Things I like

I like it when my sister gives me stuff that used to be hers that she doesn't want anymore. Everytime I use it I get a warm fuzzy. It has my sister in its history, and when she was done with it, she thought of me and thought I would like it. On a even more practical note, the item has been test driven which means I end up using it a lot. Nothing pokey or itchy in the clothes she gives me.

I like vinegre as a cleaning product. Vinegre is single handedly making me the type of person that cleans everything. Which is very good for my environmental allergies. And my very real belief in feng shui. A clean house is obviously good, but vinegre goes above and beyond clean on the feng shui front. It's simple, inexpensive, multi-use and safe for the environment and my person. I can store it anywhere. I like it. As a belonging, it has a big fat gold star.

I like yoga. I am stuck indoors right now due to my allergies. The weather is beautiful and it's that kind of summer that makes all the winter cold okay. But I've had a sore throat from the pollen that hurts so bad I can't sleep at night. I had this problem last summer too. It was stupid to not start getting allergy shots right away. I didn't start until 3 weeks ago. But anyways, I'm stuck inside and I'm really grateful to know more than enough yoga to stay in shape and not go crazy.

Bell Peppers II

The peppers were local, but not organic.

I care more about local than organic. Maybe this makes me a bad environmentalist. An organic vegetable from California sits in a truck for 2-3 days being driven to my grocery store. A local vegetable gets sprayed with pesticide and fungicide, and grows in soil enriched with chemical fertilizers. But then it takes a 2-3 hour drive to my grocery store. Now that I see it in black & white, it seems like the problems with each are of equivalent weight, both for my own health and the environment's health. So I care more about local than organic, but just by a little bit. What tips it towards local is how much better the food tastes. And those extra three days I can leave it in the fridge before it wilts. And supporting the farmer who is trying to help the environment by selling to a local grocery store.

I get in a zone at the grocery store. If it is plump and fresh looking, I buy it. I spent 20 seconds staring at the bucket full of peppers wondering why nobody was buying them. And then bought 8 of them. And feeling weirdly guilty ever since. Or maybe not guilty, but defensive. Or annoyed. Or confused. Ok, I think I'm back to not caring now. Whew.

It's not really a soapbox I want to stand on. I'm definitely okay with giving my customer testimonial, for local, organic, and local-AND-organic. But I will emphasize flavor and convenience right along with health and the environment.

Bell Peppers I

I bought bell peppers at the co-op that are just mind boggling. The brightest and deepest colors I've ever seen in a pepper, and heavy for their weight. That means instead of a thin layer of pepper holding in a lot of air, you have lots and lots of sweet crispy pepper flesh and just enough space on the inside for the seeds.

The Joy of Cooking tells you to buy squash that are heavy for their weight. I tried it and was completely sold. The thicker layer of squash on the inside means you can scoop out big spoons of squash and then scrape the skin, whereas when you buy a squash that is light for its weight, it's all scraping. More work, less squash.

And for these peppers, there is also more pepper for the same amount of slicing. But there is also the novelty and intense pleasure of biting into such an enormously thick slice of pepper.

And it isn't just thick - it's fresh. Because it's local. I'm totally hooked on local. My super simple food preparation methods, necessitated by my food issues, are not a hindrance to me when cooking with very fresh food. It seasons itself. And when I do season it, I need just a pinch.

Red bell peppers taste like strawberries when they're really fresh. Well, they taste like strawberries would taste if the world ended, a time capsule was found, and a Strawberry Shortcake doll was used to re-create the flavor of a strawberry. None of the yucky tartness of a real strawberry.

Although, my bitterness that real strawberries do not taste like a Strawberry Shortcake doll smells, was recently reduced considerably. I got my hands on local strawberries. At first I was kind of pissed off because they were too tart for human consumption. But then I remembered the sugar bowl -- people who didn't grow up with my calorie-phobic parents do this funky thing where they dip fruit in sugar before they eat it. So I got my zylitol and started dunking. Homer-Simpson-inspired-drooling. Much, much more similar to the doll than ordinary strawberries. Though a fresh red bell pepper is still a closer match.

The Uber Fit

We need new words to describe fitness. The more I read about fitness, the more I know. Or rather, there is a lot of ignorance to be had, and after much reading, it is shocking to find out exactly how much ignorance I had. Shocking because my parents exercised with us when we were all little. On their own they ran and walked and did light weight training. With us they walked, biked, skated, swam, and played badminton, softball, ping pong and occasionally tennis. So I should be on the more knowledgeable side. There shouldn't be much of anything that shocking.

