As we reach the pivotal 50%, halfway point, hump day, etc. I have come upon some recent ruminations and observations which I'd love to share with you guys.
1) One of the reasons why I hate this so much is that choices are literally taken away from me. Now I know that I remove maybe 10% of menu items because of their dairy or cheesy-ness, but that is by my own personal choice, and aversion to dairy. When 60-70% of a menu is just not available to me, it's really frustrating. The loss of meat doesnt seem as bad when there are delicious alternatives waiting, but usually when faced with duck, veal, and lamb on a menu, I just feel like throwing back my head and weeping. (Which, if you've been along for the ride, you probably have seen).
2) I have saved a LOT of money. Let me explain why:
2a - Vegetarian options are cheaper - I guess because of the market prices for tofu and veggies, versus a cow and chicken, I really save quite a bit of money when I go out. Additionally, I can't share a lot of meals with others (as I used to) so instead of having a bit of 4 meals, I usually have 1 meal all to myself.
2b - Because of reason #1, I am not as eager to go out to eat as I usually am. When I'm at home, it's just that much easier to be faced with only the ingredients I can consume. Also, when I purchase groceries, the unit cost of stuff spread out over a week will cost me usually less than what I used to spend in one meal!
3) See reason 2b.. when I don't go out, it doesn't mean I don't want to spend time with my friends. So instead of a night out, we'll cook together for a day in (see Sunday brunch and the delicious binge that ensued). Put down better friendships and more adventures as reason #3!
4) I still love. LOVE. LOVE. meat.
In the following 20 days, I still have ahead of me:
1) Another trip to NYC!
2) A guest post by Stego about his meat-less experience
3) The home stretch.. 7 days of pure vegetarianism at its roots - no meat, no fish. The horror!
4) The anticipation of my first meat meal
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Day 19: My Introduction to Soy Chicken (and other short stories)
Today I met up with my fellow dinos: P, J, D, and G. All participants (runners + driver) in the Ragnar Relay, we met to strategize and obviously eat.. as these are quite frankly, our favorite activities.
First, I'm proud to say, P and I did a short run through West LA to get our hearts pumping (steep hills up make for scary flrunning down. Flrunning, for your information, means that you're running so fast you literally have to flap your arms a little bit to keep yourself from tumbling). Then it was onto dinner. Except.. all the dinos in my group LOVE meat. Imagine to our horror when we tried to find a place that everyone wanted to eat! Trust me.. this isn't as easy as it might seem. Each person has had lunch already at a certain genre that they don't want to re-eat, each person has had dinner the night before at a certain genre that they don't want to re-eat, and Thursday nights have still quite the long line and wait (and at 8 pm, this was not an option to 2 very hungry runners subsisting off of one orange and a coke zero).
So as we were driving around, we came upon this cute little Indian Restaurant. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that this hotspot was actually a full vegetarian joint.
In essence, what you do is choose from a variety of different dishes. You pick 3, and a choice of bread (naan, garlic naan, or roti) and get yogurt, salad, and voila! A fantastic dinner. Among the choices were jackfruit (something that was new to me), Spicy Chickpeas, and lo and behold.. Soy Chicken Tikka Masala. I couldn't believe when I saw this. I know that Morningstar has produced plenty of meat-less options, but to have it transformed into a age-old meal! If only they had soy chicken tikka masala kati rolls...drool.
Piling up on our mini dishes, we came away with our food, which turned out into a mini-feast: This is before the garlic naan and the mango juice. Really quite delicious! I will say this though.. after 19 days of the "land-meat-free" diet, this came as a great find for Stego & myself.. while to my other dino friends, it was a pretty big shock without any type of meat available. It really brought to my mind the changes that have quietly occurred behind the scenes during my fast thus far.
To be discussed in the next post. but first, a little blast to the past for you all (credit to P for this one).. who remembers the sham-WOW?
First, I'm proud to say, P and I did a short run through West LA to get our hearts pumping (steep hills up make for scary flrunning down. Flrunning, for your information, means that you're running so fast you literally have to flap your arms a little bit to keep yourself from tumbling). Then it was onto dinner. Except.. all the dinos in my group LOVE meat. Imagine to our horror when we tried to find a place that everyone wanted to eat! Trust me.. this isn't as easy as it might seem. Each person has had lunch already at a certain genre that they don't want to re-eat, each person has had dinner the night before at a certain genre that they don't want to re-eat, and Thursday nights have still quite the long line and wait (and at 8 pm, this was not an option to 2 very hungry runners subsisting off of one orange and a coke zero).
