Only fools Russian….
I’m going to be 25 this June. I’m still single with no prospects and no dependents. I’m renting a room in an overpriced Bay Area apartment. My mom and stepdad are within “I’m crying on the phone because there’s a spider in my bathtub” range. My mother was 25 years old when she had me. My mother was married; my mother owned a house and she lived further than 45 minutes away from her parents. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that part of me gets overwhelmed when I think about how far behind I feel in relation to this. When I was half my age I would have told you I planned to be having my first child by now too. At 20 I would have told you I should be getting married at least around now with plans to have a child in two years or so. Now standing here at the precipice of being halfway through my twenties I feel like marriage, kids, the picket fence…they are years away—if ever.
Despite the fact that the only thing I know I can plan is for life to upset my plans, I still have all these guidelines for the love and marriage thing. The underlying strategy to these guidelines follows that old idiom “only fools rush in.” Marriage would follow years of dating—children should be held off until the marriage is at least two years tested. A home should only be bought in a neighborhood that’s been thoroughly vetted for these theoretical children’s future education from K through 12. Definitely can’t have a kid until I’m ready to simultaneously start saving for their college fund! All these well intentioned plans that are meant to keep me safe and secure and probably will ensure I never do any of the above.
At what point does this need for security become an excuse to not do any of it? Is the truth really that I’m just bloody effing terrified of these very permanent life changes? Will I ever be as brave as my mother was at my age?
I mean I say I’m focusing on my career. It’s true but if I really wanted to, if I really wanted to I could set aside the money and raise a kid. I could do it. 
I’m physically at the right stage. I’ve got a real job with real future prospects. I’m just too damn selfish, too damn scared and well I would ideally like to have a life partner to raise a child with so I’m not really equipped but still…I could do it on my own. Is there an opposite phrase for “Only Fools Rush In” something like “and even bigger fools need to be pulled in kicking and screaming?” I know plenty of people who do…well the opposite of what I think should be done and they do it quite well.
Am I just making excuses hidden under the guise of wisdom? What do you think? Do you have similar “rules” for planning your future? Oddly enough this all popped into my head because sometimes when I go for a run at work I find reruns of Roseanne on and I’ll watch them. As far as sitcoms go this show really was something special. It was actually clever, had continuity and managed to be thought provoking at times. It wasn’t just some crass weekly potato about blue collar, white trash in Middle America. The opening is always the family seated around a dinner table, interacting and loving each other. I do have a craving for that in my life.
But until I’m ready to give up these selfish ways of my single youth, I can only supply the family meal and not the family. That’s where this dish comes in—nothing screams Sunday night family dinner more than a classic from my cultural heritage: Beef Stroganoff. The Jewish side of my family comes from the Ukraine/Russia Ashkenazi tribe and despite having never been to the “mother country” I seem to have retained some sort of cultural tastebuds. My passion for fermented vegetable juices, cabbage soups, beets…not exactly American. This main course will appeal to non-Russian Jews though as it’s really just a big pot of pasta, meat and creamy mushroom sauce. In fact it should appeal to everyone BUT jews since as we all know mixing dairy and meat is decidedly not-kosher. Oops. Well like I said…I’m Jewish. I don’t keep Kosher year round…and I’m fairly certain Nana would approve of this meal. “If it’s clean, it’s Kosher”
The flavor is OFF THE CHARTS out of this world amazing. I know it’s far from the healthy food I eat most of the time, but this is exactly the sort of thing I crave when I really want to indulge once in a while. It’s warm and filling in your stomach. A more “Russian” approach might be to spike the sauce with vodka instead of red wine, but I guess the one thing I didn’t inherit in my cultural genetics was a love for that fermented potato juice. It’s just…gross. I think the red wine adds more body to the sauce–some cognac would be nice too. Play with it if you like but just remember this: it’s not stroganoff without the mushrooms. Yes mushrooms. It’s just not stroganoff without them.
