A Feast of Thrones

Three things I love:
1) food
2) Game of Thrones
3) reading fan theories & spoilers

Ever since the show surpassed the books, I feel very vulnerable watching Game of Thrones. I'm sure a lot of book readers feel the same.

In an effort to distract myself from searching out spoilers for tonight's GOT season finale, I spent the last couple days thinking about and planning themed snacks to accompany the viewing. I've found that the Internet may be dark and full of spoilers, but Pinterest is full of tasty puns.

So here is my Game of Snacks!
(Gluten free modified, because, life is a cooking challenge with an allergic spouse.)

First, drinks! For my Wight Walker cocktails I made piña coladas and floated a spoon full of blue curaçao on top for an icy blue hue. A White Russian, or a white chocolate martini, would be delicious as well.

(Theon's) Sausage Rolls

I used the puff pastry recipe from Gluten Free on a Shoestring. This recipe is The Tits. GF pie crust can be a total kitchen nightmare for me, but this recipe just always works. It's a bit time consuming but so worth it. I use it for pies, turnovers, and anything that needs a pastry crust.)

Filling:
16 oz Italian sausage
1/2 cup gluten free bread crumbs
2-3 garlic cloves minced
1/4 cup parsley
2 eggs
Minced onion (optional, I skipped because I forgot)
Dijon mustard (to be brushed on pastry before spooning sausage filling on)

Roll, pinch, chill, slice, brush with egg wash, and finally, bake @ 425F for 20 min till golden brown

Chicken (Little)fingers

I made my own and used a mix of gluten free bread crumbs & crushed up pork rinds as the panko crumbs. NOM!

Weirwood veggie platter

Roasted cauliflower steaks for weirwood trees. Thanks, Pinterest!

Dragon devilled eggs

Pinterest WINS again. Except, you should wear gloves while peeling these. Because I didn't..

Old(town) cheddar

Green onion (knight) cakes

– 2 cups of flour (I used Bob's Redmill 1:1 GF blend that already contains xanthan gum)
– 1 tbsp of baking powder
– 1 tsp of salt
– 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
– 1-2 bunches of green onions chopped & mulched in food processor with a little water to make a slurry
– warm water as needed to pull dough together 
– more flour to dust dough as it's rolled out to a quarter inch and cut into what ever shapes you like
– oil to grease pan as you fry cakes like pancakes ( I use coconut oil) Gluten free flour!

Something Something Something with Many Faces.

This one stumped me. Cookies decorated with icing faces were the obvious answer here. But GF baking is the worst and after the tedious task of fussing with GF pastry for the sausage rolls, I just didn't care to fuss with more baked goods.

So drawing a face into the hummus was CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ME!

And there you have it, A Feast for Thrones (watching)

NOW. HOW BOUT THAT FINALE?!

make baba proud.

While I was visiting my mom in Arizona earlier this month I asked her about how to make dill pickles, because store bought pickles are gross. Why are store bought pickles either sweet, sour, and/or soggy, but NEVER CRISPY DILL? According to the google search that my mom did, pickling cucumbers won’t be in season in California till May or something, so I have some time to figure out the gear and supplies needed for canning.

But in that same convo, mom told me how easy it is to make sauerkraut. So I thought I would give it a try. In typical mom sharing of information, she didn’t give me any really solid instructions, so I had to make up my own.

How To Make Sauerkraut:

1. buy shredded cabbage, or if you’re ambitious, shred your own damn cabbage

2. buy actual pickling salt

3. put cabbage in glass bowl and add pickling salt to taste

4. panic when you accidentally put too much salt in because the picking salt runs quickly from the gapping hole you punched in it

5. try rinsing out some salt out of the cabbage with cold water

6. buy more shredded cabbage to even out the salt to cabbage ratio

7. cover bowl, leave on counter, and try not to side eye it too much

8. side eye the bowl more and more every day

9. realize that your side eyeing has gotten so intense that you’ve basically turned your back completely and you’ve forgotten all about that mystery bowl on your counter

10. two weeks later walk into your apartment and exclaim “what the fuck died in here??”

11. after frantically cleaning your apartment searching for the source of the odour, realize that the stench is coming from the mystery bowl, which means that it’s READY

12. uncover bowl and scoop off and dispose of any scum that’s formed on top, gird your loins, and give it a taste test

13. be surprised that it’s still pretty fucking salty, but dang it tastes like sauerkraut

14. spend the rest of the evening being hyper suspicious of every twing or grumble that comes from your gut and asshole

15. wake up the next day realizing that nothing terrible happened and since you did not give yourself food poisoning, CONGRATS, YOU MADE SAUERKRAUT.

