Wine around the world

A few days ago I made that delectable cilantro pesto chicken. I’ve made sure to jazz it up as I have slowly consumed the one point five pounds of chicken tenders over the week. My usual boring sliced turkey, mozzarella and low-carb tortilla wrap made way for my new cilantro pest chicken, mozzarella and low carb wrap bonanza! Pretty delicious if I may say so (and despite the not-so-amazing low carb whole wheat tortilla).

For dinner I was inspired to chop up the tenders that were lazily lounging in my refrigerator and add them to some whole wheat pasta. This turned out to be stellar! I have no idea why I would have thought otherwise as it was essentially the same dish as my mom’s fantastic chicken pesto pasta (made with traditional basil pesto). But I must admit that any “adventure” in the kitchen, be it ever so tiny, that is a success leads me to celebrate.

Delish!

I sprinkled shredded pecorino over the pasta and paired it with vinho verde (which is my new favorite – and cost effective – wine).

After having been somewhat “called out” by a close friend in regards to my cooking skills, or lack there of, I perused the cook book section of Barnes and Nobel this evening while I waited for the traffic to die down a bit. While my intentions are always quite pure, I have yet to leave that store without something in hand, and so this evening my eye caught the book THE PLEASURE OF COOKING FOR ONE by Judith Jones. One of the detergents in the kitchen is that I need to follow recipes and most of them are geared towards groups of four or more. Thus, I never make anything because I am almost always cooking for one (when in a group it is always so fun to eat out and not worry about anyone having to clean up afterward).

I was very pleased to see that all the recipes in this new collection are for one person to enjoy a meal with a few servings of left overs. Mrs. Jones even explains how to create new things out of the left overs! Joy upon joy! Ah, I am easily bored so finding new things to create from “old” seems to be most exciting – and has great promises of creativity. The book also boasts beautiful pictures (very important to this artist) which will help as a guide.

Once I tried to make rice balls without a picture. When the author said to “wrap seaweed around the rice ball” I took a full square, placed the ball in the middle and then proceeded to wrap it like a gift. Eagerly I shoved it into my mouth only to push it out again onto the kitchen counter. BLECH! I then researched the so-cleverly title food and found that a small strip is wrapped around the middle of the ball. Much tastier. So you see I must have photos (or at least very detailed instructions).

Photos are also so aesthetically pleasing and become a sourse of inspiration and delight!

Peace and blessings.

Note: please take a gander at Mrs. Jones’ blog. It is very charming. I look forward to reading more in the coming weeks, months…years! Thank you for sharing your information with us, Mrs. Jones!

Tonight, I was invited to a wine event at the recently opened Wine Connextion in North Andover, about 35 minutes north of Boston. I knew the event would include 5 wines paired with 5 seasonal matching foods but I had no idea what to expect.

The Wine Connextion aims to be a destination wine store – where people can go in, taste a few wines, and buy a bottle or a case of whatever they choose. The store offers good value by the bottle – and even better value by the case. They also have helpful cards behind all of the bottles, describing the flavor and intensity of the wines.

Sam Messina, owner

Sam Messina is part owner and is the wine director at the Wine Connextion. He was knowledgeable and down-to- earth. He also chose some amazing pairings for the night!

Some of my favorites were (taken directly from the menu):

Burgans Albarino: A Spanish white wine, served with aged parmesan, honey and walnuts

Trimbach Pinot Gris Reserves: A French White served with goat cheese and an artichoke tapenade

Castle Rock Pinot Noir: From California, served with aged Gouda

Trapiche Oak Cask Malbec: From Argentina, served with roasted fall vegetables

Burgans Albarino

Roasted Vegetables

Exploring the store

I really enjoyed this event. I met a few bloggers and some people who worked in the wine industry in Boston. There was good food, wine, and conversation. And I’d definitely pay a visit to the Wine Connextion again. The owners are knowledgeable and I have no doubt they would be able to steer me to the right wine for any occasion – and tell me what to serve it with!