The shocking part has been to learn exactly how much work goes into looking like you're fit. Or rather, to look like the people described as fit on TV and in magazines. The conclusion I've drawn is that is 110% ridiculously horrifically ludicrous to describe those people as fit. Fit as an adjective should be attainable by everyone. Kind of like the words alive and breathing. If you're alive and breathing you can be fit. If your main focus in life is getting into the top 5% of human fitness, alwaysX10 focusing on what affect your training is having on your appearance? There should be a different name for their results. I should get to call my results fit. I can walk 5 miles and pick things up off the floor without any fear at all of hurting my back. I can dance for an hour and climb two flights of stairs and carry my own groceries. But I feel entirely prohibited from doing so. People like me are supposed to call ourselves “relatively in shape” and I just think it's bullshit.

Super fit. Uber fit. Obsessed. Compulsive. Really really fit. Really really really dedicated. Professionally fit (they can and invariably do make money off of it.) Professionally in shape. Having the appearance of a fitness model or a personal trainer or an action move actor. Shockingly fit.

Or even “fit in appearance.” Which would leave me and myself with “functionally fit.” Because a lot of the uber fit have pretty major injuries they have suffered, are suffering, or are perpetually recovering from. Not all, but a lot. They are certainly also functionally fit, but in the bigger picture, I should "fit" and they should get "uber fit."

Maybe now my heart will be free

I am still fine tuning what I want to write about here. But I think I'm finally back to my original idea, which was to share my daily crazy thoughts and experiences. The pressure to have a blog that is all on one topic is strong -- never overt, invisible really, but strong.

So here is the one thing today that made me laugh so suddenly I inhaled my own spit. In my gmail account which advertises to me based on words and phrased it finds it my e-mails, was this ad:

He Lying To You? - TakeBackYourHeart.com - Learn "Secret Reason" Why You're Attracted To Jerks & Players

Snort.

New round

I am starting over on my food allergy diet. I am sick of all the dishes I've been cooking - I need new dishes. Some of the food in my freezer is way too old, so every meal is a process of tasting first, and then deciding whether or not it's edible (yuck). Plus I've been eating out regularly for a whole month, which means it's hard to get back to strict, especially given the two previous sentences.

For this round of strictness, I plan to focus on eating less meat. I can't have dairy, and I'm sick of nuts that aren't peanuts, and I can only have beans every other day. So there is no way to have a daily routine, which I usually find comforting and easy to follow. So on bean days about twice a week I plan to make a bean-containing-salad in the evening for dinner, and eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. For the other bean days I will make bean soup with or without small amounts of meat, and well seasoned ground meat patties I lovingly refer to "sausage." For non-bean days I will make pureed soups consisting of fish, and veggies and fresh herbs from the farmers market, and more "sausage." It gets a little weird, given I have to rotate my herbs and spices, but I have a "sausage" recipe for every day in the rotation. It's the only way to prepare meat right now that doesn't turn my stomach.

Being strict also requires a hefty supply of pancakes and muffins.

I have some ideas for entirely new things to eat. (The paragraph above, while newish, is all stuff I've done variations of before.) This summer I plan to seek out new green leafy vegetables I especially want to try escarole after having it braised in Las Vegas. I am also planning to take toasted nori sheets I bought at the co-op and try making sushi-inspired rolls with grains and fresh veggies. It won't taste like sushi. I will be satisfied with edible.

Also, I have decided this blog should be more casual. I am not enjoying the complete thought and sentence process I have been trying to sustain in previous entries.

Big Light on "Beauty"

What makes people so obsessed with being beautiful on the outside? Why does it equate to being un-lovable? The more I get past my own obsession with it, and the feelings of insecurity that go along with it, the less logical and more compulsive it seems. It's illogical because most people aren't that attractive, and most people have people that love them. It's compulsive in the way that a compulsion makes you focus on one thing and exlude other things. I compulsively focused on my outer appearance and over-looked my positive inner qualities, in addition to all the obvious life success of people that aren't that attractive. It is also compulsive in the way that a compulsion makes you focus on one thing as the solution to all problems, which makes it easier and easier to avoid dealing with problems at all. I focused on my outer appearance in order to avoid looking at the unattractiveness of my insides. And I was convinved that the inside didn't matter, that only my outer appearance needed to be good. For me the extraordinary power of wanting to avoid my insides is what made being beautiful seem all important.

I'm speaking in the past tense to highlight my progress in this area, but I still do often fall into the trap of obsessing about my outer appearance.

Our culture is currently not very supportive of working on the insides. It's almost like working on your inner beauty means you're ugly and you've given up trying to be less ugly. What a horrible message to send! There is this imagined ultimate-validation that comes with being ultra beautiful. It doesn't exist. The ultra beautiful are just as insecure about their appearance as the rest of us. I think we should be trying to bring about an age where good hygiene and a modicum of attention to one's health are all that is needed to be beautiful, and people spend their energy becoming loving, tolerant, generous, patient, and kind. Think about how much more beauty would exist in the world if that happened? Where people like themselves because they're likeable, and their beauty shines out of them like a big light.