Planning the spring garden

Well, along with still planning/planting our winter garden (and having a miserable time finding any decent garlic to plant) I find myself already picking out tomato seeds. Seems like they should be ready to go from the 2009 crop of tomatoes and so I should get the best selection now instead of waiting a month or so, and we want to try starting from seed which we can do fairly early here in the Bay Area.

If you're looking for There/Therebucks updates...I moved 'em!

I know I haven't posted here for a while. Basically I started making YouTube videos and so I stopped writing stuff. However, I now have a new blog that is just for There and Therebucks related content and I put it here, so if you were reading this forum to get just the There related content, now you know where to go...and I've added some new features to my site and stuff soooo...you should check it out!

x-biking, comedy and cooking

Yesterday and weekend plans...blah blah...

Well, we're back from hiking...

...and ready to go again!

Getting ready for hiking...

I gots my stuffs and I'm ready...if it stops raining...

Thank you to my vlog viewers!

I just wanted to say I appreciate the emails I've been getting...

Making Banana-Split Tea Bread from Vegan Planet

I decided to do a little baking at home...

I broke my Amazon Kindle!

Okay, really I think it was Rodney...

Netflix shipping on Saturdays...but not for me!

I had a problem with my Netflix account today and had to call them. The woman I talked to on the phone said they put a temporary hold on my account because I'd reported a few dvds missing. Hey, is it MY fault they're missing????

So then she tells me "well, I'm going to remove the hold, and I see your distribution center is San Jose, which is now shipping movies on Saturdays so you should have movies going out tomorr....oh....well, I don't think we ship on Saturdays to you."

Oh, so that's how it's going to be, huh? I think I'm throttled right now anyway, due to my tv series binge of the last few months, but now I am denied Saturday service?

I'm quite irritated right now. First the hold on my account so my bf and I won't be able to watch Little Britain Season 3 this weekend, now I am not even approved for Saturday service.

Just now I dropped my service down from 7 at a time to 4 at a time. Maybe I'll even make that 3 at a time. That'll show 'em...right? Right? I mean the thing is...SOME months a rent a lot of dvds, but some months I am very bad at returning them in a timely manner, so I am pretty darn sure Netflix ultimately makes a profit off of me, and I shouldn't be denied Saturday service. That sucks.

Now if I could only find my Roku remote...I'd see if I can get my digital streaming service throttled, too!

Spiced Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

Spiced Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

sweet potatoes, one per person
1 T. olive oil (or more if making more than two sweet potatoes)

Seasoning Mix:
2 T ground coriander
1 T ground fennel
1 T dried oregano
1 T pepper
2 T kosher salt

Preheat oven to 425 F. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into strips about 3 inches long and 3/4 inches thick.

In
mortar and pestle or spice grinder, grind together coriander, fennel,
oregano, and pepper. Mix in salt. (This makes enough for several
batches of sweet potatoes, so you'll need a small jar to store the
extra.)

In large-ish bowl, toss together cut sweet potatoes and olive
oil. Sprinkle on half of spice mixture and toss again, then other half of spice mixture and toss until spices are more or less evenly distributed. You will need about 1 T olive oil and 1 T. of
the spice mixture for every two sweet potatoes, depending on how spicy
you like it.

On a non-stick cookie sheet, spread out sweet potatoes in single layer. Roast about 35 minutes, turning about halfway through. Sweet potatoes should
be softened through and lightly browned when they're done. (They will
only be slightly crisp, sweet
potatoes never get as crisp as fried potatoes.) Serve hot.

About hiking and such

Still with the vlogging...

My satisfying weekend

I did the vlog thing again...I feel like I'm cheating not doing any typing.

What happened after Vegas (a REAL vlog entry!)

Haha, today we have video rather than the printed word!

Part 1


Part 2

Vegans back from Vegas

Well, I'm back from Las Vegas so let me sum it up...

TheRoom:
We stayed at TheHotel and it was pretty nice, or at least as nice as a 3000 room hotel can be. The lamp in the living room was bolted to the desk and the pretty glassed-in shower made a high pitched screeching noise the entire time it was turned on and leaked all over the bathroom, and despite all the hype about the beds, I think my bed at home is more comfortable, but the good news is they charge $8 for a tiny can of pringles so you are in no danger of eating too many of them. The bathtub looked big enough to be a sheep dip, but despite going to Lush and buying a big bag of bath products almost as soon as we'd finished checking into the hotel, we never actually used the bathtub, and that is shameful. At least I think my bf is a little bit addicted to Lush products now, especially the facial scrub and the shampoo bars.

TheFood:
The food started out great and went downhill. Saturday we ate at Fleur De Lys at Mandalay Bay. That place has a vegetarian menu available on request and they can easily and enthusiastically make that menu vegan upon request. They also had a super nice GM who was also a certified sommellier. The problem that started here is, if you remove all the meat, cheese, cream and butter from your food, you end up with a tasty and healthful meal but (especially if you are exerting yourself) you will end up hungry maybe four hours later. Totally normal but not always convenient. So, we ended up ordering a pizza with no cheese and some fries (and an awful bottle of wine that remained mostly un-drunk) late in the evening.

Since Sunday started out with *surprise* daylight savings time, we not only wandered around longer than we should have before finding a place to have brunch (we were going to have champagne brunch at Bally's but it seems they have closed their Sunday brunch or maybe just closed their buffet altogether) but it was also way past time to have a first meal of the day. I ended up having angel hair pasta with tomato sauce (the dish that reminds me of being totally broke, since it's so cheap to make you could have it for every meal for a whole week for about $10, except it's about 20X as much per serving at a "nice" restaurant) my bf decided to be vegetarian instead of vegan for the rest of the trip and had a calzone stuffed with about 5 pounds of cheese.

We ate lunch so late that we didn't feel like going to our 6:30 dinner reservation at Spago. We ended up at the bar at the Eiffel Tower instead. The champagne drinks there are, I must say, amazing, and the service is great, too. I can't imagine eating a whole (vegan) meal at the Eiffel Tower restaurant, but the bartender managed to get the GM to bully the chef into preparing their jeruselem couscous dish vegan for us. It's such a shame to think they can make such a great vegan dish and yet they are so loathe to do it.

After the show that night we were once again left starving so we went on this great quest for something to eat that involved some crazy taxi driver taking us basically to the back door of Denny's while trying to pretend he wasn't taking us to Denny's because I think the guy just had no clue. We ended up going to this restaurant that is supposed to be the upscale sister of The Cheesecake Factory but ummmm...give me Cheesecake Factory any day (avocado spring rolls with tamarind dipping sauce! Portobello burgers!) because this place sucked great big donkey balls. The server started out pretty cool, asking the kitchen some questions about the pizza which basically there is no chance in hell of getting vegan because it turns out there is cheese already in the pre-made crust, so Mr. I'm-vegetarian-Now-Not-Vegan had pizza while I had...oh boy...angel hair pasta with tomato sauce. Wait...didn't I have that a few hours earlier???!? Our server forgot the fries we ordered and forgot to bring my second drink, too. Someone else brought the drink just as we were about to leave and oh boy...he put it in a to-go cup for me...because I really needed to drink some more after three champagne cocktails at the Eiffel Tower, a drink the size of a small child at The Beatles: Love, and the drink I already had at this dreadful place. We took a cab back to the hotel and I wasn't quite drunk enough to end up on Taxicab Confessions, but I probably wasn't that far off, either.

Monday we had a nice brunchy type meal at TheCafe at TheHotel. Well, I say nice although I decided to order a salad because I wanted to be the kind of person who goes out to a restaurant and orders the salad, but I was less than thrilled to get a big plate of all sorts of mixed greens with a bunch of little strips of beet mixed in and some vinagarette on top. Don't get me wrong, I can eat a humongo salad at home full of ingredients of MY choosing, but I'm not head of the beet cheerleading squat and I'm rather suspicious of mixed greens that look like they could have been growing in the sidewalk cracks (if it weren't the desert.) So, when I say nice I mean that my mimosa with fresh mango juice was nice, and having a relaxing meal with my bf was nice.

TheShows:
I think my expectations for Cirque Du Soleil shows are quite high. Especially in Las Vegas with the high prices and all the hype. And when it comes to Mystere and "O", I think the shows really deliver. My expectations of "Ka" were perhaps especially high after seeing some behind the scenes stuff featured on the tv show "CSI". Ka just didn't really deliver for me, though. Not only do I expect a wow factor, but I want to see amazing physical feats and only the guys running, leaping and jump-roping around two attached spinning drums really gave that. The Beatles: Love was even worse, although my expectations weren't as high. Ahead of time I would have said Ka would be the better show, but once I saw Ka I was sure The Beatles: Love would be better. It wasn't. The music was good although maybe people have heard all those songs SOOOO many times, they just don't have the impact they should have, plus I really, really had to pee the whole time I was there. There were two dancers that were really excellent, but still no "wow" factor. Maybe we should have gone to see "Le Reve" and the russian ice skating show instead.

TheGambling:
My bf and I don't really gamble, but he did throw some money into a video poker game the second day (and lost it instantly). Waiting for the plane to go home we played a slot machine, which passed the time for quite a while as we lost for a while, then were up $70 then lost most of that and then finally my bf won back all the money we lost plus the money from the video poker game the day before and was ahead $8 in total. I can't say I felt that invested in it, since I know if we win that it wasn't MY money we were playing with, but still...I did spend about $6 of my bf's money on a magazine at the airport, so maybe I'm the one who came out furthest ahead.

