| Today's bento consists of leftovers from last night's dinner. Unfortunately, it all seems to be the same color. Here it is:  ( Bird's Eye View )Left to Right: 1 - Asparagus Risotto 2 - Roasted Fennel 3 - Grape Tomatoes 4 - Carrots 5 - Turkey Breast stuffed with mushrooms, onions & Swiss cheese WW Flex Points = 7 | |
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| About a week ago I'd purchased a "striped beet" in a store - and more or less forgot about it. But last night I decided to cut it up and see if it was really striped. It looked more or less like a small turnip so I wasn't sure how it would look inside... But once it was sliced up, the prettiest sight emerged! I'm in love with striped beets!
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Bento # 657
Smoked mackerel. Carrot flowers. Corn Cob. Fried noodles with egg and vegetables, toppped with a flower made of spring onion and a striped beet root. |
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| http://zoestrauss.blogspot.com/2009/11/first-me-and-my-lady-were-walking-down.html First, me and my lady were walking down Michigan Ave in Chicago and we saw GARRY MADDOX and I WAS WEARING THIS SWEATER. While I realize that Garry's just trying to live his life, I still had to show it to him. Garry's wife seemed to love it.  Then we went to a Bulls game and saw this amazing floating Bulls.  Then the Sixers lost, so dreams were crushed. Then we went to the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio in Chicago, which was great. Then two people who we saw at the Frank Lloyd Wright house earlier were randomly on our plane to Philadelphia! But then our plane from Chicago ran into a coyote on the runway and we had to sputter back over Lake Michigan, and I say sputter because the plane sounded messed up despite the pilot's statement of "everything's fine." Nice try, because we were greeted with quite a battalion of fire trucks and ambulances. It was actually fine and wasn't too-nerve wracking, which is probably why I was disappointed we didn't use the slides to get off the plane. Then we got home and LB just got a 150 dollar gift certificate from United and that's pretty great, so all in all a successful 24 hours. | |
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|  So, For the past two years or so, I've been trying to be " incognito." Now I once again want to be incog-NEATO! (oh god, please make me stop!) But seriously, identity can be a slippery eel that's hard to keep a grip on. I had a dream when I was a young whippersnapper that my life would be interesting and exciting. The price one pays for this is facing a greater number of challenges, both internal and external. When I was younger, my battles always seemed to be external: Me vs. the world and other people. With age, the battles became more internal: me vs. me vs. me. The downside of an "interesting" life is that it has to change all the time and you have to change with it. Often, when I'm in transition between one "self" and another, I withdraw into a sort of neutral place and re-emerge when I feel like I'm on steady footing. Often the transition involves rejecting the past self. Sometimes I have this visual picture of myself from one year to the next, all the me's standing side by side, then I see all the me's make a 90 degree turn to the right and slap the preceding one upside the head. And so I rejected the past self.
Only problem is: then I started thinking "but wait! my past self DID have so much fun! I STILL WANT THAT!" and so, in the process of rejection, there was a sort of re-integration. Thank god, because this "neutral" phase has gone on for almost three damned years.
Much of my problem stemmed from placing my "self" out there for public consumption. I made myself a "brand;" and not only my social life, but my career was tied to it. I chafe under the pressure of having to behave a certain way and live up to specific expectations and when I perceived the "expectation" as coming from some anonymous consciousness in the outside world, I started hiding inside (if that sounds way neurotic, I assure you...it is!)
Now, being "incognito" has been kind of a lovely learning experience in itself. When I was a kid, I felt like an outsider involuntarily... I was "different" and didn't want to be. When I was a young adult, I decided to be "different" on purpose. It became very important to me to be seen and to express myself in everything I did. Once that became a duty instead of a privilege, it just wasn't as fun anymore. It felt burdensome. I didn't want other people to be telling me who "myself" was. I went from "freedom" meaning being able to express myself to meaning I didn't have to express myself.
 These incognito years were my chance to feel what it's like to be "normal." I mean, there's only so "normal" a person can be in New York, but I just tried to be as neutral as possible. I still have a certain "physical expressiveness" (aka: awkward nerdiness) that gives me away, but if I dressed normal, I could get away with it. It was nice not to be pre-judged. It was nice to be able to conceal or reveal myself willfully. It was nice to feel invisible. It was nice to be happy letting other people shine instead of clamoring for the spotlight. It was nice to watch from the outside for awhile.