 

the dude abides by the menu.

Travel Fever!

The husband finally booked his flights and hotel for his April work trip to Dublin. Ireland, last night. I’ve had my flights booked since November, but I have to find flights on a steep seat sale (which I did: round trip incld. taxes was $400 on Air France), where as he books on a corporate credit card. The only urgency that he ever experiences is how long he can stand to have me chirping at him to GET IT TOGETHER, MAN. But it’s all booked. Flights for both of us and his hotel within walking distance of his Dublin office. He’ll be traveling a few days before me so he can get Timatized and Climatized to the local office before I show up with my raging and exhausting travel excitement. Or so he says. Personally I think I’m pretty chill and he’s just a typical tech guy that’s not overly emotive.

And now I can start planning! 

• some new things to do, 

• things I didn’t get to do the first time we were there, 

• and double back on some things from our last trip to repeat. 

When we were there this last October for just a single week we took a day bus trip to the Cliffs of Moher (stunning), toured the Teeling Whiskey Distillery (delicious), did a Halloween themed walking tour (spooky), visited the Long Room at the Trinity College Library (awe inspiring), learned to pour a perfect pint of Guinness at the Guinness Storehouse (nailed it), toured the Dublin Castle, ate Dingle gin ice cream (heavenly), drank some bomb cocktails at a couple fun Speakeasy restaurants (Vintage Cocktail Club and The Blind Pig, both more than worthy of a repeat), and visited a few tasty pubs and restaurants. AND IT DIDN’T RAIN ONCE.

I highly doubt we’ll be so lucky with the weather in April, but I’m game to repeat a few things from that trip in the rain and check out a bus trip to a different part of rain-land. I’m a rain positive individual. 

Since we’ll be there for two weeks that include two weekends, I’m hoping that for one of those ‘ends we can pop over to Scotland. There’s a Big Lebowski themed cocktail bar in Edinburgh that is calling to me. They have 30, THIRTY, different versions of a White Russian on their drink menu. I think I need to try at least five of those Caucasians.

Because The Dude abides, man. 

sorry for what i said while i was sous viding.

… which was nothing because my mouth was full.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

That, and many other nonsensical, unoriginal sayings to describe a pointless disappearance. Because I haven’t been busy, just uninspired. I’ve been craving a new creative outlet but I just can’t muster the enthusiasm for any one thing. Especially not blogging!

Anyways, while I’ve been thinking about that, or avoiding thinking about that, I’ve been traveling (NOLA, Seattle, Ireland, Canada, Las Vegas), reading shitty books, poorly training for a half marathon, drinking delicious cocktails, running said half marathon, and eating.

Yup, mostly eating.

Me, the last few months:

 

My favourite method of cooking these days is sous vide. It’s trendy, it’s scientific, and my personal favourite, it’s THE BEST way to make ribs.

“What the heck is sous vide?”

Very recently I saw some sous vide cooked egg sandwich things at Starbucks, so I guess you could say that this sous vide thing is getting pretty serious.. ly basic. Why don’t you already know about this??

Sous vide sounds like a strange cult or new style of militant yoga, doesn’t it? It is pretty ritualistic in a way, but it’s just a water oven. Oh, I suppose “water oven” isn’t very descriptive either. Sous vide is just a fancy and precise way of cooking food. The basic run down is thus: season food, place in plastic pouch, vacuum seal, float in a temperature controlled water bath for longer than normal cooking times.

It’s the “longer than normal cooking times” part that made me uncomfortable the first time I heard it. Ain’t nobody got time for dry and overcooked meats!

Much to my great skepticism, the husband bought me a rig many months ago, and I have to say, I’ve become a believer. (side note: I’m also a Belieber, because the Biebs has got so many fire songs out right now, I can’t stop, won’t stop. Is it too late now to say sorry?) Those long cooked meats do not come out dry, they come out perfectly moist and flavourful. Even chicken breasts! Nothing overcooks because whatever you put in the water never gets hotter than the temp the sous vide is set. You want medium rare beef? Set the sous vide for 130F and you can leave leave it in for hours. The longer you leave it the more flavourful and tender the meat gets. And if you want a char or crispiness to your meat, you can pop it under the broiler, or sear it in a hot cast iron pan, or blast it with a kitchen torch for a minute or two.

Bomb ass things that I’ve made in my sous vide:

perfect medium rare tri tip steaks and other cuts of beef,

 

juicy af chicken breasts and thighs,

 

pork ribs,

 

and even eggs.