Question:

Do you buy wine by the case? I haven’t before, but I might look into it!

Halloween weekend can be a time for partying and drinking. Beer Pong is probably the most well known game. Many schools have banned drinking games on campus because they encourage binge drinking.  Here are the names of the more popular drinking games:

Beer Pong

Buffalo Club

Quarters

Beer Hunter

Edward 40 Hands/ Mad Dog Hands

Power Hour/ Century Club

Flip Cup/ Boat Racing

Depth Charge

King’s Cup

Sloshball

Dice Drinking Game

A simple Google search will give you the rules for any of these games.  If you start seeing pictures of your student holding red plastic cups at parties, more then likely they are drinking alcohol. If you see the following items in your students belongings, they may be participating in beer games: small dixie cups, ping pong balls, pint glasses, shot glasses, straws, funnels, or duct tape. Again, ask your student.  As always, communication is key.

I have decided to celebrate Samhainn–opening my year as a Druid Apprentice–with a rite honoring Demeter, Persephone, and Hades. It seems appropriate since not only is Samhainn traditionally a time to celebrate the dead, when the gates of the underworlds are thrown open and the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead are thinner, but it is also a celebration of the harvest (the final harvest!). And coincidentally, it also can be conceptualized as the threshold between fall and winter, which in Greek Mythology is the time when Persephone leaves her mother Demeter and goes to reign in the underworld with her husband, Hades. Demeter’s grief at the loss of her daughter inaugurates winter, when plants turn brown and die and the earth goes cold, and it stays that way until Persephone returns in the spring, bringing with her the rebirth of the living world.

Unfortunately one of my main resources for prayers honoring the Hellenic gods is now lost for all time thanks to the death of Geocities, so I don’t really have a prayer honoring Hades, and I am having a hard time writing one. I’m sure this bottle of Jaegermeister next to me isn’t helping, but I just don’t know enough about Hades to write a decent prayer to him.
So I’m stuck, and cranky. And tipsy, I guess. I think I’m going to play video games online with my brother and worry about this tomorrow. Of course, the problem with that attitude is that I plan on celebrating Samhainn on Sunday, and Sunday keeps getting closer. I mean, if all else fails, I guess I can always just come up with a sort of impromptu invocation, and that’s probably what nI’m going to wind up doing. So the whole thing isn’t foiled; I’m just feeling irritatingly uncreative. Maybe I should try to pray to Hades before Sunday, and ask for a bit of his dread underworld inspiration. I mean, if anyone knows how Hades wants to be honored, it would probably be Hades, right?

I do have a lot of other cool stuff planned for the holiday, but this rite is sort of supposed to be the fulcrum of the whole thing, and celebrating the Wheel of the Year is supposed to be a part of my AODA First-Degree Druid curriculum, so it is kind of important to me.

On the other hand, I did manage to be creative to write a New Eleusinian Mystery Rite. It’s fairly awesome, and contains the secrets of life, death, and immortality, but I don’t know anyone who I can initiate who can then turn around and initiate me. And what’s the point of having initiatory mysteries that nobody gets initiated into? And it’s not really the kind of thing you can initiate yourself into, either.

I’m throwing this phone in the trash . Either it’s fucking retarded as hell , or Jack is getting fed up with all the shit that’s happening . I don’t blame you if you are , because you’re right – one thing after another . I’m sorry . I just don’t know who else to talk to about that other than you . I’m not sure anyone else would understand . . .

It really blows that the one person I need to talk to is the one I can’t get a hold of . My phone being retarded is killing me . I can’t imagine what it would be like not knowing when I’d get to talk to you next . It’s hard to believe I even thought about leaving . Fuck , I’m really stupid sometimes .

Remember in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas , how his heart grew two sizes too big ? I think that’s what mine did when you said you’d be here for me by the end of the night . I shouldn’t have argued – I’m regretting it more than you could ever imagine right now , hurt ribs and all .

