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Posts tagged ‘omg’

May 8

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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

Apr 30

Think Think Tuesday: Raising the Steaks

What if I told you that it is possible for you to lose anywhere from 3.5 to 7 pounds in a year without changing a single meal in your typical week and without adding exercise to your daily routine?  If I told you that you can eat just as many pounds of beef in a year and lose weight simply by changing how that beef is farmed?  Do I have your attention now?  It’s a common misconception that beef is bad for you.  Beef is not bad for you.  Beef is in fact quite good for you.  It’s the kind of beef you eat that matters.  I posted last week a little bit about the corn industry and why I have serious issues with factory farmed beef.  Today I just wanted to share some interesting facts with you about the quality of corn raised beef versus grass fed beef through the simple lens of weight loss.  Just looking at our waistbands (ignoring ecology, biology and economic factors) the case for grass fed beef is far from lean.

Commercial beef has on average 8.5 grams of fat per 3 oz serving, commercial chicken has 2.5g when you average the white and dark meat.  How many grams of fat, on average, do you think grass feed beef has per 3 oz serving:

  1. 8.5 grams
  2. 5 grams
  3. 4 grams
  4. 2.5 grams

If you answered D you would be correct.  Grass fed beef, according to a 2002 study by the Journal of Animal Science, has as much fat as a commercially farmed chicken.  White meat will be a little less, dark meat actually much more, but on the whole that chicken has as much fat as your grass fed cow.  Okay great but what does this mean really in your diet?  Pardon me while we do some quick and dirty math to explain what these fat grams really mean.

A single hamburger patty from your typical McDonalds – according to their website – is 3.5 ounces and contains 9g of fat.  Okay my math says that should really round up to 10g but let’s go with 9.  At a ratio of approximately 3:1 that same burger, if made with grass fed beef, would contain only 3 grams of fat.  Sweet!  But…what does that really mean?

A single gram of fat is 9 calories.  That means you are getting 81 calories from fat in that McDonalds patty.  If you replaced that beef with grass fed, you would be getting only 27 calories from fat.  That’s a difference of 54 calories in the one burger.  Assuming you eat a single hamburger patty once a week…that’s 2800 calories in a year.  A single pound of fat is 3500 calories.  With the assumption that you eat only a single hamburger fast food patty a week, that’s almost a pound you could lose in year from simply switching from corn fed to grass fed beef.  And that’s a low estimate.

The reality?

On average ¼ of Americans consume at least one fast food/meal out in a week.  Various reports show that of those meals the average fast food consumer will eat 4 hamburgers in a week.  Doing that math it breaks down to 3.5 pounds you could lose in a year without changing the content of your diet—just by changing the quality of the beef you are eating and again that’s assuming your burger is a simple ¼lb patty.  Are you eating half pound burger?  Now that’s 7 pounds in a year.  That’s ignoring any other beef products you may be consuming.

This shit adds up.

And those fats you do get?  A 1998 study in the Journal of Animal Feed Science and Technology showed that the “good fats” needed in our diets versus saturated, make you big fats, are much higher in pastured animals than feedlot animals.  How much?  Try as many as 10 times more omega-3s in pastured, true free-range hen eggs versus factory farm, crammed in cages hens.  10 times more.  This applies to beef too.  In fact grass fed beef contains the ideal ratio of the heart-healthy omega fatty acids.  It’s perfectly balanced for our bodies.

But wait…there’s more!  Grass-fed beef is higher in cancer fighting fatty acids, in vitamins B and E as well as various minerals including calcium.  The milk from grass-fed beef can be as much as 4 times richer in vitamin E and this is because the grass that they eat, versus the corn, is that much more nutritious for the animals and therefore, for us.

So to sum up by switching to grass fed beef you could do all the of following without changing a single thing you actually eat:

  • Lose 3 to 7 pounds in a year (on average, for many this number would go up)
  • Increase your omega fatty acids – good for your heart
  • Increase additional healthy fats shown to reduce cancer risk
  • Increase your intake of calcium
  • Increase your intake of vitamin e

Now I know, I know.  Grass fed beef is expensive right?  Fine.  Here’s a recipe using grass fed flat-iron steak.  I was able to buy 8 ounces (2 servings) at whole foods for under 8 dollars.  Flat Iron is a really great cut of meat for a simple steak salad.  It’s no Filet Mignon or New York strip but when you slice it and pan sear it with the right seasonings it’s just as delicious.  It’s superior to ribeye that’s for sure.  Pair it with some greens and a perfect steak horseradish dressing?  You never knew getting skinny tasted soooooooo good.

Skinny Steak Salad with Horseradish Dressing

an Olivia Original Read more

Apr 22

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Muffin Monday: Going All Ameri-vegan

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?

Aside from some of the more well-known humane issues with modern animal husbandry, there are political ramifications that break my libertarian heart from the terrifying corn industry we’ve concocted to feed these animals.  The biologist in me abhors the antibiotic abuse and the nutritionist in me objects to the idea of eating such unhealthy meat when better options exist.  The environmentalist in me, who is a very small me all things considered, hates the waste and destruction the factory farms cause.  The agriculturalist and botanist in me hates the way monoculture is destroying our farmlands and finally the foodie in me bemoans the loss of variety of food monoculture causes.

 

Confused?  Don’t worry this week I’m going to take some pulpit time from my blog to break down some of my concerns to explain why these issues matter to me, why they might matter to you and try out some vegan recipes in honor of the Oakland Veg week happening here in Oakland.  http://oaklandveg.com/ It’s a pretty cool initiative sponsored in part by whole foods and a slew of local, organic, vegetarian companies. 

