It's taken me longer to get to yoga than might be expected by those who know me.
Friends might reasonably expect me to take to it the way I did with Tai Chi, hackey-sack, volleyball, gymnastics, Kali, ultimate or any of the other left of center sports I've enjoyed over the years. Obviously, I've never been one to stick to sports that present as particularly masculine. I did volleyball and gymnastics in high school followed by intramural crocheting and varsity menses in college. In one indelible memory from grad school, I experienced a bright moment of lucidity while enjoying the crap out of a gift from my sister (a subscription to Bon Apetit - manly!). A terrifying certainty came upon me that I had to go immediately to the local kickboxing gym and man up a little. I don't really subscribe to sticking to appropriately gender-rolled sports since I think you should play whatever's fun. Still, I think it's good to play both sides of the divide for balance's sake.
So, yoga's a little feminine, true but I think the real issue is that it's extremely hippie. The physical element is demanding, but not nearly so much as keeping my smart mouth shut when people ask me to thank the universe or open a third eye. Also, and this can't be stressed enough. I'm not flexible and was quite fearful about yoga.
A few years ago I ran afoul of a friendly but dumb karate instructor at a dojo in NYC. He "helped" me with my stretching to the point where I felt a sort of disconcerting twang from my groin and continue to be essentially unable to separate my legs beyond about 80 degrees, side to side. This wouldn't be a big issue in my life except that I really do like kickboxing and it's tough to practice Muay Thai if you can only kick your opposite from the knee down.
Anyway, I picked up yoga about three months ago when a friend of my girlfriend suggested she and her boyfriend go with me and my gal to yoga together before brunch. I can't make enough jokes about my yuppie life here, so go ahead and insert your own. Based on the setup, it's structurally impossible for any of them to be over the line - by all means, use the comments.
So that's how I got started. I quickly learned that I'm unusual at yoga. I can't, for instance, sit comfortably cross-legged on the floor (very rudimentary for most yogis), but I can do a handstand, bow pose (bridge), or crow pose. These are very rudimentary for gymnasts. In fact, the crow pose wasn't called either yoga or gymnastics by my gymnastics team members; it was called "fucking around" and was kind of a trifle.
So what happens sometimes in class is that we start off doing stuff that I'm okay at - forward stretches and such, transition into difficult stuff that I'm great at, and end with cool-down poses that I fucking gasp and cry at. I'm a yoga idiot savant.
Recently however, I've been moving just toward the idiot end of the scale. I think, sadly, that I may have to start stretching before yoga. That began as a bon mot but may shortly become my life. Somewhere along the line I seem to have pulled the entire right side of my ass, which limits mobility somewhat. I was hoping yoga would help me strengthen the appropriate accessory muscles and loosen up the rest, but what I think it's done is to convince me I need physical therapy.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
There's a fine line
Between ratatouille and rancid vegetable mush. Apparently that line is quickly crossed when you leave the ratatouille in a pot on the stove for two days.
Blech.
Ratatouille, for you goggle-eyed, peasant-class, boob tube monkeys who only know it as the name of a delightful children's movie, began as a French vegetable stew. It's the un-deconstructed version of the dish at the end of that same movie. To make it you stew a lot of vegetables together, sometimes after frying them, but that's sort of up to you. If ever there were a delicious French peasant repast, it's ratatouille and crusty bread with butter and a few bottles of table wine.
I went and bought the ingredients the other day at that bastion of fine produce, Safeway. In D.C. there are multiple Safeways. The one in Georgetown is the "Social" Safeway because I guess it's a good place to meet slutty people who cook or something. My Safeway is, I believe, sometimes referred to as the "Soviet" Safeway because of the history of crappy selection. It's not bad these days, but the produce is not going to wow you. That's okay, it's a stew. As long as the vegetables are relatively fresh and you can get some garlic and basil, you're okay.
As an aside, I'm sick and tired of D.C.'s farmers markets. Where I'm from, the Midwest, which has the distinction of being near a farm or two, farmers markets were places you would show up with money to meet farmers who showed up with vegetables still dirty from the walloping great field of earth they'd just been pulled out of. The half with too many vegetables gave them to the half with too much money in fair trade and you went home with some hideous, but cheap and delicious veggies and fruit.
I went to the Dupont farmers market and they have cedar planked salmon and overpriced, sad looking strawberries. Everything is marked organic; Everything is expensive as hell; And everything bears that slight taint of being touched by at least one earnest yuppie too many.
