Crunchy Salad Days

One of my sisters says that salads and sandwiches taste better when made by someone else. I believe this is true 90% of the time.

Anywhoozle, today before work I went into my local Food Hole to pick up something or other and I thought I'd fancy a ready-made salad for lunch. The three that I like, my go-to's if you will, were displayed side by side, just waiting to be chosen. 

Their Caesar's salad is pretty good, but it has chicken. I don't always want meat in my salad. I eat meat, but I don't need it for every meal, or every day, even. I can do without it. It does come with a lemon wedge and something with a spritz of citrus is usually welcome. I didn't want to pay $10 to pick out chicken today. I wish they had a version without chicken.  They a vegan Caesar's from a different brand, but I didn't want vegan. I wanted real cheese and real anchovy in my salad. I wanted the real thing, just without chicken. 

They have this one salad with mixed greens, candied. pecans, bleu cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette. I like that one, but halfway through the salad the balsamic vinaigrette gets really cloying. I didn't think I'd be mentally available for something cloying today, so I skipped it. 

The one I chose totally fit the bill for today. I got the Burma Love Fermented Tea Leaf Salad. It not only checked all the boxes today, it also created a few new boxes that I needed, but didn't consider in the moment. It had a nice pop of citrus, it had a little bit of sour, and a really pleasing bit of crunch. The crunch is what did it for me today and made me happy. 

Busy Bars

When I was 14 my parents took me on a long-ass 3 week trip to the East Coat. Some of it was kind of fun. Some of it was kinda neat. Some of it was alarming (ask me about my monkey story). A lot of it was a big drag being around my parents the whole time. I enjoyed following the lines painted on the sidewalk in Boston. I liked going to the House of Seven Gables, partly because gables are an enjoyable architectural addition to any home, and partly because they had the bedwarmer that was used on an episode of Bewitched on display. I enjoyed walking around Greenwich Village in New York and going to some clothing store I was really excited about. It was the storefront from a catalog I had. Dang it. I can't remember. It was along the same vein as the stores Alloy, Modcloth, Delia's, but from the 80's and it wasn't Benetton. I did not enjoy touring the Naval Academy, but I think it was because I was 14 and with my parents for too long, and not because the Naval Academy wasn't interesting. I did not enjoy driving around Maine looking for a dumb ass covered bridge. Except for the hour I spent in Spencer's, the mall store that sells fundies, fart spray and posters of Heather Thomas, I did not enjoy New Hampshire.  The Statue of Liberty wasn't as exciting as I thought it was going to be. I enjoyed Washington, DC. I got to see Fonzie's jacket, Dorothy's shoes, Archie Bunker's chair. I got to see airplanes and spaceships. I really enjoyed the FBI museum. We toured the White House. One of the only souvenirs I bought the whole trip was a cookbook. The First Ladies' Cookbook. It was filled with recipes that were the favorite of each President, presumably, what the First Lady cooked for the President. I got it because there was a recipe for a fried egg. I thought it was weird that a fried egg recipe needed to be published somewhere. Totally unrelated but nonetheless serendipitously coincidental, prior to my DC trip, my dad gave me a book from The Galloping Gourmet Graham Kerr. In it, it had a recipe for Perfect Scrambled Eggs. I thought it was funny that there were recipes for fried eggs and scrambled eggs. The book ended at Regan, because it was 1986. I wish I knew where it was right now. It's not something I would have thrown away. It'll turn up sooner or later, I suppose. 

Anywhoozle, I made cookies yesterday for the freezer, so we could have cookies whenever we want them. I made peanut butter chocolate chip, masa cherry and white chocolate, and speaking of First Ladies, Busy Bars.

Busy Bars are kind of like cowboy cookies, but more kitchen-sink-y. The recipe I use as the base is Laura Bush's Cowboy Cookies. It's a big recipe and makes a shit-ton of delicious cookies. It's my favorite cookie. It's delicious raw and frozen, an equally delicious freshly baked. A Cowboy cookie is a yummy cookie with a base that's kind of like a chocolate chip cookie, but with cinnamon in it. Added to it are 10 cups worth of oats, coconut, pecans and chocolate chips. In my version, I play fast and loose with that 10 cups and add whatever the heck I want. I always add 2 cups of oats, and then play with the remaining 8 cups. This time around I added chocolate chips, white chips, coconut, dried cherries, dried pineapple and macadamia nuts. In times past I have added walnuts, toffee pieces, m&m's, dried cranberries, butterscotch chips, chopped up Hershey kisses, broken up Ghiradelli squares. What goes inside is subject to whim, necessity and access, really. The world is your oyster Busy Bar. I line a pan with parchment paper, press the dough into the pan and bake it into bars. 

