2004-05-15 - 9:46 p.m.

Week of May 9th

Since Camille is bored, here are some little vignettes from my weekend while I put off uploading photos from my tour of Girard Estates:

Yesterday I was walking to the bus stop and there was a little girl in a dress walking toward me with her family. There were pigeons in front of her. She leapt forward, stomped solidly on two feet simultaneously, and SCREAMED at the pigeons. I think she was actually saying something to them, and it can't have been complimentary. Then she started running at them, still screaming (with that raw throat-scraping quality to it). I laughed for the next block. I've seen kids, mostly boys, chasing pigeons before, but never screaming at them.

Y'know those horse and carriage rides that go through the historic areas? Those horses seem to be unflappable. They've got buses and cars going by them all the time and they just keep plodding along, clip-clop, clip-clop. Well, wait until a group of fifteen humans on roller blades skate up to the corner the horse is passing. We wer all rolling to a stop, but still we freaked that horse right the fuck out. He was shying away from us, stepping sideways into traffic and rearing his head, and his shocked driver was standing up, pulling on the reins and hollering at him, trying to get him to stop angling the cart into traffic. Too funny. Poor horsie.

Last week one evening Poindexter actually consented to accompany me on a walk. We passed by a teenage boy sitting on a stoop talking to a teenage girl, who had lovely large breasts and was wearing a pink "bra top" tank about three sizes too small, so that her LUSCIOUS BOOBIES were just bursting out ready to hit you in the face. Once we were appropriately far away I mentioned to P that I felt sorry for the teenage boy having to sit there keeping his gaze away from her chest and trying to chat when they were RIGHT THERE, you know, yelling "LOOK AT ME!! YOUNG RIPE TEENAGE BOOBIES!" They were spectacular, and since I wasn't trying to carry on a conversation with her I just enjoyed the view, myself.

I've been asked to share a few recipes, and I'm finally getting around to doing this.

Some background:

As I've mentioned in the past, I have drastically changed my eating habits over the last five years, compared to how I ate growing up. I used to eat almost no vegetables and a lot of fried foods and cheese. Then I married a man who hates dairy products and had an excellent amateur chef for a mother who has a genetic condition that makes it hard for her body to process animal fats. I also got around to keeping my college promise to myself to learn to like vegetables after I graduated (there was no way in hell I was going to learn to like them in the college dining hall).

The result of all this is that, cheesesteaks aside (which we get about once a month), there is an emphasis on eating fresh foods cooked from scratch and a downplaying of processed foods. And since we get 90% of our recipes from Poindexter's mom, they're also often low-fat as well. Or at the very least, they use olive oil instead of butter. We basically don't use butter or cream at all when cooking, and certainly not cheese. (Guess what I eat when we go out to dinner? Cream sauces and cheese. Mmmmmmmmmm.....) We pay no attention to carbs or calories, though, so if that's your Thing To Avoid I don't know how well these recipes will work for you.

So. Have you ever noticed what weird crap they put in bottled salad dressings? Xanthan gum? What the fuck is that? Not to mention the low-fat versions of them taste like crap. This recipe I got off a bottle of Safeway Select Balsamic Vinegar and I like it because it's VERY! STRONG!, has garlic in it, and is approximately half oil, half vinegar. I don't need to use a lot, so it probably ends up being fairly low-fat compared to blander dressings with more oil. I get all excited about eating a salad with this dressing. I'm eating one right now -- baby spinach with yellow bell peppers. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. I usually triple the recipe so it'll last a while, since I eat it almost every day when it's in the fridge.

Balsamic Vinaigrette:

2 or 3 whole garlic cloves, peeled
2 tsp Dijon mustard, preferably grainy
2 tsp chopped fresh tarragon (1 tsp dry)
3 TB balsamic vinegar
1 TB lemon juice
3 TB light olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Blanch whole garlic cloves in boiling water for one minute. Drain well and press through garlic press.

Combine crushed garlic, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Whisk ingredients together, adding olive oil in a slow steady stream.

[That's what the recipe says -- I just throw everything in a bottle and shake it.]

The only thing of note about this recipe is that it's low-fat turkey, and it has some vegetables in it. I've gotten to the point where I prefer ground turkey for everything except a hamburger. You can't mess with hamburgers.

Oh, and it's pretty quick and easy to make.

Turkey Sloppy Joes:

1 small onion, chopped
1/2 a large green pepper (or sweet bell pepper if you prefer), chopped
4 garlic cloves, squished
1+ pound package of turkey (they always seem to be 1.3 pounds)
chili sauce (half to 3/4 bottle)
~1 TB dijon mustard
~1 TB brown sugar
~1 TB red wine vinegar
1-2 tsp worcestershire sauce
Sprinkle of chili powder (about 1-2 tsp)
Add ground black pepper if it's too sweet

I don't have any written instructions. Far as I know you saute the onion, pepper, and garlic until golden, then add the ground turkey, cook until done. Throw everything else in there and mix it up. Put it on some sort of bread.

Poindexter doesn't like sweet sloppy joes, so he leaves out the brown sugar and adds pepper. We're more generous than the recipe says with all the ingredients, including using a large onion and a whole pepper. We also double the garlic (at least) in any recipe we make.

I did a "Seven Sins" meme.

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