Now I'm trying to take the timeline of my life and take all the disparate parts and re-assemble them into some integrated whole of who I am now. I'm also trying to balance the negative and the positive. I've always veered between either extreme. Either from the egotistical "I WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW HOW GREAT MY LIFE IS!" to the paranoid: "Oh god...everyone just thinks I'm a name-dropping attention whore! Maybe I'm giving the wrong impression!" And the problem when you "put yourself out there" is that people will confirm both sides. Trouble was, I was at the point where I was like "I CAN'T BE WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE! I WILL ONLY DISAPPOINT YOU! I CAN'T TAKE THE PRESSURE!"
So, yeah, self-re-assembly. Stay tuned.
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| This week has lots of tests and projects due before a week long break in the semester... I'm preparing for spending lots of time on campus by packing extra special bentos for myself :) Also, my new cell phone is a replacement for the camera I lost while moving, oops! Tortilla pinwheels with cream cheese, cilantro, and ham, slightly underripe avacados, a mini cheese wheel, and pomegranite seeds in the cup! | |
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| Hi! I'm a brand-new member. Let's hope I get the posting rules right, please feel free to correct me if I do something wrong! :) I have lately become re-obsessed with food - in a good way. I had gotten in a slump eating the same foods over and over, due to convenience and knowing that it was safe food to maintain my weight with (I got done with losing 96lbs in March...). Since my re-obsession, which is mainly Japanese food related, I have become excited about my meals again, and yes, I am still maintaining quite happily. I also invested in randomly adorable stuff and started making benton:  And for those who enjoy this type of stuff, ( here is what last week looked like for me. )- Mood:excited
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|  A pretty standard lunch here, two strawberry gummys in the top left, parkin (ginger cake) next to that, then dried apricots, 3 colours of cherry tomato (the yellow one is underneath), a mini chicken and mushroom filo pie, craisins and almonds next to that and edamame. I'm experimenting to see how well stuff defrosts as I make my bento the night before and they have over 12 hours in a fridge to defrost so I left the edamame and pie frozen and we'll see how we go. They can always be microwaved if they don't defrost soon enough! | |
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| I was in Willie T's and we were all smoking. They hadn't yet knocked down the street-side walls, and the smoking ban was new. I had walked in and while still sunblind, ordered a Ketel, rocks. I lit up a cigarette and before I could even down that first drink, the bartender and the other two people in the place were shouting at me to put my cigarette out. Gesturing at me, waving their hands with their palms down. Now I'd been through this routine before. First on Cape Cod. Then Providence, New York, and so many others that I can't be bothered to remember them all. But this. This was Key West. The fucking Conch Republic! They Seceded where so many others had failed, after all. I was taken aback, but just before I actually snubbed out the camel, the bartendrix told me: Fuck it. I need a smoke too. She put out four plastic cups. a quarter full of water. All three of them lit up. It's not that we care. I'm sure it won't last, the bartendirx told me: It's just that it's a new law and the gecko got fined just a couple of days ago. The bar and the staff. All of 'em got fined. And one of the dudes piped up that Yeah, but that was the Gecko. This is Willy T's.Well, that's why I say fuck it. Fuck 'em. He's not from here (she turned to me) you're from out of state right? We can just blame him, right?
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|  Recipe and full 'how-to' with pics here! | |
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|  i've been wondering lately: who are my peeps? i mean, when it comes down to it, who are my peeps?but maybe, just maybe, YOU are my peeps. so hello, in case that's true. | |
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|  if we tasted with our feet, maybe we would wear marshmallow shoes. if we had huge sails strapped to our backs, we might pray to the wind. if we had 10,000 eyes we'd be awfully distracted. - Mood:young
- Music:nobody loves me, it's true, not like you do
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| I need to see the Carrie Prejean masturbation tape. I just do. Is it out there in cyberspace somewhere? | |
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| - Tags:photos
- Mood:koopa trooper
- Music:crown me king- must be a robot
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|  brown rice topped with black beans, tomato flowers, a cherry pepper, and seasonings. i should of put the seasonings under the tomatoes, in hindsight. carrots with blue cheese to dip, and yogurt with pomegranate seeds (more seeds under yogurt at well) simple, but should be good, and was very fast to make. | |
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| I've been pretty depressed down here. I seem to have this memory of a Key West that I may have independently constructed all by myself. A Key West without touristas and New York Priced drinks. A Key West where people are not creepy rich or creepy, period. I don't know if there was a tipping point, and I'm just being too myopic to realize that I missed it, or maybe it was a personal tipping point, and now that I'm fucking scared of the the police like an ex-con I simply can't enjoy myself anymore. Except in seclusion.
