Detox

What do you do to detox?
I left P-town last Thursday morning for a long weekend away at my best friend's wedding. Highlights included the wedding (of course) but also about a million glasses of wine, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, vanilla velvet wedding cake, roasted pig, a fat cheeseburger, fried cheese, french fries, onion rings, and fiesta curly fries. I came home feeling happy but tired, and more than just a little rounder and puffier than normal.
I responded by sleeping (a lot), exercising, and eating lots and lots of veggies. It didn't seem to help. I still felt lethargic and tired. And then I remembered Kombucha -- the weird fermented tea that isn't that great but is oddly addictive. And though I don't know if the placebo effect is at work or not, it does make me feel like there is a little extra spring in my step.
M. eats cabbage soup to detox -- a spartan, Russian like stab at recovery. He claims that if you dose it with enough lime juice and hot sauce its good and nearly calorie negative. That is, it takes more calories to prepare and eat it than it does to digest it. I'm not so sure of this, but I guess what ever trick you can employ to get over the hangover hump is a good one.

You Know You Work Too Much When..

You know you work too much when you arrive at work nearly every morning with a healthy breakfast in tow (there just isn't time to eat at home!) Today I packed a baggie of homemade granola and a fat banana and was looking forward to a nice bowl of cereal (milk in the fridge). Only there wasn't milk in the fridge. And it was 9:20 already, on a very busy day. I'd stopped at Target and lost the right to make a quick milk run and satisfy my breakfast craving.
So I ate granola and sliced banana from a bowl, with a spoon, milk-less.
And you know what? It wasn't so bad.

Why I Work Out

I do love exercise, really I do. But what I love just as much is eating a homemade ice cream sandwich at 2 o'clock on one of the first sunny Sunday afternoons in June and not feeling one ounce of guilt. Now if I had eaten two, I might have felt a twinge of inpropriety. They are rather big and sinful. But just one of the sandwiches -- chocolate-toffee-peanut cookies layered with vanilla and dipped in dark chocolate -- that is just fine by me. Delicious, as a matter of fact.

Bad Bad Blogger!

Apparently I am not cut out for the blogging world. It is a bit mystifying since I am a very routine orientated person. You'd think I'd fall into the world of blogging quickly and easily. But I don't, or I won't. I think secretly I am a bit wary of blogging.
Will I use it as a form of procrastination? I am right now.
Will it stifle or enhance my creativity? I don't know.
Will anyone read it, and if so, is that good or bad? I can't figure it out.
Right now it is 4:36 on a Saturday afternoon. It is June, but the Pacific NW is still gray and cold. I am wearing a cashmere sweater and am curled up on the couch, fighting the urge to get up and pour myself a glass of wine. It is, after all, almost 5 o'clock and it was a very very long week.
This morning I did all sorts of nice and luxurious things for myself; things I almost feel guilty about. First I went to an early morning yoga class, stretching and breathing to my heart's content. Then I went to the french bakery and drank one perfect cappucino, heaped with foam and dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Occasionally I'd dip the crust of my hazlenut cranberry roll into the foam and swirl it around a bit while I flipped through the pages of my library book. Then I had a massage -- a blessed, well deserved massage that left me invigorated and enthusiastic about life. And what better way to celebrate this new found verve than to go to the farmer's market. I bought pink peonies, cilantro, green onions, fava beans, and a large, large bunch of asparagus. All the bunches were beautiful and dainty and each cost $3.50. I paid and picked one and the guy manning the stand said, "Is that the one you want? It's so small." He reached for another, much larger bunch and handed it to me.
"But I'm a single girl," I said. How much asparagus can I really eat?"
He smiled. "If you live alone, no one is telling you what to eat. You can eat as much asparagus as you want. Only aspargus if you want."
"And then a chocolate bar?" I said.
"And then a chocolate bar!" He replied.
So be it.

Sunday Brunch

Just in time for breakfast tomorrow, check out my piece on Sunday Brunch:
http://www.nicolewilliams.com/living/host-a-brunch/

I made the cinnamon-blueberry muffins a few weeks ago. They smelled divine while baking and were sooo tasty. I took them to Mes Amies for a coffee break with Naomi and we both had to hold ourselves back from eating more than acceptable on a Tuesday morning.

I love blueberry muffins but have had a hard time finding a recipe I wanted to commit to and make my own. My mother's recipe is delicious -- a simple cakey muffin flecked with raw sugar on top -- but it is very simple, almost blueberry scone like. This recipe offers a little more. Sweet cinnamon and sugar, it tastes like a treat.

But Can She Cook?