Actually, eggs are a lie. I have yet to make a good egg in the sous vide; they only seem to come out over done or under done, they just don’t work out for me. I’m probably just too impatient. As much as I’d love to perfect a poached egg, I’ll just stick to hard boiling and frying eggs the normal way. I guess. 😦

I’ve also found some success with cooking vegetables, and I once attempted to make creme brulee. Those things both came out pretty good, but not really worth raving about compared to THE RIBS, YO. A good rack of ribs takes two days minimum in the water oven, which is a long time to wait for ribs. But, it’s worth it, so very worth it.

I’m not entirely sure how much the sous vide set up cost. I asked the husband about that and he told me that it was more than I’d probably be comfortable with. Which means it definitely cost more than $40. So I can’t tell you what a set up runs for, but I can tell you that it’s a fun kitchen gadget. Everyone is raving about hot pots or pressure cookers right now, but I’m still fully on the sous vide wagon.

I mean, it’s not like I can leave until my ribs are done cooking…

the sixth element is cake.

I received a bunch of good health news this week. I have a sizable nodule on my neck that I had biopsied last week, and got the news today that it’s benign. And it’s not causing problems, other than being a lazy lump, so it gets to chill for at least a year till I get an other ultrasound next April. I guess that means we get to hangout together for a while. Just the two of us, I’m never alone.

I should make a scrapbook for the upcoming year. Or a webcomic. My nodule and me, oh the adventures we will have, lumpy and meeeeeee!

la, la, lahhhh.

As good as that news is, I’m still a little bit concerned about my health. According to two months of data from my Fitbit activity band, my resting heart rate is falling. At first I thought it was a healthy thing, but it also seems like a countdown to DOOOOM sort of thing, too. In January my RHR was 67, and as of yesterday my RHR yesterday was 49. Doesn’t that seem low??

The husband says it’s because I’m getting fitter, but I disagree. Sure, I run a couple times a week, but I’m not very fast and I don’t fun far. Sure, I lift weights a couple more times a week, but I’m not really getting stronger. And sure, I did all those burpees back in February for the Spartan race, but I have only burpeed three times since then and one of them was actually just a really gassy day.

So, no, I’m not getting healthier or fitter. I bought that stupid $6 monokini that Buzzfeed said looked good on everyone but I can’t even get it on. And the parts of me that I can shoehorn into it look like the fallout of an explosion at the Play-Doh Fun Factory.

I’d show you what it looks like but I can’t get the bottoms past my hips. And the headband they proclaim to be a “top” has no hope in hell of covering my nips. I ordered a XL but since the item was made in China (you’d have never guessed by that price tag, amirite??), that’s more like a US medium. A proper medium, not an Old Navy glamour medium.

I couldn’t even wear that suit if I had my body from my 30th birthday, Project Bikini, when I was 20lbs lighter than I am now. I’m pretty sure the only way I’d get that suit on my body is if I dropped 40 pounds, which would cost me a fair bit of muscle. And I quite enjoy my 300+ pound deadlifts and 200+ pound squats, so I don’t think I’m willing to part with too much muscle.

Even if I could break my addiction to snacks, and lost the weight, I would probably have to be okay with having having a third of my boobs inside the top, a third above the top, and a third hanging out underneath the top. And I’m never going to be able to pull that look off.

You’re only allowed to have one type of cleavage at the beach, not three.

SO, THOU SHALL NOT MULTI-PASS, BUZZFEED.

Thanks a lot, Amazon One Click Prime Shopping, you’ve claimed another $6 victim.

To die or dye for gluten free perogies.

So you didn’t get me an Easter gift.  That’s okay, I know we’re not that tight. But I still got you one anyways.

Here is my Easter gift to you:

Dyeing is what you do to colour Easter eggs. And dying is what I’m going to be doing later when I eat my body weight in homemade gluten free perogies.

Fine, grammar lessons are lame and only appreciated by assholes like me. So I guess I’ll share the gluten free recipe for perogies my mom and I made up a few years ago. Perogies are really easy to make in the first place, so making them gluten free is just a matter of super simple substitution.

Which means that ingredient number one is, alliteration.

LOL, I’m not making this any less lame, am I?

Gluten Free Perogie Dough Ingredients:

• 4 generous cups of GF flour (I used Mama’s Almond flour) + 2 tsp of xanthan gum (because the kind of GF flour I used didn’t have a binding gum blended in)
• 4 eggs
• 4 tbsp oil
• Salt
• 1.5 cups warm water

Combine dry ingredients, mix oil, mix in eggs, and then add warm water by small splashes until the dough pulls together and forms a ball. Then knead till smooth.

