Eggs in a Basket (and in My Refrigerator)

Posted on January 7, 2012 by KO

Lazy weekend mornings are something I have been enjoying very much over the last several months. W and I like to sleep in as late as we want, then take time to make coffee “the hard way,” in a French press or a chemex pot and eat breakfast while lounging on the couch with the dogs. These breakfasts have included eggs for a while now, something I had not eaten in years of avoiding animal products and being a mostly strict vegan.

I have never exactly toed the party line on every issue: I have always eaten honey, and am not often inclined to ask at restaurants if, for example, their bread contains eggs. I question whether there is, in fact, a true “party line” at all. I think most people have to find what works best for them as individuals. Nonetheless, soi-disant vegans do not eat eggs, and I had not straight up eaten a fried egg in maybe three years.

When I had eggs again for the first time, they were eggs delivered straight from one of our local CSA farms to W’s office (they receive egg deliveries pretty regularly — I don’t know how that arrangement came about but I’m not complaining). It’s a small, ethical, organic farm right here in our county, which made it something I felt much more comfortable about than I would grocery-store eggs. That morning, we also had a fresh loaf of sourdough bread from the farmers’ market, and W made eggs in a basket. To this day, that is one of my Most Memorable Meals. Everything about it was perfect.

Since then, I have often requested eggs in a basket, which I did this morning and the chef kindly obliged. It’s a little indulgent, to eat eggs when I clearly don’t have to. I get by without animal products most of the time, right? But the whole lazy weekend ritual is pretty indulgent in and of itself.

I see this as a sort of luxury food. I don’t bake with eggs, for example. Why bother when I have tons of vegan recipes and there’s nothing noticeably different (to me, anyway) between vegan cookies or cupcakes and their non-vegan varieties? Just because I am having eggs on a Saturday morning, I am not going to start putting them into my cookies.

I had added organic Greek yogurt to my diet about a year ago, when I was having problems incorporating protein into my on-campus lunches and was simultaneously experiencing some slow-to-resolve running injuries. I’m not sure that it’s made a huge difference in the injury issue, but it has kept me on track nutritionally even when I’m stuck eating lunch in my office. (Bags of pretzels and granola bars were not doing the trick, and hummus and veggies really wasn’t, either.) I still keep all of my dairy-free products in the house, though, like Earth Balance, Tofutti “cream cheese,” soy milk, and so on. Given the choice, I will take the vegan option almost every time, but if I am eating some local, organic, eggs from one of our CSA farms on the weekend, I am not going to sweat it.

I am also not going to sweat it if I occasionally add a Bloody Mary or two to the long, lazy breakfast. Especially if I’ve just finished a long run. But please hold the Worcestershire sauce — I’m not interested in drinking any anchovies with my cocktail, thanks!

I have always said that I eat the way I do because it works for me and is sustainable, both in terms of nutrition and the environment. That was true when I completely avoided eggs and dairy and I hope it is still true now.

Why Hosts are Like Fish and Other Things I Learned this Christmas

Posted on December 27, 2011 by KO

Apparently, three days and three nights is the maximum amount of time I am able to spend with my family in Tennessee without committing any violent crimes. Therefore, as a pacifist, I was ethically obligated to leave without spending any more time there. I did manage to spend the holiday up there and have a fairly peaceful time, but only thanks to the magic of Twitter, which allowed me to air my every grievance without having to actually argue with my family. If you don’t follow me on there, you missed out on some gems, such as the fact that my increasingly conservative father tried to make the claim that “leftists” are all “eugenicists,” as evidenced by the existence of Planned Parenthood, which apparently exists so that poor people can be made to have abortions. Well. The more you know.

No, sadly I am not kidding. I won’t go into the rest of the nonsense, but take that one point above and multiply it by three days and three nights and there you have it.

[357/365] I only turned around where the trail was flooded.

Funny signage from the Greenbelt in my hometown, where I ran this morning.

Nonetheless, I managed to have some fun while there. I went for a wonderful run on the Kingsport Greenbelt, a paved trail in my hometown that connects different parks and neighborhoods, and is long and flat and pretty. It’s one of the few flat places to run there, actually, as my town is in a very hilly/mountainous part of Tennessee. It had been so rainy that the creek was really high and parts of the trail were flooded out, but I managed to see some lovely sights, meet a family of geese, discover an abandoned putt-putt course, and enjoy the signage that reminded me distinctly of something you’d see in the parks of Pawnee, Indiana. (Seriously, if you’re not watching Parks and Rec, get on that now.)

I also left on a good note after Christmas dinner, which my brother and I cooked and which came out wonderfully if I do say so myself. I forgot until after eating that marshmallows are not vegetarian (they contain gelatin) and I should have skipped them, but I guess I am not perfect. The gift exchange went well and I think everybody was happy with what I chose for them.

I had been planning to stay over until Monday morning and then drive home in the daylight, but I decided to leave after dinner on Sunday. I still made it back home by 10:30 pm even though I left right as the sun was sinking low. A road trip in the dark is not my favorite, but I tried to enjoy the quiet roads and the prospect of my own couch and bed awaiting me.