So, back to the Safeway where yours truly is trying to answer questions from the Latina checkout lady who has, with the same sort of instinct that draws cats to allergic people, intuited that my Spanish is exactly good enough to give her a good laugh. She opened simply enough by asking if I was a vegetariano. Porque no tuve carne (I didn't have meat). I, quixotically, tried to explain that, no, I wasn't a vegetarian, but today I was making a delicious French meal called ratatouille that didn't require meat. I may have gotten it across to her, but she did end up asking if I spoke French.
Anyway, the ratatouille was a disaster of burned garlic, missing basil and rather drab vegetables. Nevertheless, and here's one of the key selling points of this dish, it came together nicely. It wasn't great, but even bad ratatouille paired with some bread and butter gets the job done. I ate it for two days, during which time my gut inquired frequently and loudly as to what the hell I thought I was up to. It made one exercise class in particular kind of touch-and-go. Still, plenty of fiber and deliciousness even if I was producing high-grade construction-ready adobe in my spare time.
Finally, yesterday, I got a mouthful of the ratatouille that I'd been leaving on the stove (not for philosophically grounded reasons, but because I'm an orangutan) and realized that somewhere during the night my french cuisine had transubstantiated into compost.
So, here's how to make ratatouille:
- cut up a bunch of the following: 1 egg plant, 1-2 summer squash/courgettes, a couple of bell peppers, some mushrooms, 6 cloves of garlic, a handful of parsley and a handful or more of basil (expert tip: you can't really add too much basil to anything). This is a rough meal, so things don't have to be chopped up finely. Cut the eggplant, for instance, into rounds about half an inch in height and then quarter the rounds.
- Open a tin or two of tomatoes, and look, this isn't a highly engineered dish here you prancing tit, stop fretting about whether it's one tin or two. See how you like it with one and try it with two next time. That's cooking.
- (Second expert tip: put the chopped up eggplant into a bowl and either sprinkle salt on it or drop it into boiling water for about 30 seconds. This helps alleviate the bitter taste you sometimes get with eggplant).
- lightly saute the 6 or so cloves of garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil (a little butter thrown in has never hurt either, you pompous ascetic) in a very large cooking pot.
- Add some salt and pepper and drop in the mushrooms and courgettes (oh, courgettes are the English term for what you goofs call zuchini - we speak English here in the U.S. of A. so, er, love it or leave it, etc. and so forth. Also, Freedom Fries!)
- Saute until you've got a little brown on the mushrooms but before you've totally burned the garlic. Burned garlic tastes like failure in cooking, so avoid it as sedulously as possible. Expert tip 3: You will never use the word sedulously in conversation.
- Add the eggplant and whatever else I've forgotten to tell you to add so far, including the tomatoes.
- Turn the whole mess down to a medium simmer. Add chicken stock or water if it's not kind of watery and go away and have a beer or two. Check in as necessary.
- When is it done? Taste it occasionally. It's a stew so it's got the consistency of thin chilli. All the veggies are okay to eat raw, so basically you're just adding heat to mix the flavors.
- Eat with crusty bread and irresponsible amounts of butter.
- REFRIGERATE THE LEFTOVERS. I cannot stress this enough.
The final result should look EXACTLY like this:
Or you can use that computer network I've been hearing so much about.
Disclaimer: If you burn yourself on my ratatouille recipe, or learn the hard way that you're allergic to anything in it, it serves you right. I'm not your life-coach. Exercise some critical thinking when you do stuff. I take no responsibility for your dumb mistakes. Mine are trying enough.
Blech.
Ratatouille, for you goggle-eyed, peasant-class, boob tube monkeys who only know it as the name of a delightful children's movie, began as a French vegetable stew. It's the un-deconstructed version of the dish at the end of that same movie. To make it you stew a lot of vegetables together, sometimes after frying them, but that's sort of up to you. If ever there were a delicious French peasant repast, it's ratatouille and crusty bread with butter and a few bottles of table wine.
I went and bought the ingredients the other day at that bastion of fine produce, Safeway. In D.C. there are multiple Safeways. The one in Georgetown is the "Social" Safeway because I guess it's a good place to meet slutty people who cook or something. My Safeway is, I believe, sometimes referred to as the "Soviet" Safeway because of the history of crappy selection. It's not bad these days, but the produce is not going to wow you. That's okay, it's a stew. As long as the vegetables are relatively fresh and you can get some garlic and basil, you're okay.