Nevermind , it just shrunk back down to it’s previously shriveled state – my phone isn’t broken , you’re just too busy getting drunk to bother texting me .

I could’ve had you here and been out of this house but now I’m alone instead and you’re wasted , FML .

outside the boston book festival

Oh, Autumn.  You make it so hard to leave New England.

Last weekend I went with RB to the Boston Book festival, and even though we were left with the lousy distinction of being the very first people who didn’t get in to see Ken Burns and Scout Tufankjian, we did end up having a pretty productive day.   We made it to the book signing, RB made progress on her grad school application, I hit the going out of business (*sniff*) sale at the store for wicked tall women (need business casual for the new job!), and we had lunch, tea, and crumpets with jam and devon cream.  Good day.

But the day didn’t end there… after a pit stop at home, NS and I headed to Cambridge to eat too much snacky stuff and candy at Horror Movie Night.  Horror Movie Night is an annual event that is attended by some of the members of my wiffleball team.  It goes something like this:

• Everybody shows up (many in PJs) and gorges on snacks and libations, then watches a movie or movies, with gorging in between (this year we watched only one movie, Drag Me to Hell)
• Doughnut* eating contest (in which participants race to finish doughnuts suspended by strings, hands behind their backs and thus nothing but their faces to attack the swinging donuts)
• Bobbing for apples (suspended this year because of the cold weather, but for the record I won two years in a row)
• A new game this year which I don’t think has a name, but might as well be called Repeatedly Plant Your Face In A Plate Of Whipped Cream Until You’ve Extracted All Of The M&Ms, Spitting Each Into A Bowl (I’ll spare the participants the humiliation of the photos that I took after the one below, but you get the picture)

whipped cream (cool whip for the lactose intolerant)

I had a grand total of one beer on Horror Movie Night.  I haven’t felt like I have the time to become inebriated… trying to cram too much into my days.  However, last night I caved on the libation thing, when I went out for a lovely dinner at Sandrine’s with SL-MP.  We had a bottle of Pinot Noir that our server seemed obsessed with, referring to it by name as if it was a woman.  She was delicious!  Ha.  The meal was wonderful, and we had a chance to catch up for the first time in ages.  We apparently had a lot to talk about, because by the time we had finished our after dinner drinks (scotch for her, champagne with a splash of St. Germain for me) we had clocked almost four hours(!).  Thank you so much for dinner, SL!  I took a cab home and passed out at 11pm.  I needed that.

Speaking of sleep, I want it.  I should make some coffee and quit procrastinating.  I’m developing a product that clients are waiting on, and I need to get back to it.

*I initially spelled this ‘donut’ but realized when I reread it that the prevalence of a certain orange and pink themed purveyor of said sweet bakery items has colored my judgement.  Since I’m moving out of New England, I’m trying to regain my civility.  No promises, but for this time at least, I’m going with the ‘ugh’ spelling.  Whether you’re talking about donuts or doughnuts, if they’re being rapidly eaten, there’s kind of an “ugh” component anyway.

If you think you are saving on calories by using aspartame, you may be.  But, you will be shortening the quality of your life if not putting your life in serious harm’s way.  Please read this article as it is very important that you understand what you are putting into your body.

What is aspartame? Some of you may know it better as an artificial sweetener (a replacement for sugar) by the brand names of NutraSweet, Equal, Same, or Spoonful.