Hold on now Olivia.  If you’re eating vegan out, but omnivore when you stay in, then why bother with the vegan recipes? 

Well it’s a theme remember?  Plus I will admit that eating meat and dairy products that are only sourced from my hippie farms gets expensive.  I’m sure I’ll be eating more meals without them to save money so it’ll be good to have a few tricks up my sleeve for months when I just can’t afford free-range chicken every night of the week.  Plus it’s useful to know a good baking recipe for those days when you wanna make muffins but don’t have any eggs or butter on hand.  Like this classic recipe with a not-so classic vegan twist:

All Ameri-Vegan Apple Pie Muffins

Adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance Read more

Apr 18

Bread-Pudding it into perspective

I should note I wrote this just before the Waco disaster last night.  Like an hour before.

It’s hard for me to focus on anything but the news when something big and horrifying happens.  That’s why the blog goes dark usually in the day following a major even like what happened in Boston.  I just can’t seem to bring myself to write about anything other than the event that’s taken over news media…assuming I’m able to bring myself to write about it at all.  It really disturbs me too that my last post was literally about just enjoying something for its own beautiful sake to be marred by a mass bombing that is anything but beautiful.  Unfortunately as evident by this post I’m still unable to get to writing about anything until I talk about the giant elephant in the room.  So okay here’s my response to the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

First of all when I found out I was actually climbing onto the treadmill to do my daily run.  I usually get at least 2 miles in a day now—minimum of 1 even on days when I feel like shit—and let me tell you that running while watching the news about people who died while running is surreal.  I found myself wondering “should I be doing this?  Should I stop?  This feels disrespectful somehow.”  It was the most bewildering thing to be feeling when I was supposed to be getting exercise.  I don’t normally watch the televisions in the gym when I work out.  I really like zoning out to my music and daydreaming or feeling the “pavement” i.e. the treadmill track beneath my feet.  Obviously though when the tv is in front of your face and the words EXPLOSION streaming across it tends to grab your attention.

But here’s the really sick thing I feel about these events now.  As I was watching and looking for a death toll, seeing that it was at 2 I thought “oh well okay, it’s only a little bombing.”  WTF.  What kind of world do I live in where I even have that kind of reaction?  Were other people having any of the same thoughts as me?  See I actually pay attention to the news.  I’m a media hound.  I have google news tabs open my computer all the time.  Bombings like Boston are happening almost every day in poorer countries around the globe.  It almost strikes me as arrogant when people in the US are so shocked about one like this happening here.  We’re a big fucking target for disgruntled angry terrorists—foreign and homegrown alike.  Frankly I’m really surprised we don’t have more bombings here.  We certainly get enough shootings it seems like the next logical one-up in the mad man’s mind for media attention.  I found myself getting cynical about how this is going to be on everyone’s mind for the next month but no one seems to be aware that today for example, Egypt sent two rockets into Israel.  No one is probably aware that 182 people died in Afghanistan this month in bombings.  These events are so far removed and so common that I guess we just don’t pay attention.  But I do.  Ever since I was woken up by two very large plane crashes over a decade ago I can’t help but keep a beat on the pulse of this world and the pulse is explosive.  Turns out a few of my friends were having the same thoughts/feelings/reactions as me.  I wonder if it was like this before 9/11 for other generations or if this is the new norm for us who exist in a world without the twin towers.

I’m not ranting or raging though.  I get it.  I mean these other events are far removed from us. The world is smaller than it used to be but we’re still made up of a myriad of cultures—many far removed and still barely understand by the others.  The events that hit close to home are the ones that are going to grab our attention because it could be people we know, people we experience life with rather than read about.  As we evolve in our technological achievements we’re also going to evolve at getting better at killing each other so the bigger the BOOM and the closer we are to it, the more we’ll pay attention.  I totally get it.  It makes me happy too that the silver lining to these events is always the revelation of the strength of human spirit and the good things that are possible by people en masse as opposed to the bad things the mob mentality likes to bring out of us as well.  Two sides of the same coin—that’s humanity in a nutshell isn’t it?  We are capable of horrifying evil and astonishing kindness.

I just hope that I don’t get lost in the apathy between the two.  I think I’m okay though.  I still cried at Glee last week.  Yes motherfuckers I was on a treadmill watching the latest episode about the school shooting with tears streaming down my face so I know I’m not a robot yet.

Anyway in times like this one of the best things is comfort food.  Certain things fall quite obviously into the category of comfort food.  Bread Pudding is definitely one of them.  I mean not only is it bread which I find incredibly homey, delicious and often crave just a giant loaf to chew on when I’m down, but it’s bread in pudding form.  You don’t get more rustic, warm and down to earth than that.  When we read about people using bombs, North Korea getting testy with nuclear weaponry, I think there’s a little bit of a longing for a world where these kinds of creative mass murders aren’t possible.  A little technological rewind.  Well we can’t undo any of these things without totally destroying civilization as we know it and frankly if you asked most people my age about living in a world without terrorist bombs at the cost of their smartphones…I’m pretty sure I know what they’d choose.  Hell I don’t think I’d choose any different.  I can at least travel back in time though in my kitchen and find comfort and delicious heaven where I make it.  Warning: this is literally the best bread pudding I have ever had.  I had total strangers at work seeking me out to tell me that they were brought some and tell me it was the best bread pudding that they had ever had.  It’s seriously the antithesis of pain and agony—it’s absolute joy in a bowl, in your mouth and in your stomach.  Hell you might like it so much that you even cherish a little fat deposit from eating the entire batch because it will stir such fond memories of the flavors.  It’s that good and I certainly need something good right now.  Don’t you?