TheWalking:
Saturday night we hadn't really planned on walking for miles and miles, but then it seems like we did. So although I tried to wear some of my more comfortable heels, I still ended up with a few blisters on one heel which isn't exactly how I wanted to start out the trip. My bf patched my heel up pretty well with a couple of band-aids though, so I survived the rest of our marathon treks without any limping. It's amazing how much walking we did, as well as how tired and cranky one can get when walking so much, especially in that dry air and with all those smokers. Las Vegas is like, smoker's heaven or something. I think the general population nation-wide consists of maybe 18-20% smokers, but in Las Vegas it seems to be more like about 80% and we ended up feeling scratchy throated and watery-eyed and like we were coming down with something the whole time. These symptoms disappeared back in California.

TheNightlife:
We spent way too much time wandering around looking for something to do after seeing a show. In the future, I am pretty sure we will decide to EITHER see a show OR find some nightlife kind of thing to do. Saturday night in Las Vegas standing around trying to get in to some club that is pulsing with loud house music is not my idea of a good time...I'd rather be enjoying TheBathtub and TheLushProducts. There are some fun events, but once you get out of a show that starts at 9:30 pm, everything is very clubby and/or smokey.

TheShopping:
Shopping = walking. Ugh. I lost my lipstick, so I ended up getting some more at Christian Dior. Then since I was there I got some Miss Dior skin creme as well. Actually, my bf bought these things since somehow I forgot my credit card in my bf's other jacket. Oops! He almost bought me a purse, too, but we ran out of time to go back and get it. I'm happy to know that shiny patent croc bags are in vogue right now...since I have one in a purpley berry color. I would have loved to get one in eggplant, intense red or grey and black, though! I also noticed that dress lengths right now are either very very mini (bleh) or very very maxi (yay!) Made me wish I'd brought MY maxi dress with me. Made me wish I had more than one maxi dress. I might have to see if they have one at H&M in San Francisco sometime this month. My bf also got himself a few things but I won't tell you what or he's going to ask me why I'm on the Internet telling people what he bought because it's NOYB.

TheConclusion:
I probably sound negative, but to me the trip is all about how much you enjoy the company of the person you're with, and I enjoyed the company very, very, very much 80% of the time, so I think we came out ahead and I'll chalk this trip up as a win.

Next post I'll tell you about how I came home to two very freaked out cats and no Internet service.

You got me a what?

Sometimes I have the dumbest ideas. Like last year when my bf and I were going to the gym quite regularly and I suggested we get jump ropes and jump rope between sets. My bf actually agreed this would be a good idea, but then we both forgot about it. Until now. Today my bf brought me my very own Valeo speed jump rope. Whoopie! Instead of jumping at the gym, though, he seems to think we should each jump for ten minutes a day at home.

I'm not sure which I'd rather do, knock over furniture and stacks of magazines and such, thwack a length of rubber against my ceiling a bunch of times and terrorize my cats in the privacy of my own home -or- flail about at the gym tripping over a length of noisy rubber with my body bouncing about in the most undignified manner when I'm already dead tired from lifting weights.

I'll have to think about that one. Meanwhile, let me tell you about TODAY's great idea...

Today we worked out triceps and hamstrings, and there is some kind of rule my bf totally made up (or so I think sometimes) where we don't do cardio after we work out legs. This time I was asking him "why" as I often do. "Why did you choose this parking spot?", "Why do we have to do deadlifts?", "Why is the sky blue?" and of course the ever popular, "Why don't we do cardio after we work out legs?"

The answers are as follows...

"Because the spot I wanted was taken when you insisted we go to Jamba Juice."

"Because if you hate them they must be doing something good."

"Because I'm your mother and I say so." (Ooops, sorry, my mom already answered that question for me years ago.)

and...

"Well, we could do cardio if they had stair machines here, because that is a hamstring exercise so it would fit in with what we're doing today. But they don't so I guess we can't do any."

Aha! But actually there ARE two stairmasters hiding at my gym, which I had to point out because I love to be right so much. My reward for being right was...we did ten minutes on the stairmaster. Dang that machine is freaking hard. In ten minutes I burned almost as many calories on that thing as I do on the treadmill in 25, and I was sweating like a sweater (because that's what I do, I sweat. It's a talent I have.)

I have a feeling I am going to be hobbling around tomorrow, which is too bad because I have a lot of errands to do (on foot). On the bright side, I feel very virtuous from all the working out we've been doing this week and I'm THISCLOSE to fitting into the skirt I want to wear to Las Vegas on Saturday.

Another Day, Another Gym

What is a great Saturday night with your sweetie?

How about a couple hours working out at the gym followed by a chocolate smoothie then 70 minutes of yoga at home and a glass of wine while watching Little Britain?

Works for me!

My bf is bound and determined to get back in shape and take me with him, and once I'm on board with an idea I'll give 110% to it, so after going to 24 Hour Fitness last night (which was very cool for me, it's not my regular gym and I enjoyed checking out the different machines and equipment and got to kill myself for 25 minutes on a Precor AMT. This is the third gym we've been to together. How many gyms have YOU been to with the same person?) and then doing 70 minutes of yin yoga (not really strenuous like yang yoga) we got up this morning and tried Tai Chi. We even got his sister involved. And we're still planning to do more yoga today (and maybe a little salsa lesson?) after we get back from seeing a movie.

We would have gone hiking today but it's raining. Can't go next weekend because WE'RE GOING TO VEGAS, BABY! (At least Las Vegas involves a lot of walking.) But after that we have a big book of hikes you can do on the Peninsula and so we're going to be backpack toting (have to put the picnic lunch somewhere) goofballs.

We're trying, really trying, to change the way we spend our time, not just go on a little fitness bender and then give it up for lazy brunches yet again. I'm kind of hoping it can involve a little more dancing than weight lifting. (Ooooh...did my bf really agree to try the belly dancing dvd I have???!!?!??)

Actually, we still managed to fit a lazy brunch in today. Maybe you can have your fitness and eat brunch too.

Ways to get FREE credits on IMVU

I was just wondering if IMVU's "spin and win" game was still around as I hadn't seen it or seen it advertised lately so I looked it up...I found a few other ways IMVU was giving away credits but they seem to be defunct. Here it is for my future reference...and yours!

Spin and Win
(can be played once a day, and you could win up to 500 credits)

Sunday Feasting

It seems Saturday my bf and I were both perusing our latest issue of our independent Vegetarian Times subscriptions and both felt drawn to some rather tasty sounding recipes, so today (Sunday) we prepared some stuff straight out of the mag...

Sunday Evening Menu

Root Vegetable Stew with Spices and Dried Fruit

Banana and Black Bean Empanadas

Ginger-Chocolate Stout Cake with Sweetened Sour-Cream

We had the usual suspects there for dinner, and Root Vegetable Stew ended up the clear winner. It was slightly spicy but also sweet, with nice chunks of turnips and sweet potatoes and a nice garnish of cilantro. We'd definitely make it again.

The empanadas...I dunno, to me they were too spicy and I didn't really think banana added anything to them. Maybe they should have had some kind of savory green banana instead of your standard cavendish banana, or maybe something totally different like seitan-stroganoff-in-an-empanada-crust or anything with a nice rich savory sauce. The crust was not my fave, either. I liked it but I'm just itching to try to make empanadas again just to try and make it more pie-crust-like, because I make a fabulous pie crust.

Cake...hard to mess up cake but I blame the recipe. It says to use 1 cup of maple syrup OR one cup of molasses. We used molasses because it's not often we come across a recipe that calls for it, but I have a feeling those two just don't substitute well for each other. It was just wrong and it ruined the cake. Also, my bf especially disliked the Sweetened Sour Cream, which is basically just (vegan) sour cream and brown sugar stirred together.

Oh but EARLIER in the day we had the most delicious breakfast of tortillas with refried beans, cilantro, tomatoes and avocado. We've made this over and over and I think it gets a little more perfect every time. We've stopped using Soyrizo in the beans and just mash them up with coconut oil and they are soooo good and simple yet slightly coconutty that way. Yum!

Somewhere in the middle we had wheatgrass shots. We are going to try and drink them every day now. It's expensive, though, so we're going to try and grow our own. Actually, I've grown large trays of it for my cats before and it's very easy. It grows fast and dies young without a foot of good soil underneath to keep it going, so you just have to get it off to a great start and keep it alive for maybe two weeks max. It doesn't even need that much light.

I think I'm going to go to bed and dream about those delicious coconut refried beans!

Gmail task list

I am totally loving the task list feature on gmail. It's been staring me in the face for a few weeks now daring me to click on it with little bubbles trying to explain it, and now I can see how this could come in super handy for this person who always thinks of all the things I must do "first thing tomorrow" until I wake up the next morning and my mind is a blank slate until maybe 7 pm when I start thinking again of all the things I'm going to do "tomorrow".

Since gmail is the first thing I check every morning...no more excuses!

Er, well...one less excuse anyway.

A tale of two wheatgrass shots

Sunday my bf and I made dinner for his family and I was very excited in the end because we made a pineapple-cucumber gazpacho and a warm tomato and corn salad with macadamia feta, both of which were raw, and we served those first and THEN left everyone at the table while we prepared them some cooked food. We made quinoa for the first time and tried making some dehydrated "chiken" soy patties as chicken fried steak and we served that with a mole sauce which was actually another raw recipe but rather tasty...it didn't really go with "chiken" fried steak, we should have had a mushroom gravy or even just a plain white gravy. Too bad because with a few tweaks I know my bf can totally perfect this raw mole and make it completely awesome, but instead he'll probably end up making a cooked one next time.