So as we were driving around, we came upon this cute little Indian Restaurant. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that this hotspot was actually a full vegetarian joint.
In essence, what you do is choose from a variety of different dishes. You pick 3, and a choice of bread (naan, garlic naan, or roti) and get yogurt, salad, and voila! A fantastic dinner. Among the choices were jackfruit (something that was new to me), Spicy Chickpeas, and lo and behold.. Soy Chicken Tikka Masala. I couldn't believe when I saw this. I know that Morningstar has produced plenty of meat-less options, but to have it transformed into a age-old meal! If only they had soy chicken tikka masala kati rolls...drool.
Piling up on our mini dishes, we came away with our food, which turned out into a mini-feast: This is before the garlic naan and the mango juice. Really quite delicious! I will say this though.. after 19 days of the "land-meat-free" diet, this came as a great find for Stego & myself.. while to my other dino friends, it was a pretty big shock without any type of meat available. It really brought to my mind the changes that have quietly occurred behind the scenes during my fast thus far.To be discussed in the next post. but first, a little blast to the past for you all (credit to P for this one).. who remembers the sham-WOW?
Day 18: The Rube Goldberg Experiment (to music)
From Wikipedia:
A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately over engineered machine that performs a simple task in a very complex fashion, usually includig a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg.
This band is incredibly talented (if you don't remember them, think back to that fantastic treadmill video) - and doesn't get enough exposure if you ask me. I just read an article that although this video is getting a ridiculous amount of hits.. its record sales in the US aren't even hitting 25,000. Time to support their amazing and innovative stuff!
A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately over engineered machine that performs a simple task in a very complex fashion, usually includig a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg.
This band is incredibly talented (if you don't remember them, think back to that fantastic treadmill video) - and doesn't get enough exposure if you ask me. I just read an article that although this video is getting a ridiculous amount of hits.. its record sales in the US aren't even hitting 25,000. Time to support their amazing and innovative stuff!
Day 17: Running Interlude
As I've said, my secondary goal (aside from talking about the meat-less goal with pretty much everyone all the time) is to get fit in time for the Ragnar Relay. I feel like with about just a little more than half way to go, and also because I honestly cannot remember what I ate yesterday(when you work from home, your lunches and dinners become somewhat a mixture of bagels for breakfast, something thrown together for lunch, and ramen or wine for dinner) I will use the rest of these week's posts to talk about... exercise.
Or in my case, lack of. I just got the official email assigning the runners (there are 12 of us on the team) the legs and their difficulty. Mine are 4.8 (medium), 3.8 (easy), and 5.5 (hard). I should also mention that I am Runner 12.
This means that I will not only end on the hardest, longest leg of the race, but I will also end the race. As in.. run in all my sweaty, painful glory to cross (or crawl, whichever is more convenient) to the finish line. My teammates assure me that they'll all run the last 300 yards with me, but I'm equally as confident when I tell them that they won't want to get a single yard close to me when they see the agony on my face climbing (or limping) up that last hill.
The fun part of the race is that 6 of us will all get to be hanging out in a van for close to 36 sweat-filled hours. I swear, if there is even a DROP of bengay somewhere... someone is going to feel cold Gatorade drip on their face as they try to sleep.
Anyhow.. I drove to LA last night to keep Stego company, and to see some of my buddies to discuss the race and the logistics. Next stop.. LA!
Or in my case, lack of. I just got the official email assigning the runners (there are 12 of us on the team) the legs and their difficulty. Mine are 4.8 (medium), 3.8 (easy), and 5.5 (hard). I should also mention that I am Runner 12.
This means that I will not only end on the hardest, longest leg of the race, but I will also end the race. As in.. run in all my sweaty, painful glory to cross (or crawl, whichever is more convenient) to the finish line. My teammates assure me that they'll all run the last 300 yards with me, but I'm equally as confident when I tell them that they won't want to get a single yard close to me when they see the agony on my face climbing (or limping) up that last hill.
The fun part of the race is that 6 of us will all get to be hanging out in a van for close to 36 sweat-filled hours. I swear, if there is even a DROP of bengay somewhere... someone is going to feel cold Gatorade drip on their face as they try to sleep.