What products contain aspartame? It is in 6,000+ ingestible products around the world.  Some of these include:

• carbonated soft drinks
• powdered drink mixes
• chewing gum
• confections
• gelatins
• dessert mixes
• puddings and fillings
• frozen desserts
• yogurt
• some vitamins
• sugar-free cough syrups and cough drops

Why is aspartame so harmful? Since it’s release in mid-1983, it has increased diseases from 10-80 percent depending on which disease it is.  It is most notable in mimicking diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Systemic Lupus which are both autoimmune diseases.  Multiple Sclerosis affects the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system) while Systemic Lupus attacks the body’s cells and organs caused by chronic inflammation.  Most of the clinical and reported symptoms aspartame is attributed to are neurological or are connected to the nervous system.  Please see this report by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS):

When aspartame was fully marketed in the United States in 1983, many Americans switched from regular sugar-laden sodas to the zero calorie diet drinks believing that they were doing something good for their health.  Six months later, there was an extreme rise in disease:  10 percent brain cancer, 30 percent diabetes, and 60 percent lymphomas.  The statistics are staggering according to Dr. Jim Bowen, Biochemist.  Further, those statistics were from 1984 when 6.9 million pounds of aspartame were consumed.  Currently, 90+ million pounds are being consumed in the United States per year.

Read what some experts on aspartame have to say about the product:

• Dr. H.J. Robert, Board Certified Internist, says that in 1988, 80 percent of “voluntary” complaints to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) were on food and additives that contained aspartame.  (These are complaints that did not need to be submitted.)

• Dr. Ralph S. Walton, Psychiatrist, says that aspartame impacts biogenic amines, or neurotransmitters in the brain.  Essentially, it looks like this:

ASPARTAME + CARBOHYDRATES = LESS BRAIN SEROTONIN

• Arthur Evangelista, FDA Investigator, states that aspartame causes a slow accumulation of toxins that disrupt normal brain activity and endocrine and within the endocrine system (which is also controlled by the brain).

• Dr. Russell L. Blaycock, Board Certified Neurosurgeon, says that some people are more resistant than others to its obvious toxic effects, but even the resistant ones will build up a subtle toxicity where over many years will produce obvious diseases.  He also states that:

Aspartame is a POISON that affects:

PROTEIN SYNTHESIS

BRAIN SYNAPSE OPERATION

DNA

Why is aspartame so dangerous? It is a very highly crafted poison, a chemical or molecule made up of three different components:

1. Phenylalanine Isolate = 50 percent = a POISON that floods the brain lowering the seizure threshold and depleting seratonin.
2. Methylated Aspartic Acid = 40 percent = an extreme excito-toxin, implemented in vast brain damage, including the common neuro-degenerative diseases.
3. Methyl Esther-Formaldehyde-Formic Acid-Carbon Monoxide Toxic Axis = 10 percent = a POISON when swallowed becomes methyl alcohol, also known as methanol or wood alcohol.  The methyl quickly converts to formaldehyde in the body which causes severe damage to the neurological system, the immune system, and the DNA (even in low doses)

What can I do if I’ve been using aspartame? First of all, you can ban the product from your body.  Say “no” to any foods that contain it.  When you shop for foods, be smart and read labels.  If the product contains the chemical, try to find another product that is a healthier choice.  There are natural sweeteners that are much less harmful to your body such as Stevia.  It comes in powder and liquid and is a natural herb that contains no calories and does not affect blood glucose levels like aspartame.

Remind you not to forget to remember me.

Something seems wrong. I guess it could be a combination of many things, but to be quite frank, it’s never felt this wrong before.. My choices are catching up to me, and I’m scared.

I was thinking about random things inside my head the other day; A story came up that I haven’t thought about for quite some time, and I thought I’d give you a bit of an insight into my mind by telling you the story.

I must have been nine or ten. My mother and her boyfriend, Ares were still in a kick of drinking and smoking. My mom was sitting on our back porch, and a rat showed up. She screamed, and oh man, if you know my mother, you know she can scream like no other. But in the end, we figured out it was someone’s pet rat, so we put her in an empty fish tank with a screen covering it. I never slept at night; I have a sleep problem, and I was scared of Ares. I was up reading yet another lengthy book when the sound of scraping awoke my mind to reality. In the living room, I just stood in front of the cage, watching this rat move around. I lifted the screen and set it on the side. Something about her, I just kept staring at her while she fucked around in that tank. I didn’t expect anything crazy, but when she jumped up on the side of the tank, I felt my heart jump up my throat in fright. I eventually got her back in the cage, put the lid back on, and went to back to my room to read.