I have been very obsessed with kitchen and cooking orientated blogs recently. My new favorite is The Kitchn (www.thekitchn.com) followed closely, obsessively (at least for the past 24 hours) by Quirky Cupcake http://slush.wordpress.com/ I just cannot fathom how this woman makes, and eats, cupcakes, brownies, and sweet treats every single day. This just might be my secret yet unrealized dream!
The point is that beautiful food blogs are filled with beautiful food blog photos -- perfect poached eggs, flawless pies, soups to swoon over. And I'm wondering where the mistakes are -- the things that just didn't turn out. The dishes that aren't pretty, or even that good, but you eat anyway because you put all that effort into making it and you live alone, so it seems like a huge waste to toss it all away.
I'll be honest, these things happen. I am not a perfect foodie. This weekend I had two mistakes -- two! Even for me that was a tad high. The first was a seriously simple salad of arugula, white beans, bowtie pasta, garlic, a little butter, some toasted walnuts, salt and pepper. Sounds simple and good, right? Maybe too simple... and a little too influenced by garlic. It was a great lesson in how simple has to be good simple, right simple, not just simple.
On Sunday I decided to make a spring soup. Something like but nourishing sounds divine so I added leeks and carrots and celery to the pot along with homemade chicken broth, thyme, salt, pepper, and then towards the end, rice, a diced potato and some peas. Then I left for dinner. When I returned my soup had become risotto, minus the cheese and the really good butter and olive oil. I have heated and eaten it two nights in a row with sliced avocado on top and lots and lots of salt. So much salt it crunches, which I love. But then the salt and avocado are gone and I am left with mush and blah and a meal that reminds me a bit of something you'd find in the college dining hall. But I had the best of intentions! Where did I go wrong? Don't tell me, please. I won't make either of these recipes again. I'll just hope for better the next time.

Easter is NOT a Single Person Holiday

Easter always sneaks up on me. All the other holidays fall on predictable days and are easily marked on the calendar. But Easter hops around. One year it comes in March, another April, there's little rhyme or reason. One thing is for certain -- Easter is not for single people.
I would never invite all my friends over to celebrate Easter. I would never dye eggs or bake rabbit shaped sugar cookies to give away on Easter. I would never cook a ham, coating it with peachy jezabel sauce, steam asparagus, make homemade rolls and open bottles of clean, festive white wine to share with a motley collection of buddies. I'm not sure why. Maybe it is because Easter is religious and by acknowledging and celebrating it, it some how seems like I should also go to church. Maybe it is because at 30 years old, pastel eggs and sprouted wheat grass seems just a little silly. Whatever the reason, another Easter came and went, with nary an Easter moment aside from the adorable floral bag my mom sent stuffed with darling pastel candies and goodies. Yes, I'm thirty and my mother still gets me an Easter basket... but that's a whole other story.
I tried to revel in my solitude, but it was hard. It rained all day, hard sheets of rain that made it nearly impossible to go outside. I woke up early and couldn't fall back to sleep. I watched the sun rise and read the New Yorker in bed, and then ate oatmeal and drank coffee. It was tempting to think of breakfast out, but the idea of being surrounded by dozens of celebrating families was too much -- the lines, the spring dresses, the bows. I couldn't handle it. I lit candles and read and wrote and read some more. Still it was barely noon. At the grocery store later that afternoon I stocked up on ingredients for a springy rice soup and bought milk and yogurt and dried bing cherries. There was nobody in the store but the grocery was overflowing with samples -- large hunks of havarti cheese, small tastes of stuffed french toast with chai whipped cream, slices of bagels topped with store-made strawberry jam, mini pancakes with pure maple syrup, perfect blood orange sections. Who were all these extravagant tastes for? I realized that they were for the people like me: the girls who didn't have brunch dates, the folks without family, the people alone at the grocery store on Easter Sunday.
It made me feel better, but also a little worse. It certainly didn't help me feel any less alone. But it did make me feel a little less hungry. The chocolate cadbury mini eggs helped a little too.

Single Girl Food I

So many people are secretly jealous of the single girls. We get to spend whatever we want on clothes, shoes, and other fun stuff, watch lots of trashy t.v., and eat whatever we want.
I am usually pretty boring and non-single girl in my habits. I like routine, don't often over-spend, and like to eat pretty healthy. But I do have my days, and today was one of them!
It is only Wednesday and already this week has been a doozy, the kind of week that makes you wish and wish it was Friday -- or at least Thursday-- and really it is only Wednesday. There is laundry to do, stinky garbage to take out, and still it is only Wednesday.
So, I did what any self respecting single girl would do: turned on the T.V. for a nice diet of Extra Gossip and America's Next Top Model, poured myself a big glass of fat red wine, picked some cold chicken from the bone, ate a stinky hunk of goat cheese and proceeded to do the laundry, take out the trash, and count the moments until the weekend.