Anyhow.. I drove to LA last night to keep Stego company, and to see some of my buddies to discuss the race and the logistics. Next stop.. LA!
Day 16: Wow, she doesn't eat out ALL the time?
So the common theme in this blog is the various food that I take when I go out. In fact, probably 95% of the posts have been around restaurant-created food. So when I write about a home-cooked meal, most of my (dear) friends suspect the following:
Yes, folks. We had some citrus-dijon cod, pepper salad, and a small bowl of asparagus (yes! this was my contribution! and incidentally, my best dish. Garlic, you are too kind to me).
1) I have not cooked any of the meal - instead it was Stego
2) I ordered in and pretended it was home-cooked
3) I flew my mother in from SF and had her cook (by the way, I don't know if I've yet said this, but my mother is hands down the best chef in all of America. Possibly the world. I'm not biased.)
However, some of those are just silly, for the following reasons:
1) If I order in, I'm usually not that smart. You'd see a napkin with the restaurant logo somewhere, or those cheap wooden chopsticks. Dead giveaway.
2) My mother has gleefully told me that the day I moved away, it has become my responsibility to cook dinner for her instead of the other way around. True story; my brother and I cooked Christmas dinner for my parents last year. They entrusted ME with the menu. We did couscous and greek chicken. Worked great with the Christmas snow falling in the Northern California area.
Hence.. default to option #1. Stego was able to work from home on Monday, and as a fantastic dino boyfriend he is, he threw together the random food lying around our kitchen to create the following meal:
Yes, folks. We had some citrus-dijon cod, pepper salad, and a small bowl of asparagus (yes! this was my contribution! and incidentally, my best dish. Garlic, you are too kind to me). We took a recipe from our local grocery store which discussed the various ways to prepare this slightly tougher-ish fish, which included the mixture of dijon mustard + orange. While this may (and still does) seem a strange entanglement, nowadays anything is fair game (may I refer you to Kermit the Frog & Gaga, Giraffes & Otters, Tequila & ANYTHING?)
Anyhow, these kind of meals are my favorite, because this directly faces our 100" wide projector screen, which serves as our psuedo movie theater, where we can watch our favorite shows on our couch in our PJs.
Bon Appetit!
Day 15: Return to California (at least temporarily)
UPDATE GALORE!
After a bit of a hectic (read: Bad Weather + Poor Handling = Never flying Delta again, and falling in love with JetBlue) re-routes and mis-starts, my expected Saturday night flight (landing in San Diego at 11:30 pm) turned into a Sunday afternoon flight into LAX with an additional train ride, getting me into Solana Beach at approximately 6:30 pm on Sunday. Very sadly, I missed Stego's race (he placed 40th out of 250, fast guy) but I did catch a gorgeous sunset and a dinner at a little tapas-like bistro.
As we both are adhering to the no-land-meat policy, we chose some hummus with flatbread along with some new england crab cakes:
Yum! Although the hummus was not like my usual indulgence (and when I say indulgence I mean that I'm getting used to rolling around the pita in the Mediterrean Hummus from Trader Joe's like that child Pigpen in the Charlie Brown comics. Yup. Think that kid in dirt. That's how my pita feels when it touches the surface of that hummus), I found it quite tasty after going almost 10 hours without human food (read: salted peanuts and pretzels do not count). The crab cakes were also good but I tend to prefer them really creamy and flaky; these had a lot of lumps but Stego enjoyed them and I let him take most of it.
Since I had by this point inhaled almost 2 waffles-worth of pita (think big, 50 pound waffles) - we decided to split the fish special, which was grilled mahi-mahi.
Oh mahi... how you never fail me. This one was particularly good because there was some sort of chili-aioli (and believe you me, I really love anything with aioli in it because it implies some sort of tangy tasty goodness..) lightly spread on the roll. This morsel also had tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, staples that should never be forgotten with a fish sandwich. In my mind, it nicely complements the .. well.. fishy part. As you can see, I didn't actually remember to take a picture until after I pretty much shoved half of it into my mouth into one big bite. Whoops.
Afterwards (no pictures of this) but Stego and I took a nice little walk along the ocean. For anyone who is around this area, Solana Beach is great for post-dinner walking... we even found a swingset that literally sits at the top of a hill leading to the beach. So at night-time, you can swing and it seems like you are going into the stars! A very heady (and slightly tilty) way to end Sunday night.