To be honest, this story doesn’t hold very much importance in my life. However, it reminded me of the fact I didn’t sleep much when I was child. It also reminded me of the reason I didn’t sleep. I haven’t had a big nightmare in some time.. I don’t know if I’m waiting to wake up in tears, or if I’m dreading it. The piece of myself that I thought was missing, the piece I found after my trip? I strongly believe that piece of myself was the piece that allowed me to be thoroughly happy, no matter what. In the past sixteen years, I’ve seen things that I never want to think about again, let alone see or experience. I’ve felt different lately, more elated. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel lonely anymore, it means I’m not thinking about ending it all; It means I’m not thinking about the past as much, it means I’m not trying to think about what I’ve done wrong in my life. Honestly, I just feel strange when I’m by myself, such as the moment now. I’ve just been listening to ‘Lapse – Envy on the Coast’ on repeat, and the television’s on; I’m not paying any attention to the tv, but it makes a slight background noise that makes me feel like I’m not alone. Being alone is an interesting thing. Most people can feel at ease, know that they can act like themselves entirely. I don’t feel happier alone, I don’t feel more depressed; I just feel unloved. When in reality, I know some people do love me.. Maybe this stems from the fact I’m still single. I kind of hate being on my own; I like it when I can be with someone, when ever I want. I’m stingy about love; I want people to love me, and only me. This is unrealistic of me to think or want, but when it comes down to it, that’s what I want. Can someone love me, and only me? That’s really all I need. I just feel the absolute need to be adored.

I recently met a couple of people who use meth. I’m only familiar with the man, who doesn’t ever feel the effects of the drug. He just smokes it for the idea of smoking something. It makes me want to jump on top of a building and scream and yell about how it’s completely irrational of him to smoke this shit that can harm his entire body and mind, when he’s not even getting high of it. Eh, I guess people make their own choices. I’ve never seen anymore smoke meth before, I’ve never held meth in my hands, I’ve never seen the glass pipe that’s used, I’ve never offered up my lighter for someone smoking it, and I’ve never smelt it in the air. The thing that is most wonderous to me is the fact that I wasn’t bothered by the fact my companion was smoking meth. I kept sucking down those cigarettes and talking about things that didn’t make sense, coming out of my mouth to a stranger. I never was scared; The gut feeling I get in bad situations never came up. It was like I was watching myself sit there, and I bent down, and patted myself on the back for not wanting to smoke any. Pride is always a good feeling, right?

I haven’t eaten in days, yet my stomach feels full and satisfied.I know I’ve lost weight, I even know how much weight I’m losing. Whenever I throw back a Valium and a small drink of a liquid, I feel the cold flowing into my middle. I can imagine the traveling on the pill, down to my stomach, where it can metabolize and make me feel better. I’ve been waiting for the wake up call that tells me to get my life straightened out. But when I think about it, I don’t know what to do to straighten out my life. I suppose I could stop smoking cigarettes like they’re going out of fashion; I suppose I could stop drinking like a fish when I’m surrounded by the people I adore the most; I suppose I could quit taking pharmaceutical medication that isn’t prescribed to me; I also suppose I could stop smoking pot. Honestly, I don’t see any of this happening like that, and then me, becoming some ideal citizen. Sometimes, I’d like to be that person walking down the street, with a family to return to, with a schedule to follow, with a goal for living.

“And no, I’m not afraid, at least not to die.
I’m afraid to live and not remember why.”

I don’t want some fake sympathy, I only want the real thoughts, the real stories, the real reactions. If you’re bored and you love me, maybe you can try to help save me from myself. Maybe you can tell me that my life isn’t ruining anyone else’s. Or maybe you could just tell me you love me, and mean it.