Caramel Apple Bread Pudding

an Olivia Original Read more

Mar 28

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Bitter get on my horse(radish)

Now where did we leave off again?  Oh damn, are we still on the 4 questions?  This is turning out to be a long Seder!  Better get on my horse and keep this thing moving….

Yesterday I said that the youngest child is kept engaged by being required to recite the four questions but we only really went over the first.  The second question is:

Shebb’khol hallelot anu okh’lin sh’ar y’rakot, vehallayla hazze maror.
Why is it that on all other nights we eat all vegetables, but on this night we eat bitter herbs?

Answer: We eat Maror (a bitter herb) to remind us of the bitterness of slavery.

On Tuesday we talked about the first vegetable consumed of the evening—the Karpas.  While it is traditionally something bitter, like parsley, it is not actually the bitter herb to which this refers.  Confused yet?  Remember the symbolism for the Karpas was the dipping in salt water for remembrance of tears.  The second vegetable on the Seder plate is almost always Horseradish which as anyone who has handled raw horseradish knows, is particularly strong and pungent.  This is referred to as the Maror or bitter herb.  The inspiration for this particular ritual comes from the following lines in Exodus:

“And they embittered their lives with hard labor” – Exodus 1:14

“…and with bitter herbs they shall eat it” – Exodus 12:8

I know.  Who lets a book tell them to eat raw Horseradish just to prove a point?  I never said this thing as supposed to make sense….  And yes raw horseradish rather than prepared from a jar.  Vinegar is used to help soften and mute the astringency of the root.  This doesn’t stop me from using vinegar in my recipe below though.  Hey I only said I had to be inspired by the Seder plate for these recipes!

But Olivia why do you Jews have all these funny rules about eating?  Like the Kosher stuff?  What’s up with that?  And what is that “Pareve” or “Parve” thing you mentioned the other day?

Oy vey.  I always dread explaining the Kosher thing, especially since I clearly don’t keep Kosher most of the year.  I make an effort during the high holy days as part of the experience of celebrating the holiday, but otherwise I let the Kosher thing go.  I mean there are two schools of thought in my experience about the Kashrut (Kosher law): It’s commanded by G-d (Adonai) for some omniscient and unchallengeable reason OR they originated out of health and food safety concerns.  Well I don’t really ascribe to belief in a higher power and modern day science has more or less solved any food safety concerns.  For example we know now how to avoid Trichnella, the parasite present in poorly prepared pork.  But here’s the rough and dirty of Kosher laws that will help you if you do happen to have actively practicing Jewish friends:

  • Pork and Shellfish are off the table.  Always.  Pork is considered “unclean” and shellfish were “bottom feeders” and therefore forbidden.  Pork also had the nasty habit of carrying the aforementioned parasite and shellfish even today when prepared incorrectly can carry a slew of nasty bacteria.  Cholera is a horrifying way to die.  Additionally rodents, insects, reptiles and amphibians are all forbidden.  So just don’t go to Asia.
  • Kosher Meat: this isn’t food that’s just blessed by a rabbi.  It actually has to be slaughtered in a certain way and no blood is to be left on the meat.  The slaughtering process that is considered Kosher is designed to help remove all the blood and also to kill the animal in the most quick and humane way possible.
  • Fat that surrounds organs is forbidden.  The kind of fat that lines your liver is different than other kinds of fatty tissue.  Usually not an issue as most Americans don’t eat organ meat anyway.  (I do though.  It’s delicious)
  • No Meat with Dairy.  This is the big one that can throw people for a loop because it means your Kosher keeping friend can’t have a Cheeseburger.  Ever.  The ruling for this comes from a line about not boiling a Kid in its Mother’s milk and I have to admit, when you put it that way, it does seem kind of sadistic doesn’t it?  Anyway what this means is that no meat (Fish and Eggs don’t count though) can be consumed with Dairy or within a set number of hours of eating diary and vice versa.  Butter is considered dairy so that gets pretty restrictive.   Foods that contain neither meat nor dairy are called “Pareve” or “Parve” and these foods are useful because you can eat them with any meal.  Thus whenever I have a recipe that fulfills these rules I like to point it out.  It helps making meal planning a little easier since as you can imagine, a big banquet dinner gets quite difficult when you have to choose between using meat or dairy that night.
    This also means Jewish Lasagna is always vegetarian and therefore very, very boring.  (Not true!  I proved that with vegan lasagna.  But I concede nothing replaces mozzarella and a good bolognese.)

There are a bunch of other rules and details I could provide but this is enough for now I think.  Onto the recipe!  Tonight I made a Potato Kugel.  Oh boy more words we don’t know Olivia.  Okay so a kugel (coo-gull) is essentially a casserole made with noodles or potato.  Since noodles are obviously out during our matzo-only holiday, a potato kugel it is!  This is a staple of Jewish cuisine and there’s almost always a kugel present for any big to-do.  There’s also more often than not a BIG ego contest about who has the best Kugel.  Fueds have formed at many a Synagogue and between mother/daughter in-laws for decades.  Thankfully I have no one to compete with at the moment—Mom never really made kugel—so I can puff my chest out without fear and say mine is best at home.