Food Coma

Yesterday I had a most epic breakfast. The location was Simpatica in Portland, Oregon. The occasion was Whitney's 29th Birthday.
Simpatica is the kind of place that always has a line for brunch, which is served only on Sundays from 9 to 2. Their food is beautiful, organic, and very very good. When we showed up for our reservation there were already 10 people in line, waiting for the doors to open. There was more than a little guilty pleasure involved in waltzing by all of them to sit down at a table for eight and order copious numbers of grapefruit mimosas and bloody marys.
When I made the reservation the girl suggested eating family style, so we let the restaurant feed us. We only had one request: fried chicken & waffles. I know, what a way to start a morning. And if the morning had started like that it would have been grand. But before the fried chicken and waffles drenched in dried fruit syrup came biscuits and gravy.
I have never, ever understood biscuits and gravy. I never order them, I never want them, and I have little patience for people who list it as a favorite.
Now I understand biscuits and gravy, I do! And when I think of them I will no longer imagine hard, dry biscuits topped with gray gravy. I will picture fluffy, flaky biscuits. I will picture beautiful biscuits topped with gravy that is simply the best gravy I have ever tasted with chunks of bulk sausage, spices and salt, and a creamy, I-could-drown-in-this-consistency. This gravy was so good I took chunks of potato and sopped up more and more. This gravy was so good I took my fork and slid it along the plate in hopes of catching just one more drip.
I love moments that teach you what a particular food is all about -- how it can be not just good, but great, and maybe even a little about how it has been lead astray, bastardized, and turned into a sad, soggy, gray version of what it could be.
The breakfast could have stopped there. It didn't, but it could have. And even though I was dazed and confused for most of the rest of the day I continued to think again about the biscuits and gravy. It is hard to believe, but this just might be something I want again, and again.

Blaming

The anti-book club selection for March 2008 was
Blaming, by Elizabeth Taylor
... No, not THAT Elizabeth Taylor...
Full of guilt and blame and mildly unsatisfying, though I liked the British, slightly clipped writing style.

Of Wine & Yoga

I love busy days at work. Yes, it can be frantic but the time goes by so quickly -- whoosh -- and then the day is done. Even better when it is Friday. There is often a bottle of wine open and a few moments at the end of the day when it seems relaxation is seriously deserved. Tonight it is the 2006 Daffodil Hill Pinot Noir that has been uncorked, a single vineyard pinot that is rarely opened. It is so lovely and fruity and balanced, delicate yet powerful.

I sit at my desk, crowded with things that are best left till Monday. It must be one of the guilty pleasures of the wine world to be able to sit at work and enjoy a sip of wine at the end of the day. The rain that pounded McMinnville for hours has stopped and a hint of blue shy emerges for the last few minutes of daylight. Life seems promising and full again, as it always does when the weekend is about to start.

Tomorrow I am emphatic about going to yoga. Last week it was great, though admittedly much better at the end of class than it was at the beginning. Why must they start weekend yoga classes at 7:45 AM anyway? I am an early bird, yet even for me this feels early.

Ironically there is an article about this very thing in the NY Times today. Titled "To Stretch or Not to Stretch" it bemoans the fact that for some people (myself sadly included) yoga can seem more like a punishment than a reward. Sure, I enjoy it once I get there, but gettting there is often the problem!

But it is good, especially now, to stretch and to breathe. Funny how sometimes yoga and wine can have the same impact... you slow down, you breathe, you look at the world with rose colored eyes. Too bad you can't substitute one for the other...

To Begin

I imagine this whole book writing thing to be a bit like being pregnant. For the past four to six weeks I've been in a near constant state of panic about what is going to happen next. Now I am beginning to nest.
I know all this is happening because I've sent off a draft of the book proposal and first chapter and am anxiously awaiting news. Any kind of news would be great. If I've done it all very well (unlikely) then I'd push forward and begin researching the rest of the book right away. If I've done terribly then it would be back to the drawing board with more focus than ever. I imagine that I will have fallen somewhere in the middle. Each morning I wake up and think, "Will today be the day?" I've hardly ever been so anxious for the phone to ring and have never ever looked forward to getting a fiercely edited draft in the mail. But now I do.
In the meantime I am an organizational maven. Much of this organizing occurs during hours when normal people are not awake, which explains why I still can't seem to find the time to call a long list of family and friends. I have looked through and recycled years worth of Gourmet and Food and Wine Magazines. I have filed piles of articles clipped from the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and New Yorker about food, food writing, France, the 1920s, biography, autobiography, and chocolate. I have recycled several trees. I have baked, and baked, and baked. I am getting everything completely ready so that when I hear the good news that the book is a GO I can move ahead. I can begin writing full throttle with all my pens and pencils organized, books all in a row, and a folder labeled for each soon-to-be-written chapter.
If you haven't guessed yet, this silly blog is a part of this anxious organizational fury. If I can't be working on the book, I might as well be working on something. This seems a fairly harmless way of blowing off steam during those times that I am frustrated about my inability to be more productive. We'll see if my verve keeps up once I really do become frantic with work. I can see it going either way. But for now, you must excuse me. The Christmas 2006 Issues of MS Living, Domino, Gourmet & Food and Wine are just begging to be looked through and left to rest in an exceedingly large, increasingly perilous recycling stack.