To form perogies:

Roll dough out, cut circles, repeat till dough is gone. Regular wheaty dough is super pliable and easy to stretch around the filling, but GF dough is definitely not so friendly or accommodating. So when filling dough circles I flattened the circles between my palms and gently closed them around the filling.

Seal each perogy with pinches and lay them out in neat little rows on a table cloth, or tea towels if you aren’t sophisticated enough to own a table cloth, like me.

Filling: You can pretty much fill them with whatever you like.

For a potato & cheddar, I ran a whole yellow onion through my food processor, fried the onion bits in butter, set some onion aside to mix with butter later, then mashed in three boiled russet potatoes (salt to taste if you like). And finally, added shredded old cheddar till it tasted the way I liked. Easy peasy.

Cottage cheese & dill is also a hecka delicious filling. It’s virtually impossible to find dry cottage cheese in the US, so I just buy a large container of regular cottage cheese (the full fat kind, because who are we kidding here?) and wringing it out with cheese cloth.  Add three egg yolks, and as much fresh dill as you like (I add lots).

Sauerkraut is another favourite filling that’s super easy to make. Save some of those fried onions and fry them up with sauerkraut to get rid of some moisture.

To cook: bring a pot of water (with a splash of oil & salt) to a full boil and add perogies a few at a time. When they float for a few minutes, they’re cooked. Lift out with a slotted spoon and toss lightly in a buttered casserole. Repeat until all are cooked.

The final step is to eat perogies until you feel like you’re literally dying.

Tah-dah, Happy Easter! Enjoy your carb coma and sweatpants!

A picture is worth a thousand noms.

Three weeks have flown by like nothing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you that my attachment to this place would wane.  Sometimes I feel like I have commitment issues so deep seeded that they’re one of the very few things in my life that I’ve actually committed to whole heartedly.

That and fear of failure.  We tight.

Oh, yes, you too, husband.  We also committed and tight.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing, I just haven’t been finishing anything and my draft folder is at an impressive high.  What can I say.. ideas inside my head are so much funnier than outside my head. The old adage “better out than in” only applies to toots, burps, and unwelcome house guests, not half baked jokes. Though, I’m not entirely sure why I bothered to let that one out.

Is anyone else obsessed with their cell phone?  I feel like I’m pretty average with my cell phone usage.  I mean, I can put it down and walk away, no problem.  But I also have an ipad and a laptop, so it’s not like I’m ever without my introvert life line – the internets.  What did introverts do before the internet?

Cellphones are both the devil and LIFE at the same time, the classic paradox.  And I don’t know about you but I like my paradoxes to come with a bitchin’ camera that fits in a decent sized pocket, or handbag. 

Am I using the word ‘paradox’ correctly?  Google will tell me later, I’ll look it up on my phone later while I’m lying in bed. Anyways.. I recently got a new camera, I mean iPhone 6s.  It’s pretty nifty, and so is its 12 megapixel camera.  How does that compare to other phones?  I have no idea, but I still find it very megapix-citing because I am a slut for taking photos.

Confession: I take selfies. I take selfies when I like what I’m wearing, or if I like how my face looks that particular day. I especially take selfies after a great hair cut. That shit needs to be remembered, because not all pixies are pixied the same. I also take pictures of food and drinks that I’ve made myself or if I’m out and about nomming the good noms. I take pictures of landscapes, buildings, and interesting streets when I’m traveling, or even when I’m at home. I take pictures of things with interesting light. I take videos of myself benching, squatting, and deadlifting very heavy things, because I like to see how my form is coming along. I take pictures of pottery that I’ve made because I always end up giving it way or breaking it and it’s nice to remember.

Life is fun, it’s nice to remember.

The problem with taking a lot of photos, is you need a lot of storage, and there is nothing sadder than having to delete photos.  I make sure I have them all backed up my laptop before deleting, of course, but I also like to have some favourites on hand.  Basically, I tend to think of my phone as a camera and digital scrapbook more than an actual phone – although being able to text and share photos from it at the same time is pretty cool.m

But I won’t have the deleting problem anymore because I now have SIXTY FOUR GIGS OF MEMORY. THAT IS A LOT OF ROOM FOR PHOTO ACTIVITIES.  I still haven’t figured out what we’re supposed to be doing with the ‘live photos’, but.. Long gone are my days of rudely bumping my photo boner against the cervix of storage! 

^That joke was the entire point of this blog entry, so I guess I’ll see myself out now.

 

 

 

Hike with me.