Anyway, I was excited because everyone liked the raw food so much! The only reason we made the other food was we were afraid people wouldn't like the raw stuff and might leave the table hungry, but really we could have served the soup and salad and then just ended it with the german chocolate cupcakes we had left over from valentines day.

Next week I think we're making gnocchi and a few types of sorbet. I hope it works out. I know sometimes we make plans to do stuff and then end up doing something totally different.

That's not true with Las Vegas (this time) though! Woohoo...my bf got the Ka tickets, the plane tickets and even booked our room at THEHotel because he knew that was where I wanted to stay (I'm such a spoiled brat sometimes) so we are FOR SURE GOING in a couple of weeks. It's so exciting!

I even found a good use for my Kindle and downloaded one of the latest Las Vegas travel guides onto it. Of course then when my bf wanted to see it while we were out to brunch on Sunday it wouldn't turn on properly. It didn't turn on until I opened it up and manually rebooted it. My bf said I must have shown it what I did to my iPhone and let the Kindle know it could expect the same fate if it didn't cooperate.

So about that wheatgrass...

My bf and I have been talking about doing wheatgrass shots at Jamba Juice for a while now...we even tried to get them one time but they were out of grass. Monday we weren't working out at the gym together, so on a whim I decided I'd go wander around in the rainy weather we've been having and see if I could find a shot of wheatgrass at Jamba Juice all by myself.

I thought I was going to be disappointed when I got to Jamba Juice becaause the wheatgrass tray was empty, but they managed to rustle up a whole fresh new tray from the back, and they served me a carrot-orange juice and my tiny shot of wheatgrass with an orange wedge on the side and I was nervous because when we were in LA we went to a Jamba Juice clone and there were two women at the pick-up counter trying to down some wheatgrass and it took so long and so much grimacing was involved I thought it must be really, completely nasty.

I stood there feeling sort of foolish...wishing my bf was there to look foolish with me and wondering if anyone was staring at me and I steeled myself, downed my shot of wheatgrass and bit into the orange wedge. And you know what? It was really not that bad. It just tasted like grass. And afterwards, I felt really energized.

Not to be outdone, my bf went to Jamba Juice to get some juice and oatmeal this morning and he got a shot of wheatgrass for the first time, too. His reaction? "I liked it! I like the taste!" Wow, he likes the taste? Maybe he and my cat Rodney can start a "wheatgrass tastes great" fan club or something.

Now we want to do wheatgrass shots all the time.

Happy Day After Valentine's Day

Valentine's is a pretty silly holiday if you ask me. This one was pretty romantic to me, though. We stayed in and made seitan stroganoff and german chocolate cupcakes and watched several episodes of the reality show "Work Out". Okay, that show isn't very romantic and my bf really dislikes reality tv but it was a good excuse to cuddle on the couch.

I'm not big on presents for v-day...if it must be celebrated it should be as an expression of affection, not a reason to buy cheap roses or giant heart shaped boxes covered with red taffeta and plastic flowers and filled with cheap chocolates. Last year, you may remember, I gave my bf a big bottle of sweet smoked paprika (with a pretty pink bow on it.) Cuz that's how I roll.

This year we both sort-of kind-of got each other something...my bf wanted to fly us to Las Vegas just for the day/evening or maybe one night so we could see Cirque du Soleil's "Ka" as a surprise, but then he couldn't get tickets, so we are going to go probably within the next month and it is kind of semi-officially to celebrate valentines day. I think being flown anywhere as a surprise is pretty well...sweet and romantic no matter what the time of year!

My gift is late, too. I wanted to make my bf vegan coconut bonbons and wrap them up all pretty-like. I didn't manage to get it done in time, but I WILL get it done.

The following is my recipe for seitan (and mushroom) stroganoff. It started off as a "regular" stroganoff recipe that I adapted to be vegetarian maybe ten years ago, and now I have made a few more adaptations to make it completely vegan.

I like to pronounce the dish as "Satan stroking-off".

Seitan Stroganoff
(makes 4 servings)

Olive Oil
1 large or 2 small shallots, chopped finely
6-8 oz. Seitan, cut in strips 1-2 inches in length
aprox. a dozen medium size cremini mushrooms, quartered

2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup red wine (the heartier the better)
2 tablespoons flour
1-2 T water

1/4 c. vegan sour cream
1-2 T dijon mustard
fresh Dill, about 1/4 c. chopped
sea salt
white pepper

eggless egg noodles, OR mini lasagna noodles OR if you can't find those, rotini will be fine (or you can always use rice or quinoa)

Put a large pot of water to boil on the stove (for noodles.)

In a hot saute pan, put 1-2 T. olive oil. Add shallots and start sauteeing on medium heat.

In a smallish saucepan heat the vegetable broth to boiling.

When shallots have started to turn soft and golden, add the mushrooms.

Add the wine to the vegetable broth and return to boil, then let simmer until it is reduced in volume by about half.

mix the quarter cup of sour cream with the dijon mustard to taste. You want it to have dijon flavor without screaming "mustard!" Stir in half of the chopped dill and set aside.

Add noodles to boiling water and cook to al dente. When done, drain then return to pot with a little olive oil to keep them from sticking and set aside.

Add seitan to shallot/mushroom mixture and saute until browned.

Combine flour and water to make a paste and then whisk paste into wine/broth and cook until thickened.

Pour thickened wine/broth mixture into shallot/mushroom/seitan mixture and stir, then remove from heat. Add sour cream/dijon/dill mixture and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the seitan stroganoff over the noodles/rice/quinoa and garnish with the remaining dill.

Enjoy!

Eight Views of Actors In Their Dressing Rooms

Well, I'm back from the trip to LA. Actually, we've been back several days now, but I'm finally getting around to making an entry. This is why people use blog readers instead of going and checking manually over and over, right?

Sunday we went to Dark Delicacies straight from the airport, and the place was PACKED. They gave me a number and it was number 58 and they were on number 18 and calling one person every several minutes to go up to the tables they had set up and I dunno...smell stuff, buy stuff...whatever they were doing I couldn't even tell. So we browsed through the skull motif purses, hats, shirts, sunglasses, underwear and jewelry for a while and perused the ginormous horror movie selection but it was totally not "our kind of place" and then we decided we'd be better off getting lunch and coming back. Like maybe they'd not even have gotten to number 58 by then.

So we ate at Vegan Plate in Studio City and it was so delicious that we went back there again for lunch on Monday. Well, because it was delicious AND because we tried to eat on the Queen Mary but they had a long wait and because the restaurant isn't far from the tv studios.

Coming back to Dark Delicacies we found there was NO line any more. I guess they had sold out of some stuff by then but I didn't really know what they had in the first place so I didn't really miss it. I had free reign to smell all the different scents with no lines and no pressure, just the nagging thought that my bf was totally and completely bored. Most of the scents didn't excite me too much and I just ended up getting Eight Views of Actors In Their Dressing Rooms and PPGC456, both prototypes that I guess aren't available anywhere else, and they threw in a bunch of samples which was pretty cool. I read somewhere that some room sprays were supposed to have been available, but I didn't see anything like that.

I can't believe all the fantastic restaurants in the area! After we checked into our hotel (the one in downtown LA where Arnold the Governator rode a horse in the elevator in some movie) we went to have dinner at a mostly-raw restaurant called "Cru", which was pretty cool (and tasty, too!) but didn't serve wine. They do allow you to bring your own in, and there is even a liquor store down the street, but we decided to have a green smoothie instead. So we could have had wine, but instead we had some scary green goo made with kale and bananas and stuff. It wasn't bad! Then the waiter told us there was a wine bar just a few blocks away, but we somehow ended up driving for miles and miles down Sunset Blvd until we FINALLY made our way back to the wine bar to find it was closed.

Soooo...we went to the lounge at the top of our hotel. It's one of those rotating places, so we sipped wine that is normally $11 a bottle at Whole Foods for $11 a glass as we rotated around the top of our hotel towers while a few blocks away glamorous people were getting out of the Grammys and looking for their glamorous after parties.

Monday I decided a trip to the Fashion District to buy fabric was a bad idea because I wasn't prepared. I didn't know what I wanted or where I wanted to go. Instead we took a short trip to Long Beach and the Queen Mary, then had lunch at Vegan Plate again, then made our way to the set of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. That was pretty fun...or at least it's easy to get this weird semi-false sense that you are having fun as you are trained and then recorded laughing and clapping on cue. My bf said they panned the audience from the back, and you can see the back of my head, but I must have missed that part, and our flight was delayed so we didn't even get home in time to watch or tape the show. We got to see Glen Campbell sing Rhinestone Cowboy and one other song, that was pretty cool, he was nice and he had his daughter and two sons up there playing with him. And of course Craig was very funny, and he said on camera "the audience wrangler just said only applause, hold your chuckles" and they cut to a shot of the "audience wrangler" in the aisle near us as he made a joke about what "holding your chuckles" might mean.