9 times out of 10 Kugel is made as a sweet dish but this time around I wanted something savory to feature the Maror.  Horseradish goes so nicely with potato doesn’t it?  It’s got a lot of that traditional baked potato flavor without the bacon or the dairy since I use chicken fat.  This recipe can be altered quite easily to be rendered completely Parve by removing the chicken skins and using olive oil.  Or you could then serve it with some sour cream.  Mmmmmmm talk about potato heaven.  Flexibility makes it a great addition to your Jewish cookbook.  Look I talked about Flexibility and didn’t even mention yoga.  Gotta be a record!

Maror Horseradish Potato Kugel

An Olivia Original Read more

Mar 21

Why dough mistakes send me pinwheeling?

 “Why do we fall Bruce?  So we can pick ourselves back up again.” – Batman Begins

I need to remind myself of that sometimes when I’m in the depths of despair after some seriously stupid blundering.  My personality is such that when I make a mistake I take it as a black stain upon my very soul.  For a lot of people, making mistakes is embarrassing.  For me it is an eternal etching on a stone tablet housed in the corner recesses of my mind.  Some people might have a mental dry erase board but I take a sharpie to mine.  No.  Really.  I still remember things I got in trouble for from kindergarten.  I just don’t take it lightly.  I place so much emphasis and pressure on myself to perform—and if my friends think I expect a lot of them I hope they know that it pales in comparison to the expectations I have for myself.  This is why I really, really hate making mistakes.  Especially when I don’t get a chance to rectify the situation immediately.

I get tunnel vision when something goes wrong until it gets fixed.  I am literally incapable of focusing on anything else until I’ve fixed that problem.  I become consumed by it.  This can be incredibly frustrating to people close to me as I don’t compartmentalize well.  It tends to make me a bit manic at the best and explosive at my worst.  Thankfully the explosive behavior has toned down a lot over the years.  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.

Despite this improvement though I still get a wee bit overwhelmed when things go wrong.  I’ve learned that the absolute best way for me to manage is to take time to stop and develop a battle plan.  Even if the plan doesn’t generate an immediate solution, if I have goals and an idea of what I can do to fix my mistake, I feel an immense sense of relief.  One of the few things I do miss about working in a lab was that my mistakes were usually mechanical.  I’d mix up a reagent or realize something was contaminated—I’d have made a mistake but I’d always be able to go to my boss and say this.   “Well the bad news is that this isn’t ready yet but the good news is I know why it went wrong.”  That’s the hardest thing about laboratory research, because something always goes wrong, but a good researcher is able to figure out what/why and fix it moving forward.  I was always exceptionally good at that since I am relentless about cleaning up mistakes that are my fault.  I would keep a list in my notebook of mistakes I made to remind myself not to do them again.  Things like “double check that the heat block is ON before going away for an hour” and “LABEL YOUR SHIT.”    Unfortunately in my new field I don’t always get that immediate opportunity to rectify a mistake if and when I make one.  I feel antsy until I finally get a chance to redeem myself.

Now you might want to say “But Olivia, everyone makes mistakes.”  Great.  That’s supposed to make me feel better?  It doesn’t.  I know it helps some people but that kind of thinking isn’t how I operate.  I don’t find consolation in knowing that even the most brilliant minds of our species have made mistakes.  If anything that just proves even more that as humans we aren’t infallible and guarantee that my current mistake, if I have one to clean up, is only a precursor to the next one.  I’m also not prone to measuring my successes against others.  I define my goals, whether or not I succeed, purely based off my own personal expectations rather than measuring them against what others have done.  Worst of all if OTHER people are making mistakes that just means I have to be even more diligent not to let those errors mess me up.  So no, it’s not a particularly comforting thought to me.

You’d think that with this level of intense pressure I’d be a total wreck and miserable all the time.  Ah but there is one thing I console myself with about screwing things up: it is only through making errors that we are given the opportunity to prove our worth by fixing them.  I recognize that as impressive as it is to walk the line and perform perfectly, it is that crucial time after falling that I get to really prove I have worth.  Strength, resilience, ingenuity…these are all tested and best demonstrated in the recovery phase.  As human beings we are defined as being imperfect, and errors are inevitable, the only way to really measure someone’s fortitude is to see what they do after they fall.  I only hope I continue to rise.  Like bread dough.  Hey speaking of mistakes and rising….

I made these pastries the other day and they came out less than perfect.  Upside was that the dough rose just fine.  Downside was after that I screwed up, I admit it.  I shouldn’t have stretched the dough so much.  As a result my Pinwheels pulled back and lost their centers during the baking process.  In fact next time I might chill them a bit first. *Sigh* So they look far less pretty than I’d intended.  More like starfish pastries than pinwheels.  Thankfully the flavor was at least spot on.  I know because I ate five or six of them.

 

Cranberry Curd Pinwheel Danishes Read more

Mar 20

Heart and Mind, Toddy and Soul

For the most part I’ve written about how content I am with my life right now.  Well not content.  That’s a bad word in my vocabulary but I’m happy with where I’m at and don’t really feel like I’m missing out on anything by steadfastly remaining in my single and selfish zone.  Then there are nights like tonight; rainy, slightly cold evenings that scream out for a good movie, hot toddies, and popcorn.  What’s a hot toddy?  Um try a delicious warm beverage made from honey, lemon and bourbon/whisky.  It’s like drinking hot tea but with alcohol!  Yup rainy, wet cold evening– I want all these things and maybe, yes, it would pair well with that unmatchable feeling which accompanies having someone special to curl up into.  I’ll admit that even I feel a slight pang of longing on nights like this.  After all I’m working so hard on developing the mind, body and soul parts these days.  Is the heart just abandoned to the manchmal?

