We were going to have a Memorial Day cookout. I was marinating French style goat chops from Mint Creek farm in a really nice chopped garlic/hoisin sauce. And then a massive thunderstorm moved in, and grilling turned into the TACOSTRAVAGANZA. It was great. I carved all the meat off the goat chop bones and cooked it slow on the stove, along with some house-made chorizo from our corner bodega, some meatless crumbles, and some chicken marinated in my favorite Lizano salsa. It was awesome, and to my surprise and delight, the goat was the most popular by far! I only wish there had been more of it.
Sorry, sorry, sorry for the lack of updates. Everything will be updated tonight, I promise. I just had an extremely serious and busy weekend, filled with drinks with friends, many hours of video gamin’, playing music with people, all culminating in a huge tacostravaganza at my place last night. It was going to be a barbecue, but that got rained out, so we made a million tacos instead. Someone dubbed it the “Screw You, Joe Arpaio” Memorial Day Taco Dinner, I forget who. :)
Anyway!! so I spent the long weekend relaxing and having fun, and while I did draw some Sauceomes I just didn’t feel like scanning and uploading them. Back to normal tonight!
Here are some things you should know in the meantime:
1) I weighed myself Friday morning and I lost another pound! Hooray! I’m down to 199, so I’m out of the terrible twos. We’ll see how much of that I undid this weekend.
2) the goat tacos were the biggest hit at the tacostravaganza! I now know what I’m doing with every piece of goat meat we get from our CSA. If I make them again I will post the recipe, coz GODDAMN.
3) I made it to the 6th set of doors in the “Answer” chapter of Persona 3. If you don’t know what that means, count yourself lucky, you are a free person, unlike myself. Trust me though, it’s an achievement, these battles are hard, and Mitsuru keeps casting status effects instead of attacking the enemies like she’s supposed to. Idiot!
Updates coming tonight!
So of course all the beers I like best are heavy, high-alcohol, high calorie things. The good news is they’re usually so strong that I’m pretty satisfied sipping a single tulip-glass for an hour or two. Anyway, it’s gotten to the point where even Guinness kind of tastes like water to me; I can’t even imagine what an MGD 64 must taste like.
Another attempt to banish the ideas of “good” and “bad” when it comes to food. You would not believe the guilt spirals I’ve sent myself into over a piece of cake or some pizza. It’s ridiculous. You’d think I was out punching babies or something. It’s a piece of damn pizza, not a war crime.
The best part is that those kinds of self-recriminations usually send me to the kitchen looking for caloric comfort, which means they’re utterly, completely counter-productive. So, I have no use for you any longer, food-related guilt trips. If I don’t feel great about something I ate from now on, it is what it is, and I’ll just try to make a different choice the next time, instead of beating myself up about it.
Originally that last panel was just a plain old orphanage, but then I decided that a Puppy Orphanage was simultaneously less offensive and also more funny. Although that doesn’t really explain why the puppies are crying like human children, you can chalk that up to laziness.
Ah, the return of miniburger Tuesdays at the Small Bar. Well, OUR return TO miniburger Tuesdays, now that Lost is over. I missed you, miniburger Tuesdays.
That said, I only had one tiny miniburger tonight, because I am learning to like salads more and more. I think I used to sort of scoff at people who ordered salads in restaurants. I’d think, why would you spend $12 on that? It’s just a bunch of LEAVES. And then Randi introduced me to the Small Bar’s taco salad, which is not SUPER healthy, but it’s still mostly lettuce, and it’s more healthy than a lot of taco salads I’ve seen. I still have yet to order one and eat every bite, it’s just so much food.
Anyway. This is what I want out of Sauceome – not a diet, not a temporary thing, but a lasting shift in how I see food and in how I see myself. I have become, in the past three months, a person who likes salads. A person who chose a salad tonight over a plate of $1 miniburgers. And not because I was trying to be “good” and denying myself, but because I really love the taste of the taco salad.
I have this list of reserve ideas for Sauceome in my sketchbook, in case nothing specific occurs to me on any given day. On that list was “Things I hate and things I love about my body”. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, it’s probably just flat out a bad idea to give any more air time to “things I hate”. That sort of thing has taken up too much real estate in my head as it is. So I promise never to do that.
If you’re interested, I also really like my red, red hair. But that’s not, you know, naturally occurring or anything, (you can thank Ruth at Twisted Scissors for that) so it seemed like it was cheating to include it.
Also, if you are interested, that is pretty much the exact color my toenails are painted right now.
Thank the GODS. I know it’s only one pound, but if I had spent one more week at 201 I would have had a nervous breakdown.
Oh food. I was so determined to be good today.
Well, okay, let me stop there, because I think I am kinda done with assigning values like “good” and “bad” to food, and by implication to myself, if I eat them. If you managed to parse my crappy syntax there, good job! I’m sick of it. No foods are inherently Good or Bad, they are just food. And I’m not being Bad if I eat one thing and Good if I eat another, it’s just choices. Those are the rules from here on out.
That said, I was so determined to be good today. :D Ha! Seriously though, I feel like I have been stuck on that damn plateau for so long and I could really, really use a win this week. I have all this salad mix at work, I brought in more onions and a huge orange bell pepper, I was going to make the healthiest lunch… And then the bosses said, “let’s go to the Indian buffet!”
You know what is the natural born enemy of moderation? THE BUFFET. I think I did okay though. I tried to eat slowly and pay attention to the food, to consciously eat only two pieces of naan instead of mindlessly chomping away at the entire basket. And I looooove the buffet at Sher-a-Punjab. I love punjabi kadi so much. I have no idea what it is, but it’s AWESOME.
Also, their gulab jamun are off the hook. (bonus points for identifying that reference, because I make that joke almost every time I get Indian food)
So. If you’re still with me, it’s … um… “shark week”, if you know what I mean. I always hated the sound of “aunt flo”; “shark week” is so much better. Anyway, Kristin says weigh-ins don’t count during shark week, because everything’s out of whack, but I still have my fingers crossed. Like I said, I could really, really use a win.