As an aside, I'm sick and tired of D.C.'s farmers markets. Where I'm from, the Midwest, which has the distinction of being near a farm or two, farmers markets were places you would show up with money to meet farmers who showed up with vegetables still dirty from the walloping great field of earth they'd just been pulled out of. The half with too many vegetables gave them to the half with too much money in fair trade and you went home with some hideous, but cheap and delicious veggies and fruit.
I went to the Dupont farmers market and they have cedar planked salmon and overpriced, sad looking strawberries. Everything is marked organic; Everything is expensive as hell; And everything bears that slight taint of being touched by at least one earnest yuppie too many.
So, back to the Safeway where yours truly is trying to answer questions from the Latina checkout lady who has, with the same sort of instinct that draws cats to allergic people, intuited that my Spanish is exactly good enough to give her a good laugh. She opened simply enough by asking if I was a vegetariano. Porque no tuve carne (I didn't have meat). I, quixotically, tried to explain that, no, I wasn't a vegetarian, but today I was making a delicious French meal called ratatouille that didn't require meat. I may have gotten it across to her, but she did end up asking if I spoke French.
Anyway, the ratatouille was a disaster of burned garlic, missing basil and rather drab vegetables. Nevertheless, and here's one of the key selling points of this dish, it came together nicely. It wasn't great, but even bad ratatouille paired with some bread and butter gets the job done. I ate it for two days, during which time my gut inquired frequently and loudly as to what the hell I thought I was up to. It made one exercise class in particular kind of touch-and-go. Still, plenty of fiber and deliciousness even if I was producing high-grade construction-ready adobe in my spare time.
Finally, yesterday, I got a mouthful of the ratatouille that I'd been leaving on the stove (not for philosophically grounded reasons, but because I'm an orangutan) and realized that somewhere during the night my french cuisine had transubstantiated into compost.
So, here's how to make ratatouille:
- cut up a bunch of the following: 1 egg plant, 1-2 summer squash/courgettes, a couple of bell peppers, some mushrooms, 6 cloves of garlic, a handful of parsley and a handful or more of basil (expert tip: you can't really add too much basil to anything). This is a rough meal, so things don't have to be chopped up finely. Cut the eggplant, for instance, into rounds about half an inch in height and then quarter the rounds.
- Open a tin or two of tomatoes, and look, this isn't a highly engineered dish here you prancing tit, stop fretting about whether it's one tin or two. See how you like it with one and try it with two next time. That's cooking.
- (Second expert tip: put the chopped up eggplant into a bowl and either sprinkle salt on it or drop it into boiling water for about 30 seconds. This helps alleviate the bitter taste you sometimes get with eggplant).
- lightly saute the 6 or so cloves of garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil (a little butter thrown in has never hurt either, you pompous ascetic) in a very large cooking pot.
- Add some salt and pepper and drop in the mushrooms and courgettes (oh, courgettes are the English term for what you goofs call zuchini - we speak English here in the U.S. of A. so, er, love it or leave it, etc. and so forth. Also, Freedom Fries!)
- Saute until you've got a little brown on the mushrooms but before you've totally burned the garlic. Burned garlic tastes like failure in cooking, so avoid it as sedulously as possible. Expert tip 3: You will never use the word sedulously in conversation.
- Add the eggplant and whatever else I've forgotten to tell you to add so far, including the tomatoes.
- Turn the whole mess down to a medium simmer. Add chicken stock or water if it's not kind of watery and go away and have a beer or two. Check in as necessary.
- When is it done? Taste it occasionally. It's a stew so it's got the consistency of thin chilli. All the veggies are okay to eat raw, so basically you're just adding heat to mix the flavors.
- Eat with crusty bread and irresponsible amounts of butter.
- REFRIGERATE THE LEFTOVERS. I cannot stress this enough.
The final result should look EXACTLY like this:
Or you can use that computer network I've been hearing so much about.
Disclaimer: If you burn yourself on my ratatouille recipe, or learn the hard way that you're allergic to anything in it, it serves you right. I'm not your life-coach. Exercise some critical thinking when you do stuff. I take no responsibility for your dumb mistakes. Mine are trying enough.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Digital Love Help
I just signed up for theicebreak website. Maybe ironically. I'm not sure yet.