My body is healthier, stronger, and leaner than ever.  The health aspect really is such a triumph for me.  I did succumb to illness finally but I got better in a timely fashion that indicates I’m actually a human being with a functioning immune system now.  Contrasting this against say my junior year of high school, I was out sick 1 of every 3 days on average, makes me extremely happy.  I remember the sad resignation I felt when I walked into AP Bio after missing 3 days and having my friend happily announce “We’re studying what’s broken in you!” as I walked in.  This was his humorous way of letting me know we’d moved onto the immune system portion of our anatomy unit.  I laughed but it was a really sad truth and at the time it was one I thought would define me for the rest of my life.  Losing weight and getting into ridiculously good shape, because let’s face it I’ve got a Hot Toddy Body going on right now, was a fantastic bonus to my health efforts.  Body is good.  Body is great.

Soul is coming along.  I feel like I’m getting to explore so many interests and expand my horizons.  I’m sharing them as I can with you, dear reader, in my adventure posts.   One thing that I’d say is still craving in my life is more time exploring this acting world I’ve had a taste of.  When I go back and look at the videos I’ve done that itch gets harder to ignore.  Starting in April I’ll be taking some improv courses in Berkeley with my friend Doug and hopefully participating in some stagey theater productions.  Then who knows…I’ll see how it plays out.  Some people can get a thrill, knitting sweaters and sitting still /That’s OK for some people don’t know they’re alive/Some people can thrive and bloom, living life in a living room/ That’s perfect for some people of one hundred and five /But I, at least gotta try Even if this doesn’t play out the point is that I’m really pushing myself to grow and expand outward, soaking up everything in the world that I can.

Mind is happy.  I’m happy because I’m growing.  I’m learning, stretching and exploring my various worlds every day.  I have work, hobbies, habits and I’ve been able to indulge my appetite for books in a way I haven’t childhood.  I’m taking classes now through the UC Berkeley extension to get my Clinical Trial certification – already on week three of my first semester!  It’s nice to get back to my Hermione roots with school and reading.  It’s like discovering an old friend or putting on that cozy, oversized sweater.  I was always a bookworm and teacher’s pet and I’m okay with that.  I had my reasons for being so invested in my teachers, a post topic for another day, and school functioned largely as an escape for me.  It had rules that I understood, goals I could attain, and since knowledge is the basis for transformative power I have always been damned determined to get as much as I can.  In the meantime I’m learning tons on the job and really, really finding out that I enjoy it.  It’s nice to have a career.

I don’t sleep much but I don’t seem to need it so that’s okay.

But the heart…the heart has been left alone now for a while.  I think it’s going to continue to be despite longing on nights like this.  I miss it but I’m not ready yet, if ever, again to embrace that part of life.  There’s still a lot of healing left to go there.  I was telling my friend Dallas the other day that the common analogy about relationships leaving scars is flawed.  I don’t feel like my relationships have left scars.  Scar tissue heals and stops hurting eventually but you see them constantly until you learn to stop noticing.   Once it heals though it doesn’t open up again.  That just doesn’t seem quite right to me as an analogy.  Instead I realized that all my past hurts, betrayals, cheating and manipulations are like torn muscles and ligaments.  You have to stop exercising those muscles and let them heal—a process that has no treatment plan but time.  The pain fades and you’re able to eventually use them again BUT the wound might never heal all the way.  Put your foot down the wrong way during a run and that old ankle injury flares up all over again.  I saw a photo a few nights ago that did just that.  The biggest problem with these kinds of injuries is that repeated wounds to the same ligament/tendon/whatever will eventually make it impossible to heal.  It could be that’s why tonight I’m feeling a little bit lonelier than I normally would.  I have to wonder if I’ve just pulled this muscle one too many times for it to ever work right again.  I think I want it to.  I just don’t know that it can.

Meanwhile I might not have a hunk of man cake in the house, but I do have my hot toddy in cake form and that’s pretty damn good too.

Hot Toddy Cheesecake

An Olivia Original Read more

Mar 8

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SciFriday and the Feminist Mys-Quiche

IMG_2932Today is International Women’s Day and I find myself focusing in on it through the lens of my culture—not the Jewish one but rather the geeky one.  As a woman I often find myself troubled both by the attitudes of the “normies” and the male geeks within the scifi world.  There’s one thing that unifies these two seemingly disparate groups: they remain ever incredulous about the geeks with lovely lady lumps.  Yeah I just wrote that sentence.

In my younger years I digested most of my science fiction in the form of the written word.  I grew up reading both the classics and every bargain bin paperback I could get my hands on.  Heinlein.  Adams.  Asimov.  Scott Card.  Herbert.  Huxley.  Clarke.  Wells.  Bradbury.  Oh…Bradbury.   But what do you notice about all these names?  They’re all male.  Every damn last one.  I have nothing against the male sex mind you and for a long time I didn’t really notice that my bookcase had this imbalance of gender.  I did after all have a few books written by women—Madame L’engle and Lois Lowry for example—but for the most part scifi as a genre was and is largely dominated by men.

For a while I was happy in this little world of spaceships, lasers and dystopian futures.  Then one day I woke up.  I think it coincided with middle school and frankly it kind of shocks me that I don’t remember realizing this sooner.  I had always been a very “girl power” oriented kid.  I was in elementary school during the reign of the platform british diva and definitely spent nights in front of my mirror singing “wannabe” with a hairbrush.  The theme I wrote up for my 10th birthday party?  Girls Rule, Boys Drool—Splash til you Crash Birthday Bash.  It was a pool party—ahem.  Anyway THAT embarrassing tidbit aside the point is suddenly one day I realized all my books were written about or by men. IMG_2929

Thus began my search for scifi written by women and a dark and disturbing realization: there is a great deal of scifi written by women but they changed their names to be accepted.  A number of books I’d read were written by women but I had no way of knowing that, and based on the trend by the more notable authors, I always assumed that names which followed the A. Z. Last Name formatting were men.  That was exactly what the publishing industry wanted me to think—or rather what they wanted little boys to think.  It started as a way for women to publish when it was considered indecent to do so and then carried on as tradition because publishing companies didn’t think boys and men would want to read books written by a woman.