I thought that Plainview's state, the way he lived, at the end of "There Will Be Blood" looked pretty fucking appealing and not at all the lonely, pathetic existance they were trying to make it out to be. Of course I'd be sleeping with my head on a keyboard instead of a Bowling Alley-gutter, but none-the-less...
The last time I was down here I was really skittish. It was only about a month after I'd been arrested and charged with the felonies. I didn't know what was going to happen. I did know that a condition of my bail was that I wasn't supposed to leave Hillsborough county. I drove down from St. Pete doing 5 miles an hour under the speed limit. That's a long fucking drive. Especially across Deer Key. If you know what I mean.
The last time I was here I went to the raw bar once, and I think I went to the Fed-Ex out by the airport once. That was as far as I went from this dock. I didn't even go to the Green Parrot, and that's two blocks from here. The good times I remeber being here make me remember being here and getting swallowed up, rolled up. Smothered so that I'd have to escape and go play with the cats down at the Hemingway house through the gate in the wee hours. But that was september of '01, and there wasn't ANYONE in this town except for the Conchs. I got swallowed up because I had the town to myself. There was Magic in the trees.
Now, despite all the touristas and speed-boat racers clogging every bar and street corner, this place is fucking empty. It's lonely, even when you are with someone you know. It's one big boutique for chrissakes. Nothing but an expensive boutique.
The time I was here before last, I fell in love. Real love. It lasted all of three hours, but it was probably the purest relationship I ever had...
I'd tell you about it, but I have to go to work. I work every single day out here. Don't forget that. I have no time to be sad. I have no time to be depressed. I don't even have time to cry. I wish I could at least have that. I wish I could at least tell you about the love of my life that I met and lost on Duvall. - Mood:sad
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| Сегодня снова настоящая любовь в Солянке. Я играю в компании верных соратников Липского и Грозного. Заходите! | |
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| How was your day? I found a pot for my cactus plants. I had a few on the kitchen windowsill they'd been there for years and weren't doing much so I moved them outside and put the hose on them a few days in a row. Then the tall hairy one grew a bushell of blond, and the small round one started a cactus flower bud. So I thought I'd find a pot and put them all in their own cactus garden. I told Mikey to drive around this street that street I said it had to be wide and shallow. And we found one. And he said that was remarkable.  We went to lunch at my mother's. Jasmine's birthday quiche. My mum gave me a bag of spices and said she had two plants which would benefit from moving to my garden. I told her I liked the tall one but not the squat. She said they had to be housed together. That they had been grown by the same ol lady at the orchid stand at the garden show. That they were bought together, and they had always been together. That if they were separated they would fret for each other. She tried to tell me about companion planting. She thinks her two plant friends are companion planting. I know companion planting means if you're growing tomatoes, you plan onions/garlic etc etc. But she seems convinced it means some plants are companions. And I got a feeling she was speaking the truth. So I took the both of them. They can live near the new frog ponds. I gotta tell ya, they seem quite happy... together. | |
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| We're in love. Maggie has been stalking a mouse since she got back. Hasn't caught it yet but it is just a matter of time. That crazy bitch earns her keep around here.    | |
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|  mmmmmmm sea pools. Why are they so magical? I like them because I hear the sea roaring but I am safe in the old stone pool, swimming in the same sea water, only no chance of being washed away or beaten black and blue  Jasmine's birthday cake. Made from a packet but still delicious and pretty as a picture.  My house at night from the garden. We put christmas lights in the frangipani tree.  All you need for a party - a two dollar pack of sparklers. I've used up all my internet for the month already! Too much searching the internet for inspiration. Looking at real estate and finding pictures for my Tumblr. | |
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