It’s also really pretty… a bright green chunky soup with flecks of herbs floating around.

Fast Food Fail

I don’t regularly eat fast food, I haven’t for a very long time now.  Perhaps two or three times a year I can be coaxed into Chik-Fil-A because I really love their waffle fries and if I’m going to indulge that craving I’m danged well going to the place I like the most to do it, but that’s about it.  No Wendy’s, no McDonalds, no Burger King – period. McNoThankYou.  Although I am still not thin, I believe this fact is a big contributing factor to my overall state of good health.

Everybody knows that fast food is bad for you, and when I mention my aversion I’m often told: “just have a salad.”

I have two responses to this:

One – If I walk into McDonald’s and smell the fries and Big Macs and then order a salad, I will sit there miserably picking at greens while inside I’m dying for a bite of grease.  Why would I torment myself like that?  I’m setting myself up to binge later on because I feel I’ve been horribly deprived.

Two – Fast food salads are still not good for you!  Sometimes, often, they are loaded with cheese, fried croutons, fried chicken and dressing that is PURE FAT and manage to load more calories onto your day than the sandwich you’re trying to avoid!  Example: Wendy’s Chicken BLT salad with dressing is 790 calories.  I get around 1,500 calories total per day – you do the math.  Would it really be worth it? 

Yes, it’s true, if you go into Wendys and order a plain baked potato and small chili, dump the chili on top and eat it, it’s not a complete calorie disaster.  But is that really what you want while you’re smelling greasy hamburgers and fries the whole time?  Besides which you will have consumed nothing but nearly nutrion-less white carbs and meat fat to boot.  Go home, and make yourself something nice.  Bake yourself a sweet potato instead.  Cooking is fun.

I know some people are saints and experience zero desire for greasy fast food EVER but I am not one of those saints nor will I ever be.  So walking into those restaurants at all is about as smart as strapping raw meat all over myself and leaping into shark infested waters.

I refer to that as McStupid.

Realism in advertising - you've gotta love it.

Binge

I’ve made this analogy before but for those of you who haven’t heard it: being a food addict is exactly like being an alcoholic who MUST swallow half a shot of vodka per day in order to survive, but in order to maintain sobriety – may have no more than that.

So, every day, for survival, you must indulge in your addiction just a little bit and then walk away.  Sometimes at every meal.  Sometimes every minute.

You’ll do great for a month, or a week, or a day, then something like being denied a nights sleep on account of your bedmate’s loud snoring might cause you to eat an entire sleeve of club crackers and a big glass of milk.  Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…

That may not sound so bad to a normal person so let me enlighten: I have just consumed 1,100 calories with almost no nutritional value (milk has a LITTLE calcium, but it’s actually far from the best source for it).  I get 1,451 allotted calories per day.  That means that it’s now almost 7AM and I have 351 calories remaining for the entire day if I don’t want to go over.  Which basically means I’m going over today, probably by a lot.

A binge feels great while you’re doing it, after it you feel sick – emotionally and physically.  Right now it’s like having a doughy rock in my stomach that’s so nauseating it’s making my throat ache, go figure the physics behind that one.  Worse than that I know that I’m a failure yet again.

As I’ve mentioned before I have a normal stomach and normal hunger impulses, so when I overeat it hurts just like it would for a thin person, and that’s combined with the emotional guilt of knowing that all the hard work I did that day, week, month is now gone.

I would NEVER do this, but I understand why people become bulimic.  It does cross my mind that one quick trip to the bathroom and a minute of unpleasantness would undo what I’ve just done to myself.

Right now it feels like getting through every hour without a binge is a victory, some days it’s every minute.  Right now my resistance was lowered by exhaustion.  One of the “keep you alive” systems that our bodies possess is to hunt for energy whenever possible.  When denied sleep, the hunger impulse will ramp up to try to compensate for the lost energy you should have gotten from resting.  Tonight, that’s what felled me.  Or I guess its morning now.

Later I’m probably going to regret blogging when I’m this strung out and exhausted.  Right now?  Meh.

Glee: Good and Bad

I freely admit that I’m a Gleek, a big fan of the TV show Glee which has been on for two seasons now since 2009.  I’m a big enough addict that I just re-watched the last season finale to get a bit of a happy song and dance fix.  I also confess that I download the music and sing it in my car.

The writers of Glee have a lot of good things going for them, they present a persistent message of hope, courage, friendship and understanding between different people.

They have the balls to include in their permanent cast not one, but two overweight characters who not only get air time – they both have love interests.  They touch on the fact that these characters are overweight, but it’s not the ONLY facet of who they are.  They’re also talented, confident, and dimensional.  They’re fully realized people.

Glee has a gay character whose father is a love letter to what caring and understanding parents should and could be.

They have a character who has Downs Syndrome, played by a young actress who really does have Downs Syndrome.  She’s on the Cheerleading squad.  She is never the butt of jokes.

The writers of Glee love everybody.

Well, almost everybody.

The writers of Glee do not love me.

It’s very difficult to be so inspired, get so much joy, shed happy tears and jam so much over something that’s written by people who despise me.

There is only one time you see cruel, misunderstanding parents and mean spirited, nasty caricatures of people rather than developed characters.  There’s only one group who receives blatant, cruel ridicule on the show – that would be characters who the writers define as “Christians”.

Need examples?  Quinn’s parents, who throw her their daughter out of their home for being pregnant and turn their back on her.  You might be tempted to say hey, there are plenty of parents who do behave that badly.  That’s true.  There are also plenty of parents who, upon learning their child is gay, treat them like absolute crap – but as I mentioned above that particular character’s dad is written like the poster child for good parents everywhere.  Of course he’s a good guy, he’s not religious.