IMG_2936Disgusted, I understood that this belief not only dismissed females as writers—but females as readers.  It completely ignored the girls who were reading, the girls who might choose to read a book because it was authored by someone with whom they share a certain ovarian affinity.  Talk about a total invalidation of my greatest love.  Heck even J.K. Rowling fell trap to that line of thinking as her editors didn’t believe Harry Potter would sell to boys if they knew the author was a woman.  Well that cat got out of the bag and Rowling is still richer than the bloody queen so fuck-that.  Sadly it’s probably somewhat true that boys would turn away more from female written works.  There are certainly a number of men I’ve met who avoid anything that seems remotely “feminist” out of fear that supporting it will suddenly doom them to marry a girl who doesn’t shave her armpits.  Disgraceful.

With the second wave of feminism (aka the 60’s) a number of female scifi authors came out of the woodwork. Notable among them being Ursula K. Le Guin who is usually the first and sadly only name people provide when I mention female scifi writers.  As for me, the first scifi work I encountered in my youth that made me think about this topic was Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale”.  If you aren’t familiar with the work it is about a dystopian future where a fascist and religiously dominant government has suspended the constitution following a terrorist attack.  In this world women have been stripped of any rights and are regulated to various roles in society; racism and homophobia also rampant.  The protagonist of the story is in the ranks of the Handmaids who function as concubines and whose sole purpose is to provide a womb for breeding; women reduced to literally the very thing that define their sex.  Other roles women play are wives, daughters, “Marthas” aka compliant infertile women and the Aunts who train the handmaids.  Infertile or troublesome women get branded as “unwomen.”

While this certainly sounds like a feminist manifesto, it should be noted that the book explores a variety of other oppressions enacted by this government for religious and racial reasons.  Heck even the men are just as regulated as the women; assigned various roles within the military structure of the government but it is only the higher ranking classes that are permitted to breed and obtain a handmaid.  As for the rest?  No sex.  Not even masturbation.  I particularly remember reading the part about underwear designed to prevent nocturnal emissions and thinking that this world is just as criminal to men as it is to women.  Gay men, as another example, are gender traitors and sent to death camps.

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I’d like to think that today we don’t have this problem anymore or that it’s at least diminishing, but well…when I was thinking about this blog I decided to go find a copy of this book.  I popped into a used bookstore on the street after yoga, ran up to the scifi section and discovered no listing for Atwood at all.  With a heavy sigh I trudged up to the “Fiction-Literature” area and sure enough there it was.  I went to check out and this was the exchange that followed:

Me: Glad you had this, I went looking in the scifi section first and couldn’t find it.

Counter: Well that’s because it’s not scifi.

Me: Uhh…well actually it is, I mean it’s soft scifi* but it’s definitely always been in that category from what I know.

Counter: it’s feminist lit.  It can’t be scifi.

And it was a girl behind the counter too.  Apparently feminism and scifi are incompatible.  So much for forward thinking but hardly that surprising.  I still get strange looks from most people who discover my love of the genre.  Strides have been made over the years but aliens and wormholes are still apparently a “boy thing” in the eyes of most.  I personally feel that more strides have been made in film and tv to promote the female empowerment of the geek world and it saddens me that books seem to lag behind which is why I’m so excited when I do find a thoughtful and geeky lady writer.  There is a need, especially in our youth, to identify and learn about ourselves.  That’s part of why people will seek out specific racial, cultural or gender groups and socialize within them.  We want to understand ourselves and while Joss Whedon comes pretty damn close, ultimately I’ll still learn more about being a woman from another woman.  That’s why it’s important to have these talks still and why you can’t ever be completely “color blind” in life.  So I hope more women writers are picking up the call and defying convention and I really hope that they drop the stupid initial-last name convention because while 5 boys might pass over your book, there will be one little girl who might finally pick it up.

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*Some people will claim it’s not scifi or only loosely scifi because it is about a dystopian future.  Funny that I don’t hear people rejecting 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 nearly as often on those grounds.  Now for those of you that would, look we can talk about this another time and I’ll school you on the history of the genre, also known as speculative fiction, and please stop trying to invalidate these books just because you happen to prefer hard-scifi which is a subgenre okay?

Oh right, I still have a recipe to share!  Well as you ponder this topic, why not bake up a lovely quiche for dinner.  Why a Quiche for today’s post?  It’s a largely egg based dish and since I’m thinking about ovaries and baby-mamas I immediately jumped to the ovary connection.  I’m weird.  Accept it.

Scifi Mys-Quiche

An Olivia Original – I made several mini-quiche but this recipe will make one large 9” pie Read more

Feb 12

1 Comment

Think Thin Tuesday: Horny as a Goat Tacos

It’s coming up on Valentine’s Day and that means two things: flowers and chocolate.  Past that it usually means an elaborate meal out with your honey that costs tons of money and usually leaves you full to the point of bursting.  Valentine’s day is the ultimate post-New Year’s diet trap for anyone trying to stay on track, or maybe get back on track, with a diet resolution.  Some of you might be ready to splurge on a nice fancy dinner after working hard the last 6 weeks since turning the corner on the fatty food trilogy that is Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas.  Some of you though, maybe haven’t been keeping it together so well and for you the thought of Valentine’s Day is “oh god here comes another holiday where I ‘m going to stuff my face and there’s going to be chocolate EVERYWHERE for days.”