After a bit of a hectic (read: Bad Weather + Poor Handling = Never flying Delta again, and falling in love with JetBlue) re-routes and mis-starts, my expected Saturday night flight (landing in San Diego at 11:30 pm) turned into a Sunday afternoon flight into LAX with an additional train ride, getting me into Solana Beach at approximately 6:30 pm on Sunday. Very sadly, I missed Stego's race (he placed 40th out of 250, fast guy) but I did catch a gorgeous sunset and a dinner at a little tapas-like bistro.
As we both are adhering to the no-land-meat policy, we chose some hummus with flatbread along with some new england crab cakes:
Yum! Although the hummus was not like my usual indulgence (and when I say indulgence I mean that I'm getting used to rolling around the pita in the Mediterrean Hummus from Trader Joe's like that child Pigpen in the Charlie Brown comics. Yup. Think that kid in dirt. That's how my pita feels when it touches the surface of that hummus), I found it quite tasty after going almost 10 hours without human food (read: salted peanuts and pretzels do not count). The crab cakes were also good but I tend to prefer them really creamy and flaky; these had a lot of lumps but Stego enjoyed them and I let him take most of it.
Since I had by this point inhaled almost 2 waffles-worth of pita (think big, 50 pound waffles) - we decided to split the fish special, which was grilled mahi-mahi.
Oh mahi... how you never fail me. This one was particularly good because there was some sort of chili-aioli (and believe you me, I really love anything with aioli in it because it implies some sort of tangy tasty goodness..) lightly spread on the roll. This morsel also had tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, staples that should never be forgotten with a fish sandwich. In my mind, it nicely complements the .. well.. fishy part. As you can see, I didn't actually remember to take a picture until after I pretty much shoved half of it into my mouth into one big bite. Whoops.
Afterwards (no pictures of this) but Stego and I took a nice little walk along the ocean. For anyone who is around this area, Solana Beach is great for post-dinner walking... we even found a swingset that literally sits at the top of a hill leading to the beach. So at night-time, you can swing and it seems like you are going into the stars! A very heady (and slightly tilty) way to end Sunday night.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Day 14: Dim Sum (and then some)
I couldn't help myself with that title. On Saturday, after a long night at the bar/club/chicken and rice stand where I was taunted by my oh-so-wonderful friends, we ended up in Flushing for the night. The next morning, I dragged my very tired self to Dim Sum in Flushing. Being that weekends are prime time for the Tapas of Asia (as I like to call it), we beat the lunch crowd and got there just in time for all the goodies to be rolled past us.
Now, I have to say one thing about dimsum. For some reason, I had always assumed that a large majority of the food was centered around seafood. Shrimp rolls, Fried Shrimp Balls, etc. However, it turned out I was vastly mistaken. Congee had pork mixed in. Tons of pork dishes were wheeled by my sad unsuspecting nose. And even Chicken Feet, strange as it sounds, began to hold a big appeal.
We ended up with a mixture of items, which were placed at our table. How delicious! My favorite thing to do is take a ton of red sauce, lightly sprinkle it with soy sauce, and dunk my shrimp wrap/dumpling/etc. unceremoniously in it until it too becomes a nice reddish hue. Fantastic!
What also struck my fancy was the ginormous crab that was chilling out in their tank. Kudos for the freshness of their seafood.. but man that guy could star in the next Terminator movie.
Great food for a great price.. I'd always recommend Dimsum, especially for a rainy day where you feel like eating a lot!
Now, I have to say one thing about dimsum. For some reason, I had always assumed that a large majority of the food was centered around seafood. Shrimp rolls, Fried Shrimp Balls, etc. However, it turned out I was vastly mistaken. Congee had pork mixed in. Tons of pork dishes were wheeled by my sad unsuspecting nose. And even Chicken Feet, strange as it sounds, began to hold a big appeal.
We ended up with a mixture of items, which were placed at our table. How delicious! My favorite thing to do is take a ton of red sauce, lightly sprinkle it with soy sauce, and dunk my shrimp wrap/dumpling/etc. unceremoniously in it until it too becomes a nice reddish hue. Fantastic!
What also struck my fancy was the ginormous crab that was chilling out in their tank. Kudos for the freshness of their seafood.. but man that guy could star in the next Terminator movie.
Great food for a great price.. I'd always recommend Dimsum, especially for a rainy day where you feel like eating a lot!
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