A judge at one of the singing competitions is a Catholic nun.  She’s a nun not because she’s actually, you know, religious or anything – but because she used to be a stripper and she needed somewhere to go.  This is supposed to be hilarious.

Then there’s the “Christian” school choir who competes against our heroes by singing a poorly written song called, “Jesus is my friend” like a bunch of psychotic, frozen-smiled escapees from the Barney Dinosaur show.  If they wanted to put a Christian school choir in there, there are probably a hundred thousand well written, rocking contemporary Christian songs they could have used for them instead of making up something so stiff, frozen and outright bad.  But since the whole purpose was to depict Christian school kids as insane little robots that wouldn’t have been as “funny”.

I’m not even going to get into the Sarah Palin knockoff character, it was nauseating enough that I couldn’t watch that scene all the way through.  Lets face it, I can’t really get through anything all the way through that features Kathy Griffin.

I love Glee, but the people who write Glee make it abundantly clear that they hate me in return.

It makes me a little angry, far more than that – it hurts.

Farmer's Market / Garden Report

I hate inflation.  Part of the reason going to the Farmer's Market was cool was because it was so reasonably priced, I've noticed that this year it's just as expensive as the grocery store if not more so.  Now the main appeal is really fresh food and supporting my local growers, which are both still incentive enough to get me there, but I miss the deals.

It's late enough in the season that the fruits have started to show up, so today I got "Tango Mango Peaches" which look like so:

The flavor is awesome.  Light and sweet with a very slight tough of tartness and hints of mango.  The name is pretty spot on with it's description.  Plus they look fun - like little squashie doughnuts.

This is not diet friendly but I couldn't resist.  There's a baker that comes to the Market each week selling breads, cakes, home made cookies and such.  They make this stuff called "Olive Rosemary Bread".  I seriously wish I had smell-o-vision so your nose could enjoy the wonderfulness along with me.  It's crusty, it's olivey, it's chewy, it's soooooooo so good...

My own garden is having a bit of a weird summer.  The heat has killed my cilantro completely, I think I was able to harvest it once before this happened.  My dill is dying a slow and painful death right behind it, but I'm hoping to get one more handful to make cucumber dill soup with before I give up and pull it out.

The basil is flourishing.  Apparently it likes to fry.

The tomatoes are alive and just now starting to come in, here's the first one I've harvested:

They're red, and firm, but very small.  I don't know if that's the heat or just the breed I selected.  I'm inclined to think somethings not right though since the name of the breed is "Big Boys".

Lastly, something very, very strange is going on with my jalapenos.

Summer Cooking is Cool Cooking

[Bwahahahaha! Carolyn has given me contributor access to her blog. I can now inundate you with vegetarian recipes. ~ Joanna]

This summer I’m experimenting with container gardening. My original plan was to have a big pot of cherry tomatoes and maybe a little basil. I planted a few plants and was happy. Then a friend of mine, who is a professional gardener, gave me 4 indeterminate tomato plants that she had leftover from work. Now every morning I’m outside watering three overflowing pots of tomatoes. (In retrospect, I should have planted the larger tomato plants in larger pots, but this was all an experiment. Next year will be even better.)

The cherry tomatoes are ripening up now while the indeterminate tomatoes are still mostly green. But there’s a magical thing about tomatoes; under ripe ones are just as edible as fully ripe ones. I was craving fried green tomatoes the other day, but the weather has been ridiculously hot. Turning on the oven was out of the question. I turned that green tomato craving toward gazpacho.

Other ingredients were picked up at the local farmer’s market. I couldn’t find any yellow or orange bell peppers, so I opted for a young green pepper. This makes for a sharper flavor (as orange and yellow peppers are much sweeter), but I’m still pleased. Also, I opted to omit the parsley. It also is an ingredient meant to counter balance the spicier flavors, but I didn’t want to buy a bundle of parsley for one recipe. I figured a slightly larger cucumber would do.

Aren't they pretty?

I made the soup early Saturday afternoon and let it refrigerate until today. It’s spicy and cool and wonderful. I’d love to have this with a side of grilled pineapple and miniature black bean burgers with a spicy mayo dipping sauce but instead I’m at work with rye crackers and a fresh grapefruit. The fancier meal will have to wait for another day.

Avocado and Green Tomato Gazpacho

• 3 medium-sized (3-inch diameter) green tomatoes, cored and diced
  
• 1 small (or half a medium) orange or yellow bell pepper, cored and minced
  
• 1 medium-sized (7-inch) cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
  
• A handful of flat-leaf parsley
  
• A handful of cilantro
  
• 1 medium-sized ripe avocado, peeled, pitted and diced
  
• 1 medium clove garlic, minced or pressed
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste)
  
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  
• 2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  
• 1 teaspoon sugar or light-colored honey
  
• 1 cup cold water
  
• Black pepper and cayenne to taste
  
• Up to 4 tablespoons fresh lime juice (to taste)

Combine everything in a large bowl and stir to mix well. Using an immersion blender or a regular stand blender, puree all or part of the soup, as desired. Transfer to a container with a lid, cover tightly and chill until very cold. Serve cold — plain or topped with tortilla chips. Makes 4 to 6 servings. Pretty and green.

(This recipe by Mollie Katzen was published in the Washington Times. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/14/avocado-tomato-gazpacho.)