“Rush-in” Beef Stroganoff
An Olivia Original – to serve 4 Read more
Even so I always refrained from using racial slurs or references to homosexuality as part of my salty repertoire. For my generation avoiding some of the more notorious and long-standing racial slurs has been taught from birth. We know better than to use Huck Finn language, the terms our grandparents will still use to our horror, but I was always frustrated by the acceptance of terms like “Gay” and “Fag” as a young child. I would lecture my peers, practically handing out S.P.E.W. badges in my more righteous moments, and even refused to associate with kids who didn’t understand why it was wrong.
I’m not about to stop cursing anytime soon. I find it too cathartic. Maybe I’ll have an epiphany about that sometime in the future. I can’t make any promises. I also am not going to stop thinking that shallow, lazy and willfully ignorant people are annoying. I simply cannot abide useless people. I will stop using the word retard in a manner that implies someone born with an intellectual disability is useless. There are those born disadvantaged and those who simply choose not to use the healthy brains they were given. When so many in the handicapped community work to overcome the obstacles they were given, not only was I being insulting but I was being inaccurate in using “retard” to describe someone who chooses to be lazy. The only thing I hate more than being an insensitive jerk is being a wrong, insensitive jerk. I was wrong to lower those with born mental disadvantages to be on the same level as creeps and lazy assholes. When I saw it from that perspective, I was appalled at myself.
Then I thought about it some more and realized that if you consider insects “people too” you basically have to desist from eating anything manufactured. In fact even growing a backyard garden and employing some organic tricks for pest control would mean impacting and killing the insect population should be disallowed. At what point do you draw the line? In a normal day any plant processing your vegan agave nectar is going to kill a thousand insects simply as a side effect of running the plant. Bugs get in the gears; bugs get in the food; bugs get everywhere and they get filtered out. So I can’t really get on board with the anti-honey vegans. The issue of animal-cruelty hypocrisy has been pretty prescient lately when PETA was exposed for “putting down” up to 
I accept that in the natural order of things some animals eat other animals—and that I am one of those predators. That doesn’t limit my desire to see these animals raised humanely and slaughtered as painlessly as possible. I think of this way: torture is often seen as something worse than death. Keeping someone in a state of constant pain and agony until they desire to no longer exist is horrible and overall we tend to object to torture more vehemently than even death itself. I accept this because, as with the honey issue, finding a way to eliminate any negative effect of our human need to eat on other living creatures is impossible. I’m not convinced that honey farming, especially the small scale local level, is particularly harmful to the mental state of the insects. I do buy locally sourced honey and not just because I try to be a locavore, but because eating local honey has been demonstrated to help with allergies—local pollens and all that.
‘So it is,’ they answered, ‘But we call it lembas or way bread, and it is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.’
I don’t necessarily believe in veganism as a sustainable whole-lifestyle choice. At least not for me. I certainly think it has applications; it’s a good diet model for people with serious obesity health concerns. With respect to animal welfare it is possible to find animal products from humanely raised animals so I don’t think someone has to cut all cheese out of their diets for this reason. As for killing animals for food…well I don’t have a problem with that aspect of it but I’m not going to judge anyone who does. Still that only means that people really need to go vegetarian if they are controlling where all the animal byproducts they consume come from. But again that would be at home. I really doubt Denny’s is getting their half & half from free-range, grass grazing cows
Yet still it has happened. I’m a social vegan. Oh you’ve never heard that term? Well basically when I eat out I stay on a vegan diet but at home I’m happy to go about my omnivore ways. Strange isn’t it? Typically you’ll hear about people doing the opposite—eating vegan at home but relaxing out in company because eating vegan socially is fucking hard. But my reasons make sense I swear… See here’s the thing I don’t have a problem with eating meat or byproducts from livestock. I do have serious problems with how the majority of livestock in this country is raised. I object to it on a number of levels and decided that if I’m going to be morally consistent at all then I need to start really watching what I eat when I’m eating out because that is where I have no control over where my food came from. Thus when I’m at home and I’ve bought the food myself, I’ll grill up a steak and slather it with blue cheese and runny quail egg. But if I’m out grabbing a bite at some corner diner? Odds are I’m asking for salad and a fruit cup. So what prompted this?