That’s a big part of the problem with these holidays isn’t it?  If it were simply a single day out of  a month to celebrate that would be one thing.   Instead, in the wake of our consumerist culture and social obligations, these events really seem to stretch on for a week—at least!  There are office parties, friends parties, festivals, special events, shows, shopping deals and last but certainly not the last—the post-holiday clearance sale.   Halloween and Valentine’s Day definitely see weeks of lingering chocolates marked down 50% or more in drugstore bins nationwide and it can be so hard to resist a discount chocolate santa.  Soon enough this single holiday to reward yourself has turned into a smorgasbord that has undone the last month of hellish sacrifice and those five pounds just waddled back with their smiling, adiposian faces.

For someone like say, my mom, it’s always been a struggle.  My step-dad took a few years to learn that she really, truly does NOT want him to buy her chocolates on Valentine ’s Day.  Now what she means by this isn’t so much literally “I don’t want chocolates” but a general “I don’t want to be tempted by sweets or decadent meals, I’m trying to be good and stay on my diet and maintain willpower this year.”  I will always remember the infamous fortune cookie incident that I think finally hit home the request she makes year after year.  See my mom has unfortunately always struggled with her weight.  I have seen her on a perpetual diet since the day I was birthed into the world.  This is in part because she’s always had to work with a long commute and when she was a single mom forget it.  There was no time to exercise.  She also struggles with a metabolism problem that makes it harder for her to maintain a healthy figure and while many people I’ve known use that as an excuse, she legitimately does eat well and gain weight.  Carbs are not her friend even in the best of times.  So my mom routinely asks that for Valentine’s Day we avoid buying her chocolates.  My stepdad interpreted this after several years of buying chocolates anyway by buying my mom a GIGANTIC FORTUNE COOKIE that had been dipped in a candy shell.  We’re talking the size of a human head gigantic.  The rationale?  Well it wasn’t chocolate.  Cue the drama.  Anyway they laugh about it now, at least I hope they do, and in the years since he only buys my mom sugar free chocolates and only when she asks.  Not only does this help her manage her weight, but it demonstrates that he supports her efforts which makes her happy.

So if your honey is trying to stay good this year, but you want to still have a romantic meal, do yourself a favor and stay home.  Cook.  It’s easy and gives you complete control over the nutritional content of your food.  Plus it means so much when a meal is made for you by someone who loves you and men—if you are the one planning the menu get ready to be the talk of the town.  Every lady loves to brag when her man cooks for her and does it well.  So stay home and try this recipe that is high on flavor and low on guilt.  It’s got everything you could want: tortillas, cheese, red meat and pure deliciousness.  Oh and never fear, if you are looking for something completely sinful, I’ll be sharing several of those recipes in the days to come.

Goat meat is extremely lean, to the point that when it’s prepared improperly it can be gamey and unpleasant but when prepared correctly it has a very sweet and tender flavor.  That sweetness will get a boost from the citrus marinade and the meat will be perfectly cooked when you slice it thin and pan sear it just to barely cook.  The best part is that goat’s meat is lower in both fat and cholesterol than beef—in fact it’s lower in fat and cholesterol than chicken.  Meanwhile it’s almost double the iron content so you’re getting all the benefits of eating meat and reducing the bad.  Concerned about growth hormones?  Goat meat isn’t approved for hormone use so you don’t even have to worry about reading the package.  Not only will you steal your honey’s heart, you’ll be protecting it so that you can celebrate this holiday together 50 years down the road and feel just as young as you do today.

Foodies will be happy and delighted by the exotic element of this dish.  If your valentine is red-meating loving American he/she will love it too.  Buy some whole-wheat, low carb and high fiber wraps and you can be happy knowing that you are getting healthsome whole grains.  Finally a dollop of salted crème fraiche will add decadence and tang.  Why are these called horny as a goat tacos?  Well I don’t know about you but there are certain other things I associate with Valentine’s day.  Personally I can’t get very ardent about amorous activity when my stomach is weighing me down.  Plus, yes I’m being a girl here, but I don’t feel sexy after a super fat-laden meal.  Pair these with a nice salad, some strawberries and cinnamon spiced cream and a good Spanish wine and you will have a Latin meal that seduces through the stomach without weighing it down thus leaving room for *ahem* dessert.

Horny Goat Tacos

An Olivia Original Read more

Jan 23

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Butter! Better!

PeanutbutterBananaCake (13)

Remember those ads about whether Butter or Parkay was better?  Yeah well you know what I always thought: PEANUT BUTTER IS BETTER than both ya’ll.  So in the spirit of things that are best I’m celebrating the best woman in Star Trek and the absolute best, most delicious cake in all the verse starring you guessed it, Peanut Butter–better than butter, better than parkay and better than my willpower.

So for the past few months I’ve been re-watching all of Star Trek.  ALL of Star Trek.  Every series, every episode and pondering many important questions and topics like: Why can Geordi never get a girl?  Why is Jake so useless?  Garak is still the most fascinating character of all time.  Damn the Doctor is annoying.  Poor Harry Kim never gets to grow.  Why couldn’t the makeup department figure out how to craft a single flattering hairstyle for the women?  Seriously they all had horrible hairdos.  But mostly I’ve been admiring the myriad of amazing female role models.  Roddenberry really loaded his crews with strong females.  Because I have thoughts like this I’ve examined all the women from the perspective of “who would I date were I attracted to the double XXs” and hands down I’ve determined that Jadzia Dax should be the ideal woman to any man.  Obviously now I need to share these thoughts with you and let the nerdy arguing about how Tasha Yar is better begin….