It was much better than the trip up there a few days before, which had involved over three hours of driving through a blinding, furious, torrential downpour that actually followed me northeast on interstates 40 and 81. How rude.

Egon and I were both pretty exhausted after the stresses of travel and family drama, and we slept in until almost 11:00 yesterday morning. It was glorious, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Today has felt pretty self-indulgent, too: I started out with Body Pump class at the gym and then a quick run. Nothing better than doing something good for yourself first thing in the morning, whether that’s much needed sleep or a workout: each one has its own time. Body Pump, if you don’t know, is a group strength training class where you do a routine of weight-lifting moves set to music. Normally I love this because the music, instructor, and other people in class are all very motivating. I don’t need much motivation to do cardio as I just plain love running and biking — but when it comes to weights, I need all the help I can get, so this is a great option for me. But can I just mention that it drives me absolutely insane when the instructor and/or the other class members can’t keep time with the beat correctly? As a former marching band nerd, I take offense at any human’s inability to work within a 4/4 time signature. BUT ANYWAY.

Continuing my self-indulgent day, I watched some Vampire Diaries (I’m just getting started with season three), read a bit, and then went TV shopping. I’m buying a flat screen HDTV after getting to use W’s for a long time and seeing how much better it is than my old, crappy, 19″ tube. It is seriously nice, y’all. He’s been generous enough to leave his TV over at my place since Egon came home from the hospital and had to be crated 24/7 — we just stayed here all the time and it was better to have the nicer TV for a lot of reasons. The ability to play BluRays and stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon is, in a word, awesome. But I need to give it back to him soon, so I’ve been shopping around for my own smaller version. Thanks to a couple of gift cards and some money I received, I was able to get a 37″ model (which I got a great deal on because I ordered it online). It feels quite silly and materialistic indeed to be getting myself something so, well, excessive, but I think the enjoyment will be entirely worth it. It should arrive the week of January 2. Hooray!

So how was your Holiday weekend? Do you have any incredibly indulgent gifts about which to boast? Shocking tales of family conflict? Please do tell!

On Drinking Champagne and Other Important Commitments

Posted on December 16, 2011 by KO

I have decided to commit to drinking more champagne. Yes, that’s right. More champagne. I feel that this promise I have made to myself is important enough that I should announce it here on my very own website. Here’s the thing: I like wine, I really, really do. I like red wine, and white wine, and I really love champagne — but I ike champagne about 40x more than I like other white wine. And why shouldn’t I? It’s bubbly and delicious and like a fancy, black-tie party in your mouth. Champagne is awesome.

So why not drink it all the time? I think there is some commonly held cultural assumption that champagne is for special occasions only — birthdays and job promotions and weddings and such — and is not appropriate for everyday, with dinner, less special drinking. (Not that I’d drink it literally every DAY, but you know what I mean.) Why should that be the case? If I can buy a good bottle of champagne for about the same amount of money as I’d spend on a good bottle of pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc, why shouldn’t I? Expecially if I like it approximately 40x better?

So there you have it. More champagne, less pinot grigio. Boom. Instant quality-of-life improvement.

In Other Important Commitments News, I have decided to re-attempt to learn knitting. Well, I do already know how to knit, sort of. I can cast on and knit and purl and make little rows of stitches and whatnot. I’ve never yet gotten to the point of casting off, however, as I’ve never completed a project. Once I tried to make a Gryffindor scarf, only I got started wrong (fine yarn, skinny needles, and a project that was taking far too long to complete due to the insane number of stitches required to grow it in length at all). I never finished that scarf, and I think it eventually became a casualty of my pre-cross-country-move purge.

Yesterday I started a new project. While I was stuck in the Wal-Mart waiting for my car to be finished, I found myself staring down the wall of yarn and deciding to try again. I found a very thick (“super bulky”) yarn that advertised itself as one that helped “projects come together quickly” and was “easy care.” This time I tried to get larger needles (though I think I could have gone even bigger with the gauge) and I have started once again on a scarf. This time, no ambitious stripes or anything, just solid color, easy peasy. I hope.

If this one works out well enough, though, I may have bigger projects in mind.

We’ll see. If it turns into a huge, frustrating, yarn-based debacle, however, at least I’ll still have my champagne.

Festive Weekend Antics

Posted on December 5, 2011 by KO

Well, it’s That Time of Year. Finals week has begun as of today, and I have basically finished my holiday decorating. What this means is this: while I still have plenty of work left to do for the semester (what with giving final exams and grading of said exams and grading of essays and averaging of grades and easing of students’ frayed nerves and handling of students’ complaints), I have mentally declared myself finished with the semester and am already in full holiday mode (like you didn’t see this coming).

This is an odd place to be. So much work, on the one hand, and a steady influx of jazzy holiday tunes, festive beverages, flannel pajamas, and peppermint-based candy, on the other hand. At least I am adequately fueled with sugar for the work ahead.