Finally after losing our souls in the great Hollywood machine, we decided to find a wine bar. It wasn't easy but we finally found one that I thought was just about the coolest wine bar EVAR and that my bf found rather horrifying, which I think illustrated pretty well the area in which our tastes differ. The place was pretty close to looking like a dive bar crossed with a bordello and had Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation playing on the tv. They served several kinds of microbrew beers and one red and one white wine and I think that's it, but because the Pinot Noir they served was pretty good IMO, *I* was happy there. Or I would have been if it'd been at least 5 degrees warmer and if my bf hadn't been so miserable.

Finally we went to a tapas place, which wasn't vegan or anything but they were totally chill about finding us something vegan to eat. I mean, not just finding us something, but without even having to question us about what vegan means or think much about it at all, like they are quite comfortable dealing with different dietary requirements. So that was nice.

I was thinking how great the restaurants in LA are, with their delicious menus and chill but friendly staff and stuff and feeling kind of envious, but then Thursday night we went out to Tamarine, our favorite Palo Alto restaurant, here in the Bay Area, and we love the food and they always prepare the dishes vegan for us and the all the bartenders are totally chill and this time we talked to a couple that was mostly vegetarian and we got along really well with them and found we've read a lot of the same books and stuff like that and we met another woman who talked to us and then we saw her again afterwards at The Wine Room (also in Palo Alto) and met some more new people at The Wine Room and saw some old favorites, and I just thought "who needs LA when we've got the Bay Area?"

Jinx: Unplugged

Yesterday i started getting ready for our trip to Los Angeles. On the one hand, it shouldn't be a big deal because it's only one night so how badly can one screw up packing for that or how long could it take? On the other hand, I have on MANY OCCASIONS been up until 3am doing laundry so I have something to wear for a trip and I thought I would do something different this time. Plus today I spent pretty much the whole day at the salon which is like ya I know...boo hoo don't you feel sorry for me but srsly it is EXHAUSTING being poked and prodded and styled and having a bunch of little hairs ripped out of your body for over half an hour and having one's scalp and limbs and stuff massaged for hours...

Then we went to Millenium for dinner and I almost got trampled/smooshed on the way because I had to fight my way through the chinese new year parade crowd to get there and some crazy guy started talking to me and about the time he started trying to walk arm-in-arm with me I ducked into the Lush store and that got rid of him but OMG that was a disaster waiting to happen because I was about to kick his ass and I could probably get in trouble for that because if I have him down on the ground and I'm punching him or something they might not exactly believe that HE was the one bothering ME...

But anyway, back to yesterday...I did a bunch of laundry to avert the 3am half-dozing-off-between-trudging-up-and-down-to-the-laundry-room thing, and I also tried to fix my iPhone. It's been half broken since I spilled some grapefruit juice on it, and I thought if I could just open it up and clean it with some alcohol and a q-tip that maybe it would work properly again and I could actually use it when it is unplugged from my computer, so after ruining two case opening tools and a couple of razor blades I finally managed to get it open and broken all the way instead of halfway and hey...did you know that the battery inside the iPhone is actually squishy? Isn't that weird?

Also, although there are many tutorials, pictoral and video in nature, on the web that describe how to take your iPhone apart, none really seem to tell you how to put it back together. I don't know if they think it just seems obvious OR if they're just like "haha dummy...we tricked you into taking your phone apart and voiding the warranty, but hey...check out the squishy battery!" Also, even though EVERY OTHER part of the phone came apart in a billion pieces, the part that got grapefruit juice in it is still inexplicably sealed shut and NOT included in any disassembly instructions. Apparently people DO need to replace the battery or maybe the LCD but they NEVER EVER get grapefruit juice in the bottom part where the power/usb cord attaches.

After breaking my iPhone the rest of the way, I thought maybe I could use my XO laptop to connect to the Internet when I'm away from home. Cuz I don't care about actually talking on the phone, I just want my Net connection, damnit! It wouldn't connect to my network, though, and I ran out of time to say, go to Starbucks and see if it would connect to their network or to try and steal some bandwidth from a neighbor or to maybe read on the web how to install another operating system version since I think I heard something about how you should do that if like me you are an XO owner but not a child in a 3rd world country. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

So today I left my apartment feeling rather lost...I never realized how much I do on my iPhone, from checking the weather for 20 different cities every morning to texint my bf every time I'm bored (which apparently is quite often) to using iTunes Apps, to of course monitoring my sales transactions. Basically, everything but make phonecalls. Phone calls are like, sooooo last century!

I did happen to grab my Amazon Kindle on the way out, though. Last night I insisted to my bf that I would only be able to use it to read books while I was in San Francisco and that OF COURSE I wouldn't be able to surf the web with it without a wifi network connection but...guess what??? I was W-R-O-N-G. Unfortunately the browser on the Kindle is totally primitive and I can't seem to log in to PayPal or to my own websites, but it is good enough to run Gmail so I was a little bit connected after all.

Tomorrow and Monday I'm going to be trying to use my bf's phone as my web browser replacement, so that should be interesting. He does have one of the latest and greatest PDA type phones, so it should work okay I just get frustrated trying to navigate with it after using the iPhone interace for a year and a half. Now I'm going to go pack and make a list of vegan restaurants, otherwise I'll be up until 3am. Again.

What do you mean we're on a diet?

My bf says he wants to lose a few pounds. I don't know where he expects to lose them from. Maybe he could lose a pound around his stomach but that would be "pound" and not "pounds". Still, I thought I'd be agreeable and offer to lose some weight along with him. I think I will have a much easier time finding some extra poundage.

So I'm thinking "great, I'll walk for an hour every day and eat vegetables and salad like I'm always saying I'm going to do anyway, maybe add five or ten more minutes on the treadmill at the gym. This is going to be easy and fun!" Little did I know my bf's idea of losing weight involved 1.) working out harder and more often at the gym and 2.) eating less.

Eating less? Are you serious?!? I thought maybe just y'know...change ones eating habits a bit, but now I think I've signed up to share just one appetizer instead of two when we go to a restaurant, skip dessert, skip having a burrito after the gym, no after-dinner muscato. All kinds of wacko stuff like that. I think it even involves drinking less wine.

Saturday, since I'm going to the salon, we are doing the traditional after-the-salon THANG and meeting at Millenium for dinner. If he thinks I'm giving up having an irish coffee after dinner there he is quite mistaken!

Okay, I'm just kidding around...the truth is a.) my bf isn't going to hold me to any of his ideas about eating less...in fact just tonight he bought me a burrito even though he didn't have one and b.) he's right, we do eat too much. Just because you can indulge doesn't mean you always should. In fact, I shouldn't have had that burrito...it wasn't even that good and I was stuffed afterwards.

I'm still having that irish coffee, though.

Invasion of the flesh-eating reindeer from Uranus

That most romantic time of the year is almost upon us.

That's right, it's been almost exactly 2 years since my bf and I first met. To celebrate the occasion we are going to Los Angeles for about a day and a half. Woot, woot!

Why Los Angeles? Well you see, one of my latest obsessions is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, a "purveyor of fine esoteric goods, perfumes and potions". This place makes perfumes that are, well, weird. There are a bunch of different themes, like "Neil Gaiman", "The Graveyard Book", "Mad Tea Party" and "Pharmacopoeia" and the perfumes have both unusual descriptions and obscure ingredients. Here is a sample from their "Carnaval Diabolique" series:

The Parliament of Monsters
You pass through the golden mouth, and find yourself inside a narrow, cramped corridor. Large wooden paintings of skeletal hands crook their bony fingers, leading you forwards. At the first turn, you hear a bizarre jumble of sounds: the high-pitched sound of gears grinding, metal on metal, the sound of sultry, low-pitched laughter, a clattering, wings flapping, soft hissing. Suddenly, a sharp howl pierces the darkness. As you make your way around the corner you are momentarily blinded as floodlights flicker to life, and thirteen gold-gilded stages are illuminated, bathed from beneath in sinister caramel-colored light.

Dust, incense, wet tobacco, and a curl of opium smoke

Actually, some of the ingredients are much odder. "ozone", "ethereal white resins", "Balm of Gilead", "thin lubricating oils", "drooping seaweed", "the blackness of space".

There is even a huge forum dedicated to talking about and trading these scents. A forum which even has exclusive scents not available anywhere else. The one thing PBAL doesn't have is a physical store/location. Well, except during the full moon. On the night of the full moon, BPAL has a few locations open for several hours and you can get scents without having to wait and even get to smell some of them ahead of time, in case you're not sure if you're going to like a scent called "Banana Peel In a Graveyard".

It just so happens one of those locations is Los Angeles, and it just so happens that the full moon is February 9th and it just so happens that Feb 9th is ALSO that romantic day of the year I referenced above. AND it ALSO just so happens that on Feb 8th a store called "Dark Delicacies", in beautiful downtown Burbank, which carries some exclusive BPAL scents (like Invasion of the Flesh-Eating Reindeer from Uranus) is having it's OWN special BPAL event.

So I figured it would be a REALLY GREAT IDEA if my bf and I went to Los Angeles for our 2 years since we first met anniversary. Cuz we're always talking about going places but we've never actually made it further than wine country unless you count last year for my birthday when I dragged him to the San Joachim Valley (and by drag I mean "made him drive me") so we could spend the night at a rather weird B&B at a weird winery (so I guess we didn't escape wineries/wine country after all) and buy raw almonds. Except we turned out to be two weeks early for getting raw almonds...ooops.

I also wanted to go to the Fashion District because I want to buy fabric. So really I'm afraid the trip was looking like another big "let's do what Jinx wants", just like that trip on my birthday, so I was feeling kind of bad and guilty about that. Then two things happened and now it's exciting again..

