Not yet a ponch of Tycho proportions, but very nearly (#foodcoma)

This was a spectacular weekend, complete with an overdue and much-anticipated reunion; a film that surprised and moved me in tectonic ways; a breakthrough in my fleeting ability to live in the moment; and, above all, a constant, incredible smorgasbord of ridiculously awesome food, prepared by and for the people that I love.  Needless to say, the detox program has crashed and burned in a tower of smoking, still-warm debris.  And GOOD RIDDANCE.  (Although I could use a primer on the symptoms of scurvy, because this weekend was enough to wash every last useful nutrient from my system and replace them with industrial-grade carbs).

Time to get what little sleep I can before Monday comes barreling into the station.  Only six minutes left to take care of today’s lent post.  I miss writing big, meaty posts as part of this challenge; hopefully that can resume this week, before another weekend of (30th birthday) insanity begins.

This weekend I was witness to Theo's first sip of canadian wine, first bowl of poutine, and, most deliciously, first beaver tail. Like a true European, he chose one of the chocolate variety.

I’m glad it wasn’t the other way around.

What I did badly last night:

My nails.  I am spectacularly bad at painting my own nails!  For some reason, I find this fact a bit satisfying.  If you fail, fail big.  This picture does not do justice to the amount of nail polish on my skin/hair/table/cat by the time I was done.

What I did well last night:

Roasted a chicken.  For the first time ever.  There was a lot of grimacing when I had to squish the garlic-and-oregano sauce under the skin (I must blot that texture from my sensory memory forever), and a lot of poking around when it came out of the oven (is it done? I can’t tell if it’s done.  Will we die a terrible death by botulism if I wrongly estimate its done-ness?), but in the end it was tender, juicy, and delicious.  Now I know that if the whole career-and-independence thing doesn’t work out, I can always make my way as a half-decent housewife (with unpainted nails).

I’ll Just Wait for the Globe & Mail to Call.

I have to get to the office at the crack of dawn today, which is in approximately negative ten minutes, so there’s only time for a perfunctory post while I sip my lame EXCITING lemon and hot water beverage.

Last night, in headlines:

1. Local Girl Gets Taken Down a Peg by Overzealous Chapters Employee
I was killing time.  Two books in the crook of my elbow.
Chapters employee: “Oh, hello!  What brings you in here tonight?”
Me, shamelessly flattered by her interest, but also uncertain if the answer is supposed to be something other than “Ummm… books?”: “Ummm…books?”
C.E., in a conspiratorial we’re BFFs, right? sort of tone: “You know, if you buy three books today, the fourth one’s free.”
Me, in an I’m-definitely-spending-more-money-because-you’re-so-nice tone:  Roger that.  Thanks!  I love your necklace. Please be my friend forever.

She drifts off and I browse a nearby table.  A couple of minutes go by.  She sidles up to me again.

Chapters employee: “Oh, hello!  What brings you in here tonight?”
Me, smiling politely while I wait for her to recognize me.
C.E., smiling expectantly while she waits for me to say something.
Protracted awkwardness.
Then, finally, haltingly: “Well… I just wanted to tell you that if you buy three books today, the fourth one’s free.”

WTF?  I only bought two books, just to spite her and her faulty customer service robot brain.  (For the record, said books were The Little Stranger and Hate List.  My heart beats a faster when I think of the bliss of reading them this weekend.)

2. Local Girl Resists Deadly Nightshades, Only to Fall Prey to Deadly Wheel of Cheese
If you read yesterday’s post, you know about Dr. Joshi and his increasingly unwelcome presence in my life.  I met my proving ground today when I stood with my nose to the glass of the Starbucks cookie counter.  It was a five-minute battle of wills inside my empty stomach.  In the end, one thing persuaded me to forgo it: the prospect of feeling like a champion once I’m actually done this thing.  It’s the same logic I use to get through a 10K race, and all of its annoying training.  Money in the bank that I will cash in once it’s all over.

So I resisted the Starbucks cookies, only to be confronted by an all-you-can-eat buffet of hors d’oeuvres, and a well-stocked open bar served by exceedingly polite staff at the NAC (though they’ve got nothing on my C.E. bff).

To be fair, this is what I was dealing with:

I think I did pretty well!  I just had a single disc of bread, the circumference of a toddler’s kneecap, with a postage stamp of cheese on the top.  It was a little dry.  Kind of meh.  That’s what I get for being a big, fat cheater.  FULL DISCLOSURE: I also had a glass of white wine.  Derek and I, who have been avoiding alcohol for almost a week now (I KNOW! Someone give us a medal already!) were both immediately woozy after the first sip.  We just felt that an open bar is not a thing to waste.  But I am glad I did it, because now I feel like I have the mental armor to survive a weekend of detox, which had been worrying me.  Weekends are a time for pizza.  And wine.  And pizza!

ENOUGH ABOUT DETOX.  I am even starting to annoy myself.

3.  Local Girl Remarks on Minor Coincidence
I was at the NAC in the first place to hear a public lecture, which is part of Carleton’s student conference / the reason why Derek has been walking around with worry lines in his forehead for weeks.  The lecture was awesome, delivered by self-professed and staggeringly brilliant uber-geek Gabriella Coleman.  I could actually feel my brain growing bigger (which, if you’re curious, feels something like the mathematical reverse of a hangover).  She was discussing the fascinating and nebulous Anonymous community.  I only understood 5% of it, and that was only because I happened to listen to this a couple of weeks ago, by pure coincidence. Sometimes life just prepares you for things, you know?