As you can see, the holidays are making everyone a little goofy. The dogs are vigilant in the kitchen and dancing for treats, and someone feels the need to photobomb my daily Project365 picture. In all seriousness, the dogs had woken us up at 7:00 Sunday morning to go outside, so we decided as long as we were up we would get on the task of making cinnamon rolls and mimosas, which we ate while watching Cannonball Run. At 7:30 AM. And then proceeded to nap on the couch.

The weekend was spent being almost exclusively lazy, as has become the norm. Saturday morning I got up early to go race a 10K with Brunbec and Jenniac (recap to come when official results and, hopefully, photos are available), but after that I indulged in plenty of relaxation. We lounged and relaxed with the dogs and generally were very merry indeed. W and I have been watching season one of Torchwood, which I really love (although not as much as Doctor Who, but that probably goes without saying), and have occasionally been putting on old Christmas episodes of our favorite shows for a bit of something festive.

Speaking of festive, I am really happy with how my tree and decorations came out. I have had the idea for years now to make cut-out paper snowflakes to hang from the ceiling, and this year I finally executed it! It looks so great in person, but was annoyingly difficult to photograph. This collage-style Instagram manged to capture the overall effect better than any of my DSLR images:

So much fun! I feel like leaving them up indefinitely (though I likely won’t). We also took some photos of the dogs in front of the Christmas tree, because, let’s face it, when you have dogs as cute as these three, there is really no other choice.

W’s dogs Piper (Chihuahua) and Oliver (Jack-Russell/Shih-Tsu mix) are so darn photogenic; it’s easy to get great photos of them. Egon, with his black fur, presents more of a challenge, but I think I managed well enough.

Today it was back to work, of course, and I’ve been crossing things off my to-do list with a vengeance. Well, more accurately, I have been delicately tapping in the check-box on my iPhone “Reminders” app, which is surely less satisfying than really striking through a list item with the decisive stroke of the pen. In a way quite similar to how cell phones robbed us of our ability to really slam the phone receiver back down into the cradle to punctuate the end of a telephone argument, the iPhone task management apps have removed the page-ripping pen strike-out from our productivity notations. Sigh. Technology, man. First there’s being friends with your bosses, exes, and frienemies on Facebook, and now this.

In other news, next week is my birthday and I’m having a few people over for drinks and snacks. What is your favorite simple party snack? I need ideas!

Back to Reality — So Long as They Have Nog There

Posted on November 30, 2011 by KO

Thanksgiving break is long over and I am back to work in the real world. In spite of the universe trying to kill me with falling, asbestos-laden ceiling tiles in the employee bathroom and a dead hard drive on my office computer, things are going well!

The bathroom has been cleaned up, my iMac has been replaced with a newer one, and I am spending my days hard at work, staring at the screen just so:

It’s hard to tell whether I am absorbed by a brilliant student argument, a writing and research problem, or just something ridiculous somebody said on Twitter, isn’t it? But if I were a betting woman, I would place my money on the latter.

Yesterday was a great day at home: not only did I get a Christmas tree, but Egon finally got to spend his first evening out of the crate! He’s not allowed to jump up and down and on and off of the furniture due to the potential to re-injure his fragile little spine (*tear*), so I have been keeping him on a leash and (as I call it) “air-lifting” him on and off the couch as needed. He is still in the crate at night and when I’m at work, though, when he can’t be supervised.

So last night was a very cozy one indeed, with the Christmas lights on, the Hogfather streaming on Netflix, and a couch full of creatures. W was over at my place with his two dogs, so we had a dog-human-dog-human-dog double-decker club-sandwich-style arrangement going on, in which metaphor I suppose the dogs are the bread; W is the turkey, ham, and bacon; and I am the lettuce and tomato — the best part, of course.

Mmm, sandwiches.

Speaking of sandwiches, I am about to go collect a free lunch courtesy of my department at work, and tonight I hope to enjoy a very boozy and rich dinner indeed. I’ve just come from my annual health assessment/screening (for an insurance discount), and I am absolutely the picture of health. Obviously, I mean. Clearly it’s all the bourbon-spiked soy nog I’ve been dutifully consuming for the past week. Actually, I confess I have gained about 5 lbs since this time last year, but this time last year I was both recently dumped and training for a full marathon, whereas this year I am happily dating and running half as many miles. I am okay with this, especially as all of my other numbers are ideal and, more importantly, I’m not too smad* to eat. My “good cholesterol,” in fact, is so good that they “never see a number that good.” Bring on the holiday beverages and desserts, in that case!

*Name that television character and I will high five the hell out of you!

So life is grand today. I’ve got a fun creative project to grade this afternoon and some ornaments to hang up, not to mention the aforementioned free lunch to go collect, so I’d better get moving. How are you, friends?

Effing the Ineffable

kateo dot org

Category Archives: Food and Drink

Eggs in a Basket (and in My Refrigerator)

Why Hosts are Like Fish and Other Things I Learned this Christmas

On Drinking Champagne and Other Important Commitments

Festive Weekend Antics

Back to Reality — So Long as They Have Nog There