1.) We got tickets to the Craig Ferguson show! We are going to be part of a Live Studio Audience! And I think Craig Ferguson is funny. Our choices were either Wheel of Fortune or Craig Ferguson and I'm pretty happy with our choice. My bf was happy we got the tickets even though he seems to think I'm going to yell out something embarrassing like "ILOVEYOUCRAIG, YOU SEXY SCOTTISH RECOVERING ALCOHOLIC...RUN AWAY WITH ME AND LETS MAKE BABIES!" He's wrong though, cuz I'm totally not.

Nope.

Not.

Totally not.

Probably not.

2.) Before we go, I am going to get my hair done, and a bunch of other girlie things at the salon in San Francisco I always go to. And by "always go to" I mean that I theoretically go to every 3 months but it's probably been more like 7 or 8 by now and I'm soooo way overdue my bf is THRILLED that I'm going. He's convinced I finally made an appointment because I'm going to be on television and I think he's plotting how we can go to Los Angeles every three months to be in the studio audience of any lame show that will have us or even sign us up to be movie extras if that's what it takes to get me to a salon.

Not only that, but I looked up "vegan" on Yelp in Los Angeles and a TON of fantastic restaurants showed up. I don't think we'll be there long enough to eat at more than 3 or 4 places, but I'm so excited because it's like, the mecca of vegan food and since we love to eat but we are now eating a plant-based diet, this is perfect for us.

Hollywood here we come! (or Studio City or Burbank or wherever the heck we're going.)

Knitting with Cat Hair

I just received a book in the mail today called "Knitting with Dog Hair: Better a sweater from a dog you know and love than from a sheep you'll never meet".

I purchased this book because I thought it was quite silly and weird sounding and I wanted to give it as part of a gift set, but flipping through it and reading about chow you can collect cat har too, I must admit I am feeling a bit tempted to try and collect/card/spin cat hair and then knit something with it.

Probably take about ten years to get enough hair to knit much of anything, but I'm sure the cats will enjoy the collection process, so what the heck.

Energy Day 16 - 20: catching up

Whoops, as the month goes on I'm slipping on posting about my energy quest, just like back in October with the yoga thing. I shall now attempt to recap the past five days and then resume somewhat normal updates. Almost really for sure probably I will, because my bf is going to be out of the country for the rest of the week so I'll be bored and won't have anyone to talk to.

Thursday:
Saw a documentary called "King Corn" about how most corn is grown, what is done with it and how it's in darn near everything. Decided not to eat anything made with corn for 30 days. This is hard because it's not just Fritos (which now I'm suddenly craving every day even though I don't normally even eat them) and corn on the cob and corn bread and corn tortillas, there is also fructose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, vegetable oil that is made with corn and other sneaky stuff. I'm just glad I don't eat any animal products, since most animals eat corn (even factory farmed fish) so eating animal products looks, at the molecular level, the same as eating corn itself.

I was worried the mustard in the sandwiches I've been eating lately would have corn syrup, but instead the bit of sweet in it is from honey, which reminds me honey is not generally considered vegan, but I ate it anyway and hopefully those particular bees weren't pollinating any corn. I don't think so because corn only needs wind to pollinate itself.

We were supposed to have wheat grass juice this day, so we went to Jamba Juice before the gym but they were sold out...all they had was a shaggy, sad looking patch of hacked at grass behind the counter. We got smoothies instead, mine was the pomegranate paradise. It wasn't very good and I was worried about what might be in it. On the menu they aren't very forthcoming with the ingredients. I finally managed to find the REAL ingredient list for the pomegranate paradise and basically the main ingredient is apple and pear juice from concentrate. I think I'll stick to making my own smoothies with fresh pomegranate seeds in them!

Since we didn't have wheat grass and neither one of us liked our smoothies, we decided to go get burritos again. I'm sort of questioning the wisdom of not just getting out of the gym in the evening and promptly ordering a burrito the size of a small child, but of doing it over and over again. And, I'm hoping nothing in the burrito contains corn...like, the tortillas could be made with vegetable oil that is made with corn.

Friday:
I was going to go to the gym. No really! But about 5pm I suggested we make dinner at my bf's place instead. He countered with "let's go out to eat". Well hmmm...I could go work out at the gym OR I could go out to eat...that's a tough one. The toughest thing about it is picking out which restaurant to go to. We decided to go to a restaurant in Hayward that has a little wine bar built into it. This was good because we want to visit every wine bar in the bay area. We've probably been to over a dozen now, so that's only about 345,973 to go.

I should have known I'd had too much wine about the time we started planning our own lounge act, with me agreeing to learn how to play the piano so we could do this, and picking out suitable locations where we could just sort of start playing whether the owners liked it or not. I didn't catch the clue, though, and when we got home I actually had a fourth glass of wine.

Saturday:
I wanted to die. Curse that fourth glass of wine. Damn it to hell! But you know, at least I started my day with fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, courtesy of my bf who went to Costco and bought a large wheelbarrow full of grapefruits and various other large boxes of stuff that are now taking up vast amounts of space in his kitchen. I'm so sweet I'm willing to take some grapefruits and maybe some more pomegranates off his hands if he needs to be able to get to his kitchen door or use the counters.

My sweet bf also made pumpkin waffles with maple syrup and blueberries. I must say, pumpkin waffles are MUCH BETTER when you don't feel like you want to die. I spent the rest of the day recovering by napping and continuing my Stargate marathon, so as far as having ENERGY goes...well, actually I did pretty good there because what I was trying to do was horde up my energy for Sunday so I'd be ready to go wine tasting.

Sunday:
Sundays we occasionally go to Livermore for wine tasting and for brunch at Wente. For some reason my bf, the guy who ate the same flavor of oatmeal every morning for 20 years, wanted to try a new restaurant. In the past, finding a new restaurant has often involved using my iPhone to look up nearby places on Yelp to get an idea of whether we might like them and what they serve, however, ever since I spilled grapefruit juice on my phone it only works when plugged into a computer. Basically, my cell phone has now become a land line phone but still with the expensive cell phone monthly fee.

So instead, we used the gps to find a restaurant. This is not the best way to do it for two reasons.
1.) The settings on the gps allow you to choose "all" restaurants or choose based on type of food. To choose by type is confusing because we just want a good restaurant and we don't know if that's going to be american, french, italian...not to mention so many restaurants these days don't fit in a good category, like they might be pan-asian-california-cuisine and there is no category for that. So one is forced to view "all" restaurants, which will also list every Arby's, McDonalds, Subway, Dairy Queen, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, Carl's Jr., In & Out Burger and etc. It makes it very hard to find the restaurants that serve real food. The gps needs a category that is "everything but fast food".
and
2.) Just seeing the name of a restaurant doesn't really tell you much about it, certainly not whether it's good or bad or if you're going to find something you like on the menu or if they're open or ANYTHING. It's only a name.

We settled on a greek restaurant. I'm not sure if we really understood it was greek before we went in. I didn't anyway. We ended up having one of the worst sandwiches ever. So bad I decided to just eat my fries. Then I started to wonder if the fries were fried in vegetable oil probably made from corn and I decided it was very likely, so I didn't eat those either. Thank goodness for the hummus, at least that was good.

So then yadda yadda we went to some wineries that we'd never been to before and it really seemed like we made some good choices and Livermore is so much more relaxed and uncrowded compared to Sonoma or Napa. The people are nice and one guy even gave us a barrel tasting, which was pretty cool.

Eventually we ended up at the one winery we always go to when we go to Livermore and we got the owner and his gf to go out to dinner with us. I think they are starting to feel very comfortable with us because we went to an italian restaurant where they ordered pina coladas. The wine maker had a pina colada. Isn't that against some kind of rule or something?

Monday:
What did I do Monday? Oh yeah...another Stargate marathon. Hey, it won't be long now and I'll be done with Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis...I'm in the home stretch. Can't slow down now!

Did I have energy? You know, I actually did I just wasted it. I decided I should learn to knit. Or more like re-learn to knit, since I once at least knew how to make a scarf. I had knitting needles and a knitting basket and I made a kick-ass scarf for myself that of course I lost just like I lost my mad knitting skillzzzzz (and by mad knitting skillzzzzz I mean I could knit one stitch and didn't know how to actually finish off the piece.) I'm trying to assemble the things I need in order to start relearning to knit again and I think it could have been a great thing to do while watching 15 seasons of Stargate plus several Stargate made for tv movies, but I'm not waiting for my supplies to do that, so it'll have to wait for the Battlestar Gallactica marathon.

Tuesday (today!):
The winemaker and his gf called and wanted to have dinner with us again. I figured it must be because of all the very intelligent web 2.0 stuff I had to say to them on Sunday. I was spouting techo-babble and telling them how to create a dynamic CMS site like the biggest, smartest geek you ever heard. Or at least so I thought after visiting four wineries in under three hours. Since this time they never asked me once about their site, I'm now thinking my brilliant techno-babble was what triggered the winemaker saying "I'm tired!"

We had a fun evening, even though I had to tear myself away from scanning stuff in for FaceBook. I didn't quite get my 7-8 hours sleep the night before, but my energy was still decent, still drinking grapefruit juice and matcha smoothies, and I even did a few loads of laundry which I hate, hate, hate (though I must admit it's nice to have all my favorite clothes clean...)

Alright, I think there's just time for an episode of Stargate before bed...