For all the ways that I dislike living in the Bay Area suburbs – I’ve got 99 reasons and they all start and end with ’cause it’s boring AF.  And for as much as I like to hate on California for its inherent flakiness and unrelenting sun exposure, I can’t fault Californians for their love of hiking.  Oh boy, do Californians love hiking.  You can’t swing a hippy extolling the virtues of organic, free range, kale by the dreadlocks without slapping a Californian that went hiking last weekend.  And then because it’s currently “winter”, on the back swing you’ll probably hit some yuppies that went skiing in Tahoe instead.

But they’re not wrong.  It is a luxury to be able to hop in the car (that you don’t have to pay $350 a month to park) and zip off to the hilly wilderness in 30 minutes or more, year around.  Winter isn’t even really winter, it’s just a little rainy.

If you want to drive a little further you can easily find big old trees, mountains, and coast line..  And they are not at all too shabby to look at.

The Red Woods are majestic dinosaurs and I can’t get enough of them.

The coast is life.

My all time favourite hiking destination is Yosemite, CA.  Yosemite looks and smells like heaven lined with cedar.

I’ve only been to Yosemite a couple times to do the hike up to Half Dome, and I want to plan at least one trip to the park again this summer to hike a different trail.

The hike up to Half Dome is challenging, amazing, and a sun up to sun down affair.  But it’s also not so challenging that my husband feels the need to wear anything on his feet other than his usual Converse Chuck Taylors.  However, he’s a freak of nature and I totally don’t recommend hiking for 12+ hours in Converse sneakers.  And a million out of a million Podiatrists would probably agree with me.

The husband and I went for our second Half Dome climb this past September for my birthday weekend.  Unlike our first trip, we only climbed to the top of the Sub Dome.  We turned back just before the cables because they were busy when we arrived and we wanted to be back at the car before the sun set.  We had climbed the cables on our previous trip and the views were pretty spectacular, so it was a bummer to miss out on that.

But just getting to the top of the sub dome is still a pretty significant and dizzy journey.  According to Fitbit, it’s a climb that equates to ~700 flights of stairs, and ~48,000 steps, on the round trip. The cable climb to the top would probably have added another ~25 flights to our count if we’d had time to do them.  nbd.

I can’t recommend this hike enough; the view is more than worth every step.  And so are the achy calves and glutes the next day. Because it’s common knowledge that nothing says I had a great time like a sore butt.

And also, it’s a great idea to bring a flask of a mixed cocktail in your pack so you can have a mount-hattan to cheers with at the top.

It may appear to be mildly terrifying, and it kind of is, but it’s also totally worth it. I mean, don’t you want to crest this bitch more than once?

 

All this is to say that I want to go back to Yosemite this Spring or Summer to do the Clouds Rest hike.  Clouds Rest is another sun up to sun down hike that tops out looking at Half Dome, but without such a crazy cable climb to the peak.

And also, because, after you spend 12 hours hiking you deserve double double In N Out burgers and strawberry shakes.  Californians aren’t wrong about In N Out either.

As Arnie would say, “I’ll be back.”

I could use more shade this summer though.

 

 

Come with me if you want to love…

This is your friendly reminder that love is love.. Even between two tiny machines sent back through time to kill you and all hope for the survival of humanity! 

Technology is the best. 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

❤️😘 

Barfees.

You know what they say.. You can’t out burpee a bad diet.  But if you burpee enough, you might vomit, and that’s one way to burn off that extra pizza you ate.

My #burpeeseveryday challenge is still going.  I can’t remember where I last left off, but I’m now up to 200 burpees a day.  TWO HUNDRED A DAY.  And I still hate every one of them.

What is going on with my life that I’m doing this to myself??  My knees sound like wet styrofoam popcorn in the dryer, and my traps are so swole I worry that people are going to call me trapasaurs-rex behind my back.

Actually, that’s a pretty cool nickname.  I couldn’t be mad about that one.

I made the jump to 200 because my mom was up to 150 burpees, IN A ROW.  Who does 150 burpees in a row??

I told my husband and he said, “Your mom is a robot sent back in time to make us all feel inadequate.”

TRUTH.

An action shot of my mother. 

Hell no, I don’t do burpees in a row!  I only do sets of 30 because I’m not crazy, I’m just doing the bare minimum to survive this stupid Spartan race.  Because 30 is what you have to do in a Spartan race if you can’t do an obstacle.  And I know there are at least four things I can’t do in a Spartan race.  I can’t climb a rope. I can’t do a pull up. I can’t do the monkey bars. I can’t throw a spear.

It’s fine.  Totally fine.  Just 19 more days of burpees.

 

sobs forever