State of the Deirdra

Good Stuff

• Anusara Immersion: Bhagavad Gita studies, plus Tattvas next time around.
• Square Foot Garden: commence! I have 21 plots of forthcoming tastiness, including lots of basil, tomatoes, and chili peppers. Basils, tomatoes and chili peppers rule my summery world. I recently purchased some lovely heirloom tomatoes for eating, and I hoarded the seeds. Since I don’t know the varieties, I named them for fun: Rhumba Panties! Tangerine Coinpurse! Sneaky Stoplight!! I have crazy happy Rainbow Lights Chard, spicy Mesclun mix and wintry squash seeds for later. Loving husband wandered endlessly around stores at my whim, and then braved the sun while using power tools. Yay, loving husband!!
• Friday was fixed on, er, Friday. She has been extraordinarily sweet-natured to us since.
• Teaching Yoga: I taught my first studio class in a million years last Thursday. I’ve been meaning to post about it thoroughly, but I’m facing the sudden and pressing reality that I am teaching THREE classes in the first week of June. If you were coming to my class, what would you want to do?
• My sister’s tenth birthday is in a week. We’re trying to make it pretty special for her. She’ll be spending the summer in Florida, and I hope it’ll be completely awesome.

Bad Stuff

• Steroid shot for crazy flare. Steroid + weekly immune suppressants = double suck.
• The dogs fought last Saturday, and Matthew and I were caught in the crossfire. M. got bitten once, and I got two nasty puncture wounds. We went ballistic and tried to cleanse the wounds of the contagion. Matthew’s was great!
• My left hand swelled up like a balloon. No, seriously. It was so bad that when I was sitting in the doctor’s office, I was quietly chanting Don’t pop… Don’t pop… Don’t pop…
• Antibiotics that make me delirious and sweaty + Antibiotic Shot + steroid shot + weekly immune suppressants = Ridiculous crazy quadruple suck.
• Friday has Evil Tail Syndrome.  Seriously.  I wish I was kidding, but for the last few months, at least daily, she freaks out, attacks her tail viciously, screams in pain and does it again.  It’s very disturbing. Anyone else out there with a completely neurotic animal who thinks its tail is out to do them harm?
• Yoga really sucks when you are having to hold awesome ever-improving alignment without using the two outer left ball mounts/fingers.

Sleep now.

Filed under domestic, food, general, health, love | Comment (0)

Tattoo + Jasmine Green Tea shortbread

Last night, I made a variation of Habeas Brulee’s  Tea Cookies.  Instead of the oolong she used, I went with jasmine green tea.  I also used orange flower-scented sugar to coat the cookies, because I love flowers in food.  My miniature citrus plants are blooming for the very first time (they’re about four years old now!) and the smell is lovely.  The resulting cookies were well-balanced, not too sweet, and fragrant without any cloying overtones.  I’d love to make these with my Margo-inspired Madge Shelton tea (black tea spiked with rose, spearmint and pink peppercorn).

I’ll be taking a baker’s dozen to the Ink Spot this evening.  We’ll be working on the rose and the poppy this time, which will round out the largest components of the design.  The rose is a Handel, one of my mother’s favorite flowers.  She grew one next to our front door, untrellised, and the carnivorous beast used to demand blood toll from nearly every visitor.  I can’t tell you how many times that damned rose stabbed me in the left arm growing up, so this seems like fitting tribute.  I planted poppies in our garden when we were still considering a backyard wedding, hoping for a sea of orange and red.  They were a prominent motif on our wedblog (along with ginkgo), and I used them in my bouquet for our cheesy awesome Vegas wedding.

All of these pieces of my life are beautiful, especially together.

Filed under adornment, domestic, food, recipes | Comment (0)

Signs You’ve Become a Complete Food Dork

Jackson got a Fresh Market, and we inspected it yesterday. I’d gotten spoiled by all the Whole Foods locations in Atlanta, and lamented not having access to sashimi grade fish, a bakery with real buttercream, European Butter, fresh mozz, etc.

I wandered around in sensory overload, numbed by Easter Egg radishes, blown away that they, too, thought there were greens other than Collards fit for eating.

Soon, we’d walked past the bakery and gelato, and Matthew (with an understated flourish) gestured towards the cheese section. To be fair, our local Kroger has a surprisingly kick-ass cheese station, but there are a few things pointedly missing from their assortment.

That’s when I saw it. Directly behind my dear husband’s hand, there was a huge wheel with a particularly distinctive font decorating its rind.

Locatelli.

I could lie and say I was excited.

To be entirely honest, I jumped up and down, flapped my hands and squawked in such an unseemly fashion, people must have thought Matthew proposed to me with a gigantic wheel of cheese. Lottery Jackpot winners comport themselves with more dignity and grace. Matthew, bless him, did not suddenly pretend I was some cheese-fetishizing maniac stranger.

When I am gone from this world, I hope I am remembered as the girl who’d turn somersaults for a fine wheel of cheese.

Filed under food, geek | Comments (8)

Mahogany Fire Noodles

Victor Sodsook calls this Kwaytiow Sen Yai Phat Phrik Sod Kap See-Eu Wan. I call it dangerously tasty.

WARNING: If you have rivet-goggles, swimmer’s goggles, or any sort of protective eyewear that will spare you the sensation of being maced in the face, I suggest you wear them. I wear German Welder’s goggles:  friends can attest to this. I am totally not kidding.

WARNING: This recipe had a hand in driving an overdue baby to vacate to more roomy, less Capsaicin-drenched quarters within 24 hours of its consumption.

Ingredients

15-30 small Thai chilies. FIFTEEN to THIRTY. I like them at 17-20.
10 cloves garlic (I usually double this, because I am a garlic fiend)
1 package rice noodles: prepared, drained
2 Tbs veg. oil
2 Tbs Thai fish sauce
1 tsp white pepper
3 Tbs sweet black soy (this is the unctuous molasses-based soy)
1 Tbs Oyster sauce
1 1/2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 cu holy basil leaves, or 3/4 cu each of mint and basil leaves.

Optional but highly recommended
sliced chicken breasts, quorn or cubed med. hard tofu
egg omelet (best with creamy fresh duck eggs)
bamboo shoots

Instructions

PUT ON YOUR GOGGLES.
Pulverize 1 Tb oil, garlic and chilies in food processor together. Heat other Tb oil in med-hot wok while you do this.
Turn on your cooktop vent. Take a deep breath. Dump the chili mixture into your wok and stir vigorously for about 15 seconds. Exhale. Proceed to laugh at anyone not wearing goggles who adamantly refused to leave the room.
Add tofu or Chicken; stir-fry for about a minute.
Add fish sauce.
Add noodles and stir rapidly for another 30 seconds.
Add pepper and sweet black soy. Stir, and marvel at the beautiful mahogany color the soy turns the noodles.
Add Oyster sauce, sugar, bamboo shoots and/or duck omelet; stir-fry for a minute.
Turn off the heat. Stir in the herbs and let them wilt.
Remove goggles.
Serve immediately.

For dessert, I recommend sweetened coconut milk “ice cream” on warm sticky rice, or red grapefruit + orange segments steeped in rosewater syrup.

This dish will give your guests the exciting sensation of a string of firecrackers exploding in their mouths, and then rapidly dropping to a much more bearable level. You take a bite, wince, and then immediately fall victim to the spice’s dangerous wiles. You keep eating. You can’t help yourself.

Filed under food, recipes | Comment (0)