Chocolate Special K

Part of the fun of visiting people or having them visit you is you're exposed to that person's or family's eating habits. Most of us tend to buy the same foods week after week--our favorite chips or granola bars, same 'ol fruit and veggies, our favorite spaghetti sauce, cola drink, or boxed pasta.

I told you how much fun it was to come back from the Outer Banks and find our housesitter had left lager and chocolate-peanut butter ice-cream behind. Bonus! I never buy those things for myself and so had a little kitchen holiday inside the home. I had a similar experience yesterday with some CHOCOLATE Special K my niece had left behind.

When we went to the store and she picked up the box of CHOCOLATE Special K my first thought was "gross." That thought didn't change when I watched her pour it in a bowl and eat it. Dark chocolate chunks mixed with a high protein corn cereal? Sure, that or snot. Both sound about equally appealing.

But hunger makes us do strange things. Yesterday afternoon I was starving and out of desperation, poured a small bowl of the cereal just to try it before I threw the box out. Oh. My. God. You're going to need to send me to detox to pull me off this stuff. It's chocolate! And cereal! In the words of the iconoclastic Rachel Ray--"Yum-O!"

It boils down to the fact that I am a chocolate whore. Pour it on top of lima beans and I'll eat it. I think I had 3 bowls of Chocolate Special K yesterday. I'm focusing on the "Special K" part and mentally chanting, "It's good for me!" while simultaneously shoving small chunks of dark chocolate down my throat. 

If only I had some lager with which to wash it down...

Hanging With A 13 Year Old

It's 5:30 AM and the cats are swarming around my ankles like a herd of great whites. They're lonely. My niece is in in town for her annual summer visit and the cats--antisocial beings that they are--refuse to be in the same room with a stranger. 

We've had a great visit with K----- but as always, I'm exhausted. It's been non-stop since she arrived. The two of us have a tradition of cooking when we get together which is a laugh because neither of us knows which end of the stove is up. But we poured over cookbooks Wednesday night, went grocery shopping early Thursday morning, and then literally spent almost 8 hours in the kitchen. We shredded carrots for carrot cake, shelled pistachios for stuffed mushrooms, made our own breadcrumbs, and sliced and diced anything that stood still. (Perhaps explaining why the cats won't stay in the same room with us.) The upshot is that we rocked the menu this year. Each and every dish was delectable and I'll spend the next month running off the damage I did with that carrot cake.

After that is was movies. Her Uncle Blair took her to see HellBoy II. He also introduced K--- to the wonderful world of discount books at Edward McKay (she's still talking about the Harry Potter sorcerer's dictionary she found) and they found the Vivaldi flute music she'd been looking for in a music store. K---- is an accomplished flutist for her age and practices, voluntarily, 1-3 hours each day. She sight read the music for us and it was amazing. 

Then it was bowling, eating out, board games, and a visit last night to The Idiot Box, Greensboro's Improv Comedy Club. Aunt Dena and Uncle Blair are pooped!

And the fun doesn't stop. I've got an agent interested in seeing a book proposal and sample chapters for a new cat book and I've been writing the proposal all week. Now I've got to pull out the funny and slam some top notch chapters down on paper. 

But first, I must pet the great whites at my feet. That's a good kitty!

Going Vegan... Maybe

I stopped eating red meat and pork in 1988. I initially did it on a trial basis, just to see if I could. Surprisingly, I never missed it and never had any desire to go back.

Cutting out chicken and turkey, which I did around 1995-96, was harder. Blair and I ate a lot of chicken-based meals together, finding food at a Wendy's or McDonald's became more of a challenge and frankly, Thanksgiving without turkey meat sucks. (I tried Tofurkey which is similar in taste and texture to regurgitated stomach snot. Don't do it.)

I always planned to either cut out or ease back on seafood, which I haven't yet. I love me some crabcakes and lobster! But I watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen where chefs had to drop live lobsters into boiling water and I was all but screaming at them, "Don't do it!" A little hypocritical, considering I eat lobster (dunked in hot butter... oh yum.) So I think I'll start easing off on seafood by no longer eating crab and lobster.

But I've been getting a lot of signals from the Universe lately about vegan. A friend of mine read "Skinny Bitch" and he and his wife are trying Vegan for a month. I'm waiting for him to report back to me. I've recently met several vegans and am semi-following a vegan blog.

Vegan scares me. It seems like a lot of work. But I might compromise (off-putting to the true vegans, I know.) I'm not so much one that believes it's wrong to eat animals as I am someone who believes it's wrong to torture animals before we eat them, which is exactly what happens with standard meat, eggs, etc. I don't want to eat tortured animals from a moral standpoint, but also from a health standpoint. I don't think eating something raised in suffering can be good for me.

Which is why I'm quite interested in the "natural" food wave that's sweeping America. Blair has made some inquiries to local farms about buying meat and eggs. My understanding is these farms raise animals the "old-fashioned" way, with pastures and room to roam. I'd forgo vegan and eat dairy and even chicken/turkey (red meat just no longer appeals to me) if we bought from them.

Still thinking things through. I'd like to read Skinny Bitch and some nutrition books and do more research before committing to anything. But giving up meat has really not been difficult and soy-meat products are MUCH tastier now then they used to be and I would assume they will continue to improve. So stay tuned...

Fridays Off

I could get used to this. Blair's office has gone to summer hours which means they work longer during the week but get Friday's off. Since he works 10-11 hour days as a norm, the "long" hours don't bother us and it's great having him home on Friday's. It's like having my own personal man servant around the house. This morning he already went to the bank, dry cleaners, and store, and he's taking the girls to the vet at 10:30 to get their nails trimmed.

I'm sitting in the library and I noticed a bulb in the light above me had burned out.

"Honey," I called, "Can you change the light?"

Bam-boom, light changed and best of all, Princess didn't have to move a muscle.

I wonder if I can con him into fixing lunch....