BuggBlog

Sir, back away from the fries

This Washington Post article on a new effort to limit fast-food restaurants in Prince George's County is full of the kind of silly statements that makes my inner libertarian want to scream. This one's a classic of the genre:

Turner said that his group identified Panera Bread and Chipotle as preferable alternatives to a fast-food burger restaurant and that he plans to seek similar compromises with other developers.

"I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's more healthy," said Turner, who said he thinks the access to french fries has contributed to