Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I was previously unaware that I suck at life


My schedule is shifted today and so I get be at home, relaxing my Tuesday morning away. After sleeping into an astounding 7:30am I did some internet surfing to catch up on my blogs. I implore you to watch this beaut that was posted on a blog I frequent:


There are a couple of avenues you can take when writing about this jem of a youtube video. I'm just going to share with you my thoughts over the past 8:00 minutes.

1. This has got to be the cardio equivalent of running two 4-minute-miles.
2. No, my 26 year old body would NOT be able to jump rope on its knees, on a hardwood floor nonetheless.
3. Do you think there's a restriction on how long you can grow your ponytail before it gets caught in the rope? Or would that be just another trick move they'd work into the act?
4. I suddenly feel very out of shape cardiovascularly, despite having just run a half.
5. In grade school I knew all the jump rope tricks: how to "jump in", the double jump, backwards jump, the side-to-side, the criss-cross ALL while singing "Cinderella, dressed in yella'...", but unbeknownst to me, I sucked.
6. The girl in gold with the scarf and sunglasses clearly saying "Oh, my God!"...I relate to her sentiments exactly.
7. Oh my gosh, they are STILL jumping!!
8. I like how they smile and wave so politely after the end of a trick, as if to say "Yes, I can do a double roundoff back handspring while jumping rope. Can't you?"
9. Footloose! Nice song choice!
10. This needs to be blogged about immediately.
11. Where on Earth do you join a club like this?
What were your thoughts?

And that's the way it is.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Europe: Part 1 - Addendum

My beloved farmers market has a name! Today, while perusing the 101 cookbooks blog in an attempt to find a good (but heavily modified) lasagna recipe, I found out the author recently visited Madrid. Because she's got a slightly larger following than myself, her blog was swamped with recommendations of places to visit during her travels. Mixed in with all the posts was a recommendation to visit el Mercado de San Miguel:

In Madrid don't miss the Mercado de San Miguel, a recently beautifully renovated old market with an oyster bar, a juice bar, a culinary bookstore and many other treats, you'll love it.

I thought, "Jeez, that sounds awfully familiar." One google search later and tada! Es el mercado de mi almuerzo perfecto!

Isn't it weird how you're talking about something obscure one day, and the next it's like you can't stop coming across it? I believe things come in threes, so I'm waiting for mi mercado to pop up in conversation again tomorrow or perhaps by early next week. I foresee it being brought up in conversation by someone I've never met before, or have only met briefly. In my prediction this person is male and although he enjoyed Madrid, he thought Barcelona was the superior city, which I will whole-heartedly disagree with. We both will agree that La Familia is not worth the sky-high entrance fee since you can enjoy so much of it from the outside and I think we'll both be drinking a beer.

I'll keep you posted.

y ésa es la manera que es...

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Europe: Part 1 (inspired by "pan")

Be honest. When you read "pan" did your internal voice pronounce it with a long "a" or short "a"? If you pronounced it with an "ah" sound, as in the Spanish word for bread, not only is your internal voice bilingual and able to pick up on context clues, it's also correct.

Tonight I made a tasty batch of red lentil soup stolen from a favorite blog of mine, 101 cookbooks. In preparation for the dish, I picked up a fresh loaf italian bread this morning. You know the kind - squishy and crunchy all at the same time. Mmmmmm, soooo good! Well the whole thing got me reminiscing about Europe...

I alluded to the possibility of a post like this a few weeks back. I had the pleasure of hopping the pond and visiting a small handful of countries in Europe this past Spring and (five months later) haven't even managed to upload all the photos from the trip to my Shutterfly account. The problem is that I took upwards of 1000 pictures while I was over there and, keeping you in mind, I didn't want to upload all of them and make you flip through all the junky and/or repeat photos. That, and I had this great vision of writing a caption for every single picture so that it was as if you traveled with me! Wouldn't that of been dandy?! Then summer started and seeing as I was hardly even sleeping in my own bed most weekends the photojournalism project had to be pushed to the back burner.

But back to the bread.

Europe has some particularly awesome, food-journal-worthy food. Breakfast was typically cafe
con leche and a croissant which I never seemed to tire of eating. I still salivate when I remember my "best dinner." But the best lunch I had came towards the very end of the trip while I was in Madrid. At this point I was traveling with some foodie-friends of mine, Abby and Emily, and on our last full day in Madrid we happened across this fantastic outdoor market, the likes of which I can only pray our new CoMo pavilion can even come close to. In one stop, you could do your grocery shopping, snack on some fresh tapas, people watch amid the husle and bustle, AND buy a diabetic-friendly cookbook!

Heaven!

Minus actually buying the cookbook (the majority of my patients don't keep up on their Spanish reading skills) Abby, Emily and I did all of the above. I love that a simple combo of foods can be such a great meal. We got what truly were "cherry red" cherries from some lovely gents at the produce stand, savory cheese that tasted like a softer version of Parmesan a few stalls down and a loaf of still-warm bread from these nice ladies.

It was a three-ingredient feast. Never underestimate how fulfilling fresh and quality food can taste completely unadulterated. My food-loving self had been in Europe for 2 weeks at this point, eating everywhere from pizza wielding street venders to white table cloth and wine list restaurants, and I still don't question ranking this as my favorite lunch. It's a credit to how many calories you can burn by walking all day that I actually lost weight while over there.

Europeans know how to bake some mighty fine bread.

And THAT'S the way it is!