On one hand I’ve always been “so serious” about perceived injustice. Even as a child I wanted to save the world. I guess mom shoulda named me Ka-ka-ka-Katie. **TRIVIA TIME: Name that movie and win a cookie! PS: my last trivia winner still needs to email me his info so I can mail out a treat! Hey you, yeah I’m talking to you, send me your info and any allergens to my blog’s email addy: rollingsreliableblog at g mai l dot com** I do think part of it is that I’m experiencing more of life rather than reading about it. There are issues that seem far less important than they did and others that seem to be so ignored by people around me that I want to scream. Sometimes I just want to get out a drum and hold it in someone’s face and yell “WAKE UP!” The apathy and willful ignorance that serve as a constant state of existence for some…I don’t understand it. I never have. Some stupid little voice inside me just won’t shut up and I can’t sit by the sidelines and watch and do nothing. I have to do something—even if it’s just letting the people I want to defend know I’m here. I have to do something.
I noticed that there are people in this world just hellbent upon making it a miserable place for the rest of us and I have no desire to be around them. Thankfully this is a minority of folks and I find that most people are generally decent and well intentioned. Even so these decent people have a tendency to “kid around” to such an extent that I always feel very distant from them. The joking, the kidding, the teasing…I don’t know it just gets old after a while. I’ve always been one to provide a good ribbing and I like to think that I take as well as I give—but I’m more apt to get annoyed when the target is someone other than myself. I’ll go up in arms twice as quickly when the butt of the joke isn’t my own. I’d like to think with all the squats I’ve been doing my own ass is pretty springy and most stuff bounces off of it. Provided I’ve had enough sleep and coffee that day anyway. No coffee = no sense of humor. Word to the wise and future significant others. Take for example this joke which I’ve heard far too many times and which seems particularly relevant after the flurry of rape culture commentary in the past few weeks:
Then of course I realized upon getting home that I hadn’t really thought about what to blog once Passover was well, over. I mean I had such a convenient topic for posts and now pbbbbbblt total brain fart. So you’re getting just a random emotional download today. Sorry guys. There’s just nothing clever going on up here after work, yoga, taking care of my dog, improv class and studying for my clinical trial certification…. I feel like the most boring busy person in the world. But I love every second of it. I know it’s sick and twisted in a masochistic way but I’m just naturally happier when I’m juggling. Stillness outside the yoga room drives me up the wall. I’ve been wondering why.
Which means it’s a perfect time to talk about the Charoset on the Seder Plate. So far we’ve explored the two vegetables, both fairly bitter, and the oh-so -delightfully constrictive Matzo. You might be thinking that this whole thing pretty much sucks and why in the world would you want any part in it? Well the Charoset is kind of the antithesis of these things. It’s a sweet mixture of nuts, fruit, honey and wine and it’s absolutely everyone’s favorite thing on the Seder plate. After dipping our horseradish in salt water to remember the bitterness of slavery, we then dip a second piece in this mixture to symbolize the sweetness of freedom. This is in fact the subject of the third question the child is supposed to ask:
“Feed me with apples and with raisin-cakes;
Yeast, the microorganism which causes bread to rise, also is what breaks down wheat and gives bread flavor. As such traditional Matzo is pretty damn flavorless. Passover Matzo is made of only flour and water—nothing else. The rest of the year you can buy some pretty damn delicious versions (sour cream and onion egg matzo is delicious) but for Passover the plain kind is all that is allowed. Additionally no other leavened grain is to be eaten. Grains include: wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye. These grains and anything produced with leavening are called “Chametz” and they are forbidden. Thus no pizza and no beer.
At one point in my life I would become essentially paralyzed by these problems and that fed into some nasty anxiety and depression. Now I’m at least able to function day to day without falling to pieces. Yet again another thing I attribute to…Bikram yoga. I know I know I promise this post isn’t about that AGAIN. But I do have to say that it’s the one thing that’s helped me learn how to better manage these situations. After all you have to learn how to refocus when you are trying to balance on your tip toes in a room that hot.
