Category: waxing philosophical

smells like teen spirit, I mean, the odor of my perspiration, I mean, an ode to my inspiration

Other than me, my mom is without a doubt the single most least-capable person I know. She called me last week to ask how to use a garlic press. No lie. She is also insanely aggressive in her quest to correct this hiccup in her design. Plus, she has the kind of competitiveness and attitude toward winning that make being in competition with me look like a day at the spa.  And she doesn’t even cheat. That I know of.
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a blonde, an asian american, and barbara boxer walk into a bar

Public transportation turns me on, y’all. I don’t mean, like, I see a city bus and get all hot and bothered; I just mean I have a real love for the lifestyle I think a good mass transit system supports. Whenever I dream of my life as a tortured, starving artist (with expensive shoes and a Jenny Aniston hair cut, circa now, not circa Friends), it’s always midnight and I’m on a train headed home to my postage stamp-sized apartment from whatever gallery opening or swank new restaurant I couldn’t afford so I just stood at the bar sipping tap water with lime and looking hot with my pretty shoes. Shoes, glorious shoes.
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eat, vegetables, love

Does anyone remember how all this foolishness got started? I’ve been thinking about it lately while I haven’t been cooking or eating vegetables but have been eating some great meat cooked by other people at Decatur’s newest burger joint. The answer is: I have no idea. I think it was an accident. I mean, I know I had a series of revelations about what a baby I’ve been about eating vegetables all my life, but no other revelation has ever led me to wake up one day and forfeit a way of life I’ve worked so hard for. I think it’s possible my abducted by aliens theory may have legs.
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waxing philosophical–jvv gets fancy

In my effort to put off eating turnips as long as possible (I have until the end of March, which is plenty of time) I decided to make muffins for dinner last night. This decision was informed not by a remarkable lack of food in the house (although there was a remarkable lack of food in the house) but by a family tradition of eating breakfast for supper when the day was too long and the night was too short to come up with anything better or more creative. And when there was a remarkable lack of food in the house. Continue reading “waxing philosophical–jvv gets fancy” →

winning matters

I think I’m going to stop apologizing for being such an effing slacker. It’s minus 27 degrees outside right now (translation: 34 degrees) and that should be reason enough to never have to do anything ever. Once the weather warms up and I come out of hibernation we’ll kick this back into high gear, but while we’re experiencing frigid, Arctic temperatures here (translation: it’s sort of cool, we haven’t had any snow, and Sunday was even kind of balmy) I think we should just all count on JVV being kind of unreliable.

Now that we’ve all lowered our expectations we can get back to the business of winning shit. Is my perpetual winningness annoying? I didn’t think so either (obviously) but we were at a friend’s house last night for Family Fun Night with games, and of course I was winning, when David said to me, “You know, you don’t make this very enjoyable for the rest of us.”

Really? You mean losing blows? Ferfucksake, I know that, that’s why I win shit. But in the spirit of not always being a self-righteous asshole (who wins everything, always…always), I will concede this much: I have been stumped recently by an ugly, ugly, hateful green vegetable and I may or may not have to admit defeat for the first time. Maybe. No promises.

battle 20–artichokes

This time I don’t have any good excuses. I’ve got nothing. Really. Nothing.

OK, I’ve got one thing. A girlfriend said to me yesterday that she’s in a “post-holiday can’t-get-all-my-balls-back-up-in-the-air funk,” which described precisely what’s happening with me right now. I’ve got a lot of balls. And since grocery shopping and cooking are still not automatic for me, it’s been a pain in the ass to work them back into my routine. Balls.

Obviously I didn’t intend to start the new year with such a lackluster performance. I actually jumped right into artichokes on artichoke Sunday when I was at the Midway Pub watching football. Midway serves artichokes fritters as an appetizer and I figured I could start the year off right with a big fried artichoke win. But they were boring. So boring they didn’t even warrant a full post. Super boring.

A few days later I gave artichokes another try with the artichoke cheese dip at Melton’s App and Tap (I frequent some fine eateries). Boring.

And there I was. New year. Shitty vegetable. Nothing to report (what was I going to say? I lost my first battle of the year? No way). So that was it, I came home day after day and didn’t cook, didn’t write, didn’t do shit.

Fortunately I have you friends to remind me so frequently what a slacker I am.

Finally I decided that since I let myself get so far behind that it would be fine to mix and match and combine and reorder and get crazy with January’s vegetables to catch up. New year. New rules.

Here’s what we’re up against in January (and honestly, why I’ve been reluctant to start the new year with typical New Year’s verve, I mean, come on, January): artichokes (those are technically left over from December, but I’m giving them one last chance), snow peas, rhubarb, rutabaga, cabbage and turnips.

Kill. Me. Now.

battle 9–day um–er

So, here’s what happened to kohlrabi week: Admittedly, I went to the farmer’s market by myself again, and admittedly, I couldn’t find what I was looking for….again. In my defense, no one has ever even heard of kohlrabi and I’ve had three people helping me track it down on the Internet and in real life and we still haven’t found it or even really figured out what it is. Apparently, it is a vegetable, but that’s all we know.

In the meantime, I’m moving up beets…ugh…and am going to….gag… I can’t even finish that sentence, but, sigh, welcome to beet week.

I just picked up beets from the store and am still trying to figure out how to make them palatable (note: beet mousse, out; beet sangria, in), so until I work all that out, I’m pretending it’s still last week and am having some waxing philosophical time. This week’s topic: My new favorite blog, PROJECT 29 to 30. Meet Steph, new blogger extraordinaire. Steph is chronicling her challenge to do between her 29th birthday and her 30th birthday 365 things she’s never done before. I love this project.

Steph also has great hair.

Also, the one time I wrote and posted this from work, my boss walked in and saw me doing it. Hi, Scott. Remember all the reasons you love me before you fire me. Start with my hair.