4. Robust Ginger Cat Gains Control of Local Girl’s Brain, Uses It to Get More Food

Deprived (or: Fun With the Brits)

Yesterday’s post got me in the habit of streaming my old local radio station in the morning (if doing something for two days in a row counts as a habit). I never thought I would be so self-contented while listening to homemade advertisements for Billy’s Furniture Palace and live traffic updates from the only intersection with a streetlight.  It’s comforting to know that some things never change, especially small-town radio.  Guys, they are STILL playing Matchbox 20!  I did not realize how much the opening of notes of “Real World” reminded me of being sixteen years old, scraping ice from the kitchen window to judge the likelihood of a snow day, and patting an inch of brown sugar over a porridge bowl full of delicious, gelatinous rolled oats.

I am currently hunched over a bowl of what can only be the scrawny cousin-twice-removed of delicious, gelatinous rolled oats, whose taste is somewhere in the kingdom of baking soda and tap water.    This is Day Four of (am I trendy enough to use this word?) Detox.  I meant to do some sort of cleanse (ah! The words! Soon I will be buying eco-friendly hemp toques and moving to the Glebe!*) straight out of Christmas, because I arrived to post-holiday life feeling like a Looney Tunes anvil.  The kind that does not quietly enter a scene but rather DESCENDS UPON IT WITH GREAT AND RESOUNDING HEAVINESS, crushing innovation and enterprise just before the curtain falls.

I thought a little foodie self-discipline might cure that.  And now, two months later, I am finally doing it!  Because what’s worth doing is worth doing only after procrastinating for weeks and weeks, am I right?  Unfortunately, this detox thing?   It means I can’t eat pizza.  Fine print, people!  Read it!  Or at least read the chapter called “Pizza: Don’t Go There” before deciding this is a good idea.  I’m following a book by a British guy named Dr. Joshi, whose chief credential is that he was Lady Di’s nutritionist.  And I figured, hey, if she managed this thing despite all of her troubles, it should be a walk in the park for me!  Plus there is the added advantage of giggling every time Joshi goes all British on this book’s ass.  In his world, you don’t have a grocery cart, you have a “shopping basket.”  And you don’t use your shopping basket at the Real Canadian Superstore, you use it at Marks & Spencer.  He even gives his readers a helpful shopping list, but, really, he could have saved the paper and just written “BUY THE MOST BORING FOOD POSSIBLE.”  Even when I put on my best Lady Di airs while visiting the fishmonger (Hartman’s fish counter, serviced by a sleepy-looking high school kid with a bad crop of acne), I cannot make this fun.

Instead of pizza, I am eating brown rice.  A whole lot of it.  Over and over.  I try to pretend I’m Tycho, going ape-shit crazy every time the same exact meal comes around, but… Tycho?  He’s a good example of how to turn your whole skeleton into goo, but he’s not a good example of worthwhile food choices.  Though he does occasionally eat a bug, so I guess even a cat with a brain the size of a subway token requires some variation in his diet now and then.

Variation is going to be hard to come by.  This detox thing excludes gluten, sugar, fruit (except bananas, glory be to god), dairy, red meat, and (my favourite) “members of the deadly nightshade family.”  You guys, this is detox, gone gothic!  Sadly, the “deadly nightshade family” is not as much fun as you might think.  No concealed daggers, no fog, and no whispered threats in the gut of a cobblestone alley.  Just a list of last week’s salad ingredients: cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers.  Apparently these things can be deadly.  Also deadly?  ANY KIND OF FUN WHATSOEVER.  I thought Joshi had potential when I opened the book at random and read, “An excess of spicy foods, red meat, and red wine also has the same effect.”  You mean, the effect of BEING AWESOME?  No, he does not mean that.  He means, “the effect of slowly killing you, just like the deadly nightshade family.”

The upside: This detox is only three weeks long, and it will end gloriously with my friend’s thirtieth birthday, which will be a weekend-long binge on deadly nightshades AND red wine.  When that weekend comes around, I will make all the food which I am craving insanely, like homemade cookies, pizza, bread, and cinnamon buns.  Basically, I will stagger into the warm, flabby arms of gluten, and she will hug me close, just like she always has, and we will never part again.

*The Glebe: Ottawa neighbourhood overrun by SUV-style strollers, jogger moms, hippy cafes, and kitchen stores where novelty egg timers cost as much as a small car.  Nary a deadly nightshade for miles.

OMG I JUST RUINED BY LIFE BY GOOGLING THAT

Day Four: Cheating.

Today’s post has been delayed, due to this:

Homemade perogies and plum crisp, with some of my greatest friends rocking out this apartment’s tiny kitchen.

As an experiment in form, we will now collaborate on today’s Lent post.  It is 10:19 pm, which leaves one hour and forty minutes for dinner guests to add to this post!  I will post at midnight.  Whatevs.

“And then everyone was like, fuck, we have no money.” – Derek, explaining the EU crisis

__________

[Playing the board game “Taboo,” in which teammates must guess the word you are trying to describe.]
Megan: “It’s an organ!  You can donate half of it!  And the rest grows back!”
Everyone: “Liver!”
Megan: “No.”
Everyone: “…”
Megan: “Appedix.”
Everyone: “…”
__________

“There’s comfort in being with friends like this.” -Tam
“Where’s the tequila?” -Jon