As far as I can make out, the site encourages you to take the pulse of your relationship from time to time then makes recommendations based on how satisfied you say you are with things like the amount of quality time you've spent with your [insert term of affection of your choice here - you can use "sweet baboo" as my boss does if you're drawing a blank].
I rated my relationship as healthy, since I'm shortly moving in with my [cutie pie] and frankly over the moon about it. However, she's out of the country for a couple weeks, so I rated my overall satisfaction with amount of quality time as lowest of the things I was asked about. Theicebreak suggests an evening of boardgames, which tells me two things: First, theicebreak is an elderly lady in a floral print dress (it's second suggestion was to take a bath or soak my feet!!).
Second, it has never seen me or my [sassy little monkeypants] play a board game. My [boo] and I are seldom competitive with one another, but we are in fact both crazy competitive where stupid games are involved. I fear theicebreak has found an efficient, if boring as hell, way to break us up. Thanks a lot website!
My next experiment is to tell it I'm finding our physical relationship lacking and see what terrible terrible idea it suggests. "Have you considered hugging?" I'll get back to you on what it comes up with.
In other ways, the site seems like email for couples who are at that stage in their true love where they have run out of things to talk about and decided it was best to stop. It encourages you to share pictures just for your [beloved] - and for the news media if you're Anthony Wiener or any number of ethics-touting/aggressively anti-gay GOP heavies. It also gives you ideas about "Icebreakers" to share with your partner. Some of these seem like things you should have talked about on dates 4-8. Others seem like excuses for fights.
In the former camp are questions like "what's the sexiest part of your partner's body." Guys, it's their personality. In the latter are softballs like "would you rather grow old with someone you settled for or be alone when you are older because you never found true love." Holy crap. That's specifically not a question for your [dear sweet smoocheyface]. It's a question for overly earnest college seniors in a WB movie that reimagines the Great Gatsby as a bittersweet rom-com set at NYU all about the trials of joining adulthood.
Still, sometimes technology confounds our best predictions. Twitter, as it turns out, has very little to do with the rampant narcissism everyone thought it would fuel and be fueled by. I'll wait and see. I'm pretty sure my [north, my south, my certain azimuth] will not be going for this nonsense. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons I like her so much.
As far as I can make out, the site encourages you to take the pulse of your relationship from time to time then makes recommendations based on how satisfied you say you are with things like the amount of quality time you've spent with your [insert term of affection of your choice here - you can use "sweet baboo" as my boss does if you're drawing a blank].
I rated my relationship as healthy, since I'm shortly moving in with my [cutie pie] and frankly over the moon about it. However, she's out of the country for a couple weeks, so I rated my overall satisfaction with amount of quality time as lowest of the things I was asked about. Theicebreak suggests an evening of boardgames, which tells me two things: First, theicebreak is an elderly lady in a floral print dress (it's second suggestion was to take a bath or soak my feet!!).
Second, it has never seen me or my [sassy little monkeypants] play a board game. My [boo] and I are seldom competitive with one another, but we are in fact both crazy competitive where stupid games are involved. I fear theicebreak has found an efficient, if boring as hell, way to break us up. Thanks a lot website!
My next experiment is to tell it I'm finding our physical relationship lacking and see what terrible terrible idea it suggests. "Have you considered hugging?" I'll get back to you on what it comes up with.
In other ways, the site seems like email for couples who are at that stage in their true love where they have run out of things to talk about and decided it was best to stop. It encourages you to share pictures just for your [beloved] - and for the news media if you're Anthony Wiener or any number of ethics-touting/aggressively anti-gay GOP heavies. It also gives you ideas about "Icebreakers" to share with your partner. Some of these seem like things you should have talked about on dates 4-8. Others seem like excuses for fights.
In the former camp are questions like "what's the sexiest part of your partner's body." Guys, it's their personality. In the latter are softballs like "would you rather grow old with someone you settled for or be alone when you are older because you never found true love." Holy crap. That's specifically not a question for your [dear sweet smoocheyface]. It's a question for overly earnest college seniors in a WB movie that reimagines the Great Gatsby as a bittersweet rom-com set at NYU all about the trials of joining adulthood.
Still, sometimes technology confounds our best predictions. Twitter, as it turns out, has very little to do with the rampant narcissism everyone thought it would fuel and be fueled by. I'll wait and see. I'm pretty sure my [north, my south, my certain azimuth] will not be going for this nonsense. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons I like her so much.
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