You could make it cookies instead of bars, but bars are easier to make and Busy Bars is more fun to say.

On Post-Hula Snacks - a food review

 Tonight was a good night. I went to hula class tonight. It was the first time in quite a while that we met in person. It felt great to be around my fellow haumana, giving each other the most welcoming, warming and awkwardly reticent embraces, (I want to hug you. I want to give you the aloha I've been longing to give and receive...but...you know...).  We started learning something new. My knees were behaving. I was there. I was present. I was engaged. It felt really really great to be at hula tonight.

Anywhoozle, when I get home from hula, I am hungry. My go-to after-hula snack is toast with butter and peanut butter. Any kind of toast will do, but my favorite is a piece of thickly sliced sourdough bread. (You toast the bread, add butter, then before the butter is spread or melted, add peanut butter then spread the butter and peanut butter together. The butter sort of forms a ripple in the peanut butter. Sprinkle it with a little sea salt if you want to get fancy.) It's really delicious, filling and satisfying. 

Still anywhoozle, as yummy as my peanut butter toast is, I was wanting something different tonight. I wanted something with a little bit more protein, and a whole lot more salt.  Tonight I had a super craving for some Kimchee Beef Fried Rice from a super yummy Korean restaurant in my neighborhood. However, I'm on a bit of a budget right now so I had to pass, but thankfully I remembered that I had something in my freezer that could scratch that itch. A while back I bought Trader Joe's Bulgogi Beef Fried Rice with Kimchi. It had been in the freezer for a month. I totally forgot about it until tonight. I heated some up and topped it with super runny eggs and let the residual heat from the rice cook the eggs, and just for kicks, added a sprinkling of Aloha Soy Sauce. It was pretty good. It was just what. I needed. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it totally did the trick. It wasn't perfect. The beef was too sweet and I think I could have done without it. It was good on it's own, but it definitely wasn't the star of the show as the title written on the bag implied. The rice had a nice bite to it. It wasn't as kimchee rich as the original dish I was craving. I broke one of my yolks, but it was still pretty good. 

It hit the spot, in a slightly better than it'll do kind of way. I'll be going to bed happy; happy that both my body and spirit were fed tonight.

You're Innocent When You Dream - A Dream

 I had a dream last night - 

I was driving though some kind of outdoor community commerce area; people sitting at cocktail tables eating tiny sandwiches and drinking coffee, people walking their dogs, people buying pretty stuff they don't need. I stopped at a crosswalk to let a group of people pass by. Once the last person passed my car, I started to go, but just as i started to go, one of the people from the group turned around, made eye contact with me and walked directly into my car. I pulled over and walked over to the person I hit with my car and started talking to her. She told me she wouldn't be seeking medical care or pressing charges. She was living under an assumed identity and wasn't ready to tell anyone who she really was and if she were to seek medical care or involve the police she'd have to tell everyone who she really was and she didn't want to do that. So instead of me getting in trouble for hitting someone with my car, the victim and I drank Campari and people-watched.

If You Want to Be a Top Banana, the Cheese Stands Alone - a dream

 I had a dream this morning.

I wasn't the photographer, but I was in charge of taking the pictures at some kind of event where the walls looked like something like if David Lynch had a hand in decorating the Madonna Inn. My job was to take portraits of families dressed in their very best clothes, all made out of cheese. 

American cheese was the big stand-out, very versatile, especially good for lapels. 

A Very Duggar Destination Wedding - A Dream

 I had a dream this morning

My family and I were invited to a Duggar wedding. I don't know which Duggar was getting married. It was a destination wedding. First we had to all meet in Arkansas at the Duggar compound then as a group, fly to Hawai`i. Nobody would tell me why we couldn't just fly to Hawai`i and meet them there. We got our hair done at the Duggar house then flew to Hawa`i. After the wedding we went to the reception. We were dismayed to learn that we weren't assigned a seat at the reception. We weren't allowed to attend the inside. They told us to look at our invitation. We are told that although our presence was requested, we were invited. All of the invited people got to go into the reception. All of the requested people had to wait outside. 

We left feeling really put out and disappointed. 

Steve Martin's Personal Life - A Dream

I hate when I can't remember my dreams. 

This morning I woke up at the end of my dream and said out loud .....

If only I could remember what this dream was about.