5 Reasons why Jadzia Dax is the best woman in Starfleet

PeanutbutterBananaCake (14)1)      Jadzia is strong without being “damaged” — She’s not an “Ice Warrior-ess”  This is a phenomenon I’ve written about before in SciFi.  Most of the kick-ass heroines are saddled with a shit ton of baggage and an ice cold personality that needs to be “softened” over time for them to find love.   Take for example Tasha Yar on Star Trek TNG—she’s strong, capable, sexy…oh and totally emotionally crippled by the rape gangs that she had to evade during her childhood.  B’Elanna Torres on Voyager is brilliant, sassy, sexy…and a self-hating half Klingon who won’t lower her walls to admit she has feelings for someone until she thinks she’s about to DIE.  7 of 9…yeah she’s a real hoot.  The girl was raised as a BORG for 20 years.  She might be “well equipped” physically but you will literally have to teach her everything about humanity.  IF you want that in a girlfriend then great but personally I think it would get exhausting to have to explain every idiom, joke and human custom to someone no matter how hot they are.  Jadzia on the other hand will kick your ass with a Bat’leth for fun but she’s not going to freeze off your manhood because she’s a strong enough woman to carry her own baggage.  She also doesn’t need some elaborate soul crushing backstory to explain why she’s so strong.  Jadzia Dax was just born with a backbone—no horrible life altering event needed.

2)     You’d have fun with her: Jadzia has a serious sense of humor and a good sense of fun.  To quote Garak, Jadzia is “vital, alive…she owned herself.”  In the episode “Homefront” we find out that Jadzia is quite the accomplished practical jokester.  She will routinely break into Odo’s apartment and move his furniture by a fraction of a centimeter over the course of several days just to mess with him.  Any lady with a sense of humor and an ability to appreciate the fine are of “fucking with someone” is going to be a great girlfriend.  Plus she loves to gamble and play games!  Jadzia enjoys sitting around with the boys and playing tongo well into the night.  She’ll probably beat most of you and your friends while she’s at it.  How many women want to sit around with cigars on poker night—and how many women would you enjoy the company of when they do?  Jadzia is one of those rare “one of the guys” kind of gals you can date.  Speaking of which….

3)     She’s got a masculine side—literally! Okay now this might weird out some of the less secure heterosexual men in the universe, but Jadzia was once a man.  Or at least technically she has the memories of what it is like to be a man.  While Jadzia is all woman, evidenced by her bikini prowl on Rysa rwoooooowr, Jadzia shares the memories of her Dax symbiont.  Dax has been fused with several men over the centuries and so Jadzia is privy to the unique experiences of life from the view of both sexes.  Why is this a good thing?  She’s going to understand the “guy stuff” that so few girls will get.  That doesn’t mean Jadzia will put up with macho male bullshit, and she’ll call you out on it without hesitation, but she will at least be able to understand where you are coming from in a way most women never will.  Thus the typical “men are from mars, women are from venus” communication issues that plague, oh 99.99% of relationships, will be much easier to mitigate.  You might be from Mars but Jadzia is from the Trill homeworld.

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4)     She’s Kinky: Alright look, you don’t date a Klingon without having a bit of an adventurous side in the bedroom.  None of that “50 shades of grey” nonsense—and I’m not implying that all men want a girl who gets physical, physical.  I’m not saying that a girl is superior if she likes it rough and tumble.  I am saying that what you know for certain about Jadzia is that she isn’t passive in the bedroom—she’s going to be an active and engaged sexual partner.  A healthy sex life is essential to any relationship and with Jadzia you’re getting all the experience that comes from living several different lifetimes—and a girl that can tire out Worf.  I think the only problem is if YOU can keep up.

5)     She’s into your personality: Jadzia engages in various romantic interludes over the course of DS9 with an assortment of…unusual men.  Something about living as long as Dax has tends to broaden your mind past the bias of traditional physical beauty.  This obviously works out in the favor of some of the less athletic nerds in the room.  Jadzia genuinely finds personality and intellect to be more attractive than pretty boy looks.  Where Ezri, who I still can’t stand, falls for the boyish charms of one Julian Bashir, Jadzia isn’t interested.  She wants more substance in her mates.  Heck she actually dates a member of the clear skulled (as in you can see their BRAINS) Galamite race much to Kira’s shock and disbelief.   She also dates the sluggish looking Morn, finds Ferengi attractive and obviously has a fondness for the forehead ridges of Klingons.  Not because she has low standards, but because Jadzia is genuinely more interested in the person than aesthetics and empty charms.

PeanutbutterBananaCake (5)

And what does all this have to do with my recipe today?  Not a damn thing except that just like these things all make Jadzia Dax the perfect women, the ingredients I used in this recipe all add up to the perfect, most desirable delicious cake in the universe.  This was the cake that broke my diet into a million bite sized pieces as I literally ate half of the whole thing all by myself.  In a day.  Not kidding or exaggerating this time guys.  I could not stop eating it.  So I’m warning you right now not to make this unless you fully intend to stuff yourself silly. PeanutbutterBananaCake (8)

Banana-Chocolate Chip Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

Bon Appétit | October 2012 Read more

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