Twitterfox

I just learned about Twitterfox today. Twitterfox is a Firefox browser plug-in that allows you to make and send Twitter tweets right from the bottom of your browser instead of going to the Twitter site. When you receive them, you're notified via pop-up immediately. Because it's separate from Twitter, you don't have to choose it on Twitter as the method you want to get tweets, but the plug-in will go check your Twitter account on your behalf.

Of course, Twitter is designed to be easy to update via IM, website or cell phone, but Twitterfox is the easiest of all. Also, the person who created Twitterfox also created TwitterFon for the iPhone...got to give that a try although my iPhone has never properly recovered from the grapefruit juice I spilled on it a few months ago.

I use Twitter to update people when I have Therebucks in stock to sell, and any little thing that can make that process easier and faster is A+ in my book. Those people looking to see if I have ThereBucks in stock should definitely give it a try if they use Firefox.

Tweet, tweet, tweet!

Energy Day 14 & 15:

I'm awake! I'm awake!

Yeesh. Somehow my plan to get up earlier every day has completely gone awry and I'm actually getting up later. This is too bad because the weather has been unseasonably warm and mostly sunny. I was thinking I should start going into San Francisco for those stairway walks this week, but I'm actually thinking the weather is a bit warm for that. So maybe I'll plan on starting next week, and meanwhile I'll try to plan exactly what I should wear and bring to spend hours walking around San Francisco (and going up and down hills and stairs ON PURPOSE) because it would suck to get there and then I wore the wrong shoes or some pants that keep falling down or I didn't really wear layers so I can't adjust my temperature by adding or subtracting clothing or I brought a purse when I should have brought a messenger bag. Oh yes, it must be planned.

Speaking of planning, I received a new copy of Microsoft OneNote 2007 a few days ago and I installed it last night and am going to be using that to write my MASTER LIST OF THINGS I SHOULD DO. It's going to be a fun way to use my tablet pc. I can use it to plan this year's garden, too! I used a trial copy of 2003 to do that last year and...oooh, now I can access those old files if I want. Bonus!

Yesterday I received my confused herb plant from Puerto Rico. I think my postal carrier hates me. One of the part time ones now seems to be the full time guy and seriously...the old one was super nice but this guy will knock on my door to give me a package (which I guess is good albeit maybe the reason he seems to hate me...like maybe I got him in trouble before for not even attempting to make package deliveries) and then he'll just be REALLY FREAKING WEIRD when he says hello OR he won't even say hello at all, just scan my package and hand it to me like he'd rather die than do anything else. He can't possibly know I was accusing him of being a cross-dressing thief, can he??!?

The plant is FUZZY, which doesn't seem very herb-like to me, or at least it didn't until I remembered sage. Sage: the other fuzzy herb. Still don't know if I want to cook with this one. Oh heck I don't care, I just want it to live and grow and trade me oxygen for carbon dioxide. I wish I'd gotten more plants by now. I think I might plant some seeds today, some cilantro and maybe some more kinds of beans

I'm actually more okay the last few days about the time I spend in the kitchen juicing and smoothie-ing and other various activities and even cleaning up after the same since finishing Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. He says we should eat FOOD. Food! That maybe sounds obvious but he means REAL food. It makes sense. If you go to the grocery store, most of the stuff there is NOT real food. It's just processed crap that has had all the nutrition removed from it to make it less perishable and less desirable to insects and rodents so it can be stored better.

And so, while we're eating real food, it also makes sense that food takes TIME. Time to make, time to eat and enjoy. Eating should be a sociable, pleasurable act and not an inconvenience made tolerable by drive-through windows.

So I am going to enjoy my food, and enjoy the preperation of my food. In fact, I've been thinking of making bento boxes. I even found a cool site to get started with making them and I ordered a box from eBay and have my eye on another in a different style from the site j-box. Not that bento requires a special bento box, one could simply use a plastic storage container or something. In fact, I might make one in just such a container while I wait for my kawaii bento.

My final thought for now is that not eating refined grains and sugars during the day has definitely had a major positive effect on my energy levels. I never want a nap in the afternoon or early evening, and my energy level is quite high in the afternoon and evening. Still need to work on the part where I channel that energy in a useful way.

It would help if I got up several hours earlier....

Energy day 12 & 13: El Grullense

My bf and I have a new tradition. Thursdays evenings have often been "go to the gym and then go across the street to the wine bar", now Mondays are "El Grullense day". El Grullense is a very conveniently located taqueria which I have been by MANY times in my nearly four years in Redwood City. There are a bunch of them in the area, and since I'm not originally from California, I was intrigued enough by my bf's mild embarrassment at ordering a burrito there to research the place online.

An article in the Palo Alto Weekly told me that El Grullense started out as a roach coach (aka taco truck) and then mushroomed into a bunch of physical locations. The name kind of looks like it refers to grilling, but it actually grullo means "crane" and the owner is from the town of El Grullo, Mexico and because of this is known by the name "El Grullense".

I can't believe I never went to this place before! I guess I was just intimidated, because I knew almost everyone there would be speaking spanish and trying to order could potentially be an ordeal since "vegetarian burrito with no cheese or sour cream or anything too spicy" is probably not on the menu.

That's silly, though. If I know anything in spanish, it's how to order food. And shop. Or especially, shop for food. At least I thought I did until I asked the woman behind the counter "a que hora cerrado?" and she looked at my bf questioningly until he said THE SAME THING to her and she answered. C'mon, my pronunciation isn't that bad, is it? Maybe I'm just scary.

Yeah, so Mondays when we go to the gym are "go get a burrito at El Grullense" night. I'm trying to decide where I put burritos on the scale of foods from healthy to unhealthy. Rice, beans (whole, not refried), lettuce, tomato, guacamole and cilantro all swaddled up in a giant, lightly grilled flour tortilla. It's kind of in the middle maybe? It's not an ideal dinner, but it's not exactly junk food either. They're pretty huge...I mean, one burrito and you're stuffed. Not sure it's the ideal food to eat late at night. But hey, it's my bf who eats a burrito the size of his head and then goes to bed, me I'm up for hours afterwards.

Speaking of the gym, I have had a LOT of energy when I'm there. Even if I'm sleepy for a couple hours when I get up (like today when UPS knocked on my door three hours earlier than normal) by the time I get to the gym I'm quite perky and I have tons of energy. I'm not too sore the next day, either. I think I need to do something else to challenge myself and to burn off the extra energy.

About six months ago, I was going to the gym sometimes a half hour before my bf and spending an extra 30 mins on the treadmill before he showed up. That was a good way to burn some extra energy. Maybe I should do that again. Although...Thursday we are going to the gym and we are supposed to meet at Jamba Juice first and both have our FIRST EVER shot of wheat grass juice. Hopefully I'll remember we're supposed to do this. We were supposed to do it Monday and I forgot and my bf...no, he didn't forget...he was HAPPY I forgot. I guess he won't be so happy when I remember in two days, huh???

Okay, let's talk about food...yesterday some crazy person took over my brain and made me buy beer flavored potato chips and eat the whole bag for breakfast. You see this crazy person loves to shop at Grocery Outlet which is like a dented can store except the cans aren't dented and they have lots of organic products and interesting flavors of soy milk and all kinds of different stuff. It's stuff that is overstock and discontinued items from warehouses and distributors and other stores. So where a dented can store takes the product AFTER it's been on another store's shelves, this stuff comes to Grocery Outlet without making an intermediate stop generally. The thing is you never know what they're going to have or IF THEY'LL EVER have it again. So if you see something intriguing, something you've never had before like oh say...beer flavored potato chips...you have to get them NOW or they may never have them again and you may not be able to find them anywhere.

So this crazy person that took over my brain HAD TO buy the beer flavored potato chips while she was at the store buying oranges and grapefruits because it was like NOW or NEVER. Then...well, I hadn't eaten yet and I was hungry and she took advantage of my weakness and made me open the package and eat them. They were pretty good, too, although not my favorite. They had a kind of cheesy taste to them so I was thinking they'd be great for a vegan that misses cheese flavored potato chips, which I don't. I miss Velveeta Shells and Cheese. I miss port wine cheese spread. There are a lot of cheesy things I miss but that isn't one of them.

Then to continue the "weird things for breakfast" trend, this morning (morning being a relative term) I had brazil nuts for breakfast. I blame this on our society full of "convenience" foods. I'm sort of tired of having to get out the juicer and/or the VitaMix every time I am going to have something, and then having to clean them out afterwards. It's a lot less work than cooking a full meal, but it's way more work than say, tearing a bag of chips at that little notch in the top of the bag or undoing the twist-tie on a bag of brazil nuts and sticking your hand in. We're so spoiled by having food come in a cup that you just stick in the microwave for 90 seconds and voila! Soup! Or something. I dunno...I've been trying to avoid ever microwaving anything and am thinking of giving away my Warm and Toasty microwave toaster oven to the feline HIV cat shelter. I was just listening to some more of Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" and he was talking about how the food we eat isn't even really food any more and I think it's so true.

Today's smoothie:

1 young thai coconut, both the water and flesh
1 frozen banana
1 scoop maca powder
4 packets stevia
1 scoop raw cacao powder
1/2 scoop espresso powder
4 ice cubes

I used a coconut because a.) I was out of soy milk b.) I had a coconut in the fridge and c.) I thought it would be delicious. At first it tasted weird and I couldn't figure out why, then I realized I forgot the stevia. Once I fixed that part it tasted pretty normal but I think it would have been better with two bananas, a pinch of sea salt and no espresso powder.

Energy Day 10 & 11: now we're cooking

Saturday I was still suffering from the problem of "okay, I have energy but I don't feel like doing anything with it". My bf was coming to pick me up at 8pm and I have this weird thing where if I have something to do later in the day, I'm not very good at getting stuff done earlier in the day with this event (whatever it is) hanging over my head. I did start listening to Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" on audiobook, and I'm pretty sure I was doing SOMETHING while listening but I don't remember what offhand. We had food from Coconut Bay for dinner, and they saved us some extra calories and grease by refusing to deep fry the rice paper spring rolls...so we just didn't get them and were perfectly happy (and stuffed) with the coconut rice, coconut curry vegetables and vegan pad thai.

Yesterday, after staying up too late and sleeping equally late, I at least started my day out with some grapefruit juice, which was great, and some hazelnut iced coffee, which is maybe not as good for one as a matcha smoothie but it's certainly tasty. Then we had our Sunday version of breakfast burritos, which can vary a little based on what's in the fridge but was homemade white whole wheat flour tortillas wrapped around refried beans (not sure why they're called "re" fried, since we only fry them once) with Soyrizo (soy version of chorizo) in them, avocado, tomato and chives. We used to use cheese but with avocado even soy cheese isn't really necessary, and we like them with cilantro but the chives were what we had and were a tasty touch.

The rest of the day consisted of cooking, cooking, and cooking. The last two hours of cooking I just really, really wanted to stop chopping vegetables and sit down, or lie down, and sleep or drink wine while in a semi vegetative state, half sitting, half lying down. But I kept going. And now I am thinking that totally counts as exercise, so at least I didn't sit on my butt all day. We made three kinds of energy bars from the Thrive book, two soups from vegan planet, and two kinds of cornbread from a book full of cornbread recipes. Half of what we made was pretty good, too. It was like a culinary bootcamp, the idea of which is not only to learn some new recipes but to hopefully provide my bf with some food to eat during the week so eating a plant based diet doesn't cause him to starve to death. After seeing how many sweet potato cornbread muffins with dates, walnuts and streusel topping he ate, I am totally not worrying about that right now.

Energy day 9: Motivation

Well, I think the way I've been eating lately, with all the fresh juice and the matcha and maca and no high fat simple carb foods until the day is almost over is really helping me have more energy. In fact, the last few days at the gym I've been feeling energetic and strong and I've been pushing myself when doing cardio without even thinking about it.

Once I get going in the morning, after the first few hours, I have plenty of energy. It seems like my problem is more one of motivation. Like I won't get anything "done" until I find something to inspire me. The last few days it's been searching for pictures on old hard drives and scanning in photos and negatives for Facebook. I've been very motivated and driven to work on that, but there are other things I really should get done, arguably more important, that I just don't seem to get to.

All the energy in the world won't do me any good without the drive or motivation to do something with it.

Maybe if I make a list, and look at it in the mornings. Sometimes I just don't remember what it was I was going to do until later in the day, and I feel disorganized and scattered. With a big list of everything I want or need to do on it, I could scan the list while drinking my morning juice, or when I'm still laying there going "um, I really should get up..." and find something that inspires me. For the most part I don't think it matters what order stuff gets done in, as long as it gets done.

Now I just need to decide if I should write my list in Google Notebook or the old fashioned way, on paper. OR...on the touchscreen of my tablet pc using OCR!!! That could be fun because then I'd have it on my computer but I'd also be writing it by hand, which I think I read stimulates different parts of your brain than typing.

Energy day 8: Accidental Salad

Getting up earlier is not exactly going well. In fact, today I got up a little later than usual. I then felt groggy for several hours, but eventually perked up in time for the gym.

Ah yes, the gym...the only reason I got any exercise today, but at least I was there for a couple of hours, so that must be good, right?

After the gym we tried my pomegranate/orange smoothie and it wasn't bad. My bf brought me a bag from a taqueria or someplace the other day and told me it had burritos in it and I got all excited...yum, burritos! But when I looked inside I found it was pomegranates. Well, when life gives you pomegranates, I figure why not make a pomegranate smoothie? I'd seen a recipe for one the other day in the book "The Thrive Diet: The Whole Food Way To Lose Weight, Reduce Stress, and Stay Healthy For Life" and I was curious to try it since the recipe doesn't call for pomegranate juice, but whole seeds pulverized in the blender. I found it pretty tasty and may make it again although the pith of the seeds doesn't seem to get blended in and leaves some sediment on the bottom, and it's a bit futzy to de-seed a pomegranate. I wonder how pomegranate tastes with matcha...

So then we went to the wine bar because you know...it's Thursday and we were at the gym that's across the street from the wine bar anyway so whatcha gonna do? Usually this involves a few glasses of wine and some food, but they've kind of sort of changed their hours and technically weren't open any more when we went there, so food wasn't on the menu.

Finally we get to the title of this post...I'd said I was going to try and have salad every day this month, or at least have some leafy greens, but first I didn't have the ingredients and then I got salad ingredients yesterday but it just seems really hard to try and eat EVERY healthy food I'm trying to eat. It's too much food! I don't know WHEN I'm going to eat the brussel sprouts, cherries or chestnuts I have in the fridge right now. BUT, I did find myself making a salad at 11pm. Dang, salad is a lot of work. I surprised myself by actually chopping up vegetables and mixing up dressing at such a late hour. I wish I was in a salad co-op with a dozen people and each person could just make salad for 12 people once every 12 days. It wouldn't be much more work to make salad for 12 than for just one person so it would be totally worth it.

Of course, those 11 other people have to all want the same things in the salad that I want.

Okay scratch that...that would never work.

Energy day 7: My get up and go...

...got up and went.

I didn't sleep so well last night...I was doing okay until my phone woke me up (note to self: silent mode isn't good enough, it has to be set not to vibrate) and then a few hours later my cat Rodney woke me up THROWING UP ON MY BED. Ugh.

So I was kind of dragging when I got up, although I did get up a little earlier at least, so that was good.

Then before I could have some grapefruit juice or a matcha smoothie, UPS showed up earlier than usual and brought me a box of Koka Moka Pro Bar, a mostly raw organic energy bar full of dried fruit, nuts and decent sized chocolate chips. So of course I ate one. They're very filling with lots-o-calories and have that "this must be really healthy stuff" kind of taste that is saved from mediocrity by the chocolate chunks. I'm planning to give most of them to my bf so he doesn't starve during busy workdays, but I love to try something new. This totally ruined my appetite for hours.

I moped around for a while, ready to spend the day watching Stargate, but I've known for a few days that it was supposed to be a beautiful and mostly sunny 60 degrees. I'd have been kicking myself if I didn't get anything done or get outside and enjoy the day, so I finally motivated out to run some errands. I felt envigorated while I was walking, but standing in line I felt like I could doze off while waiting and by the time I was almost home I started really dragging.

After having grapefruit juice and a matcha smoothie I felt better but still not really like doing anything until I was inspired to search for and upload a bunch of photos to Facebook. Suddenly I had much more energy! So I guess finding something you can get excited about is one way to rev up energy levels. It's also one way to stay up way past one's bedtime yet again.

Oh, I think I figured out one of the reasons the smoothie has been tasting a little weird. Gelatinized maca has a mild butterscotch flavor. Maybe not the best flavor combined with OJ and green tea flavors.

Energy day 6: I wonder where to wander

So much for going to sleep early last night. I couldn't sleep and went to bed extra-late. Still, I got up at the same time as usual and although I felt slightly tired from that, I still had plenty of energy today.

I was out of orange juice until I went to the store, so I had the juice of two grapefruits for breakfast. After that I made a smoothie from coffee flavoured soy milk, 1 1/2 frozen bananas, a scoop of raw cacao powder, and a half scoop of espresso powder and four packets of stevia. It came out amazing and you could barely taste the espresso/coffee flavors, it just made the chocolate flavor richer and it tasted like a really creamy chocolate milkshake.

Because I had the cacao/espresso smoothie, I thought maybe I wouldn't have a matcha smoothie, but then some Gelatinized Maca Powder arrived in the mail and I wanted to try it, so once I had oranges I made a smoothie of the juice of three oranges, two mounded little spoons of matcha, a teaspoon of maca powder, six ice cubes and four packets of stevia. It tasted a little funny...I think without the banana I've been putting in there it just had too much matcha, but it could be the maca powder as well.

Maca helps the adrenal glands regenerate, helps maintain your body's hormone balance and possesses the precursors for serotonin (thereby reducing sugar cravings). Maca can help you lift more weight and recover faster

Anyway, I had a lot of energy today, and although I didn't get as much done as I had fantasized I might, at least I can't say it was for lack of energy. I also got the Klutz juggling kit today, and I've been practicing throwing just ONE beanbag. I completely suck at throwing anything and I want to be able to consistently throw at the same arc and catch reliably before moving on to two. It makes a nice way to fidget while watching Stargate. Hopefully that mid-range lobe in my brain is taking notice!

Tomorrow I hope to switch the locations of the cat tree and the plant shelving around. This will be to prevent a certain 15 pound cat from using the bed to jump up and down from the tree, this waking me up in the middle of the night. Perhaps this will help me get an even better night's sleep

I've also been looking at a book called "Become an Energy Addict", and it doesn't have the same concise paragraphs of ideas that "365 Energy Ideas" has, but it does have some different interesting ideas. It suggests being a "walking tourist", both in your own town and when you are away, and walking around everywhere checking out all the stuff there is to see that you might never see any other way. This is a fun idea in my own town because I love to spy what other people are growing in their gardens/yards. That's what gave me the idea that we should grow corn this coming season...so many people around here seem to plant maybe one or two dozen stalks of it and it takes up hardly any room...I think it would be SOOOOO awesome to be eating corn from your own garden. My bf was not nearly so impressed with the idea, but since it takes up such a small amount of space, he doesn't mind if we do it. Also, I have a book called "Stairway Walks in San Francisco" which is a VERY cool little book full of interesting walking routes, and as soon as I am done running a bunch of errands around my own town I AM going to move on to going in to San Francisco at least once a week to try all these walks. I think it will be so fun.

Hmmmm...I wonder if I should try to take a matcha smoothie along with me on my walks or if I should see what interesting places I can find to try new things in my wanderings.

Energy day 5: ready for a workout?

I was trying to go to bed earlier last night but I couldn't sleep. I started messing around with my iPhone, I thought maybe I'd play a little Aurora Feint, but I got stuck reading up on the update or version two or whatever it was and couldn't decide if I should update or not so I ended up discovering mint.com instead. It looks like a pretty cool website where you can track all your financial info in one place, including keeping updated on your bank accounts AND PayPal. To make it even sweeter, they have a free app for the iPhone that ties in with the site. Definitely worth a look-see.

So tonight I hope once again to go to bed a little earlier, although it's getting a bit late so we'll see. If I get up a little earlier, that would also be a step in the right direction. I am feeling pretty sleepy right now, although I did have plenty of energy today, including while at the gym! So, I'm pretty pleased about that. I just hope to repeat that over and over and over.

I really need to eat more vegetables, so tomorrow I'm going to try and make getting to the grocery store a priority.

I was reading that you can feel energized by getting rid of stuff...and lord knows I have too much stuff, so I thought I'd get rid of a bunch of magazines I have hanging around taking up too much space on my bookshelves. That was not as easy as it seemed. I sort of ended up with most of them still on shelves and a big pile of them waiting to be looked through before I recycle them...I just can't get rid of them if I haven't read them or at least paged through them yet! And many of them I view as valuable resources. Argh. I did get a few things out of my apartment however, and tomorrow I hope to do enough to make a VISIBLE difference.

I took a stab at researching low-light plants, and so far I purchased some Spanish Thyme, aka Mexican Mint, aka Cuban Oregano from eBay...it's being shipped from Puerto Rico. This plant/herb is either very worldly or very confused. I need to research/procure a few more and then clean off the top rack of my growing shelves to host my new plants. I love the idea that I can get some that are edible like this one (I guess if a recipe calls for mint, oregano and thyme...I'll only need to add one thing!)

I did have a matcha smoothie today, and I had another non-matcha smoothie after the gym. I usually make a smoothie for my bf and I and leave it in the car for when we get out of the gym...I wanted him to try the matcha powder but ummmm...probably a bad idea so late in the evening so I just used orange juice, frozen bananas, frozen cherries and a few packets of Stevia. I'm going to be really sad when I run out of Stevia because I got some packets at Grocery Outlet and they dont' have them any more, but maybe I'll try the liquid next.

Okay, in danger of babbling...going to bed...g'night...

Meme thingy

We now interrupt 31 days of energy to bring you this MEME thing. MsDarkstar sent it to me after I read her blog and requested it. I guess it's not really a meme unless you are passing it on SO, feel free to leave me a comment asking for five questions of your own to answer in your blog if you have one and I will send you some.

1. If you could go back in time and tell your 16-year-old self something, what would you tell her?
Oh hmmm...going back in time could be dangerous because you could really mess things up for the future (your present.) I was thinking maybe I'd tell her some lottery numbers, but y'know she probably would have spent all the money by now and made a mess of her life and I'd never exist as I know me today so screw that. I think I'd just tell her not to get in cars with strangers EVER, not even if they are someone she just met at a job, and I'd tell her not to cheat on her bf when she's 19.

2. What's the best thing about being vegan? What's the hardest part of being vegan?
For 20 years I was vegetarian and I was always a very guilty vegetarian. I used to agonize over the egg section at Whole Foods, trying to figure out which eggs came from the chickens that had the best lives, never mind the fact that laying hens never get to live out their natural lives no matter whether they're treated a little better than the worst treated hens or not. Plus of course all the male chicks that are born from laying hens are just thrown in a dumpster to die or otherwise inhumanely killed. I'd also agonize over plenty of other choices as well, like which butter or cheese came from "happier" cows (never mind that dairy cows are where veal calves come from, or the way the cows have their calves taken away from them over and over again so we can drink their milk instead, etc...). So becoming vegan relieved me of a great burden of guilt that I felt.
The hardest part is finding out something that seems like it SHOULD be vegan isn't for some dumb reason. Like my favorite brand of pot stickers has some egg white in it and I'm pretty sure it's not really necessary. I guess just reading food labels in general is hard, because you never know what awful ingredients you'll find in your food and sometimes I'm just not in the mood. I wish I could just say "I don't want to know" sometimes, but I don't because I've already spent too many years not wanting to know.

3. If you could live anywhere in the world (and money were not an issue), where would you live and why?
Hmmm...first I would need to travel to a bunch of places to see if I'd really like them as much as I think I would. I used to think I'd want to live in Santa Cruz, until I actually went there. If I'm not allowed to travel to a bunch of places before I choose, then I think I'd just like to live in a really cool warehouse loft/studio in the East Bay so I can be closer to my bf. I mean if money is no issue I've seen some pretty cool condo type lofts that even have space for a garden.

4. If you could have only one beverage for the rest of your life, what would you have? (This would be something you'd drink every day)
Is water a choice or do you get water too? I guess I'd have to say water because sometimes that's the only thing that satisfies my thirst. I would never pick wine because having only the finest wines on earth could be part of Dante's 3rd circle of Hell if what you really want is to have a nice cool glass of water.

5. What's your favorite non-vegan food and how do you resist the temptation to eat it?
Oh, I suppose cheese. I have always loved cheese and although it wasn't as hard to give up as I thought it would be, I do find myself thinking about it sometimes. To resist the temptation sometimes I might have a substitute, like Tings instead of Cheetos, or some Dr. Cow aged cashew "cheese", but mostly I just remind myself 1.) it's not healthy to eat it and 2.) that's not something I eat any more because of all the reasons I've gone vegan. It's simply not an option, plus it's pretty gross when you think about it.

Energy day 4: let's wrestle!

Today I had two matcha smoothies, each made from the juice of three oranges, a banana, four packets of stevia, two heaping little spoons of matcha and seven ice cubes. The first one I managed somehow to spill part of on my dress, on my face and even in my eye. Yeah, don't ask. The second one I added some sports vitamin powder to.

I felt like I had a pretty good energy level, but I didn't put it to good use. At least not to do anything physical. I did go through the book "365 Energy Boosters" and picked out some stuff I'd like to try...

Take your vitamins with oj. By taking the sports vitamin powder, I guess I did this one today although it was rather random. I don't even have any more of the powder, so I'm not sure if I'll do it again.

Drink fresh vegetable juice. I've been drinking fruit juice, I wouldn't mind adding veggie juice to the mix, although having the amount of produce on hand to juice every day can be a bit overwhelming and expensive.

Lose a little weight. Just think, if I could lose ten pounds this month, that would be ten less pounds I'd have to lug around! Like putting down the backpack you always carry.

Cultivate indoor plants. I have plants on my balcony and in my bf's garden, but having plants in your home can provide oxygen and moisture to the air, reduce dust, and even lessen fatigue and coughs. I'm going to research the best plants to grow in low-light conditions, since i get barely any direct sunlight in my apartment. I have grow lights but I'm using them right now to sprout peas and beans for our garden, and after that it will be chili peppers and cilantro.

Jump rope. Jumping rope for one minute is supposed to get your blood flowing and energize you. Hey, it's only one minute...might as well give it a try.

Juggle. Studies have shown that practicing juggling every day for three months can increase the size of the mid-temporal lobe in your brain by 3%. That sounds pretty cool, so I ordered a book and some balls on Amazon. It was only ten bucks so why not? I think just trying to do it counts, even if you fail over and over. Since the book won't arrive until Wednesday, I may try some other coordination activities...like using the Wii and maybe the Wii Fit. I have a Wii version of DDR that I've never used, and some other goofy "physical fitness" type games I may try.

Wrestle. Wrestling is supposed to be a great mental and physical release, and I was hoping my bf would volunteer to be my wrestling partner guinea pig, but today all we did was go to the giant asian grocery store and then go out to dinner, and both places would probably frown on wrestling. In fact, the bartender at the restaurant gave us a free dessert to try and prevent us from wrestling. I wonder if that would work anywhere else...(cuz I'm all about the free dessert, especially when it's coconut sorbet with Godiva chocolate liqueur poured on top.)

Speaking of dinner and the asian grocery, I wouldn't really say the items I ate and the items I shopped for at the market were any kind of energy power-houses, although I did notice that you can buy bags of matcha at the asian market and if it tastes decent I could save a lot of money getting it there.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get more done than i did today, AND we are supposed to go to the gym tomorrow night. I also hope to get up a little earlier (to take advantage of the fact that daylight/sunlight are energy-giving) so I guess I should GO TO BED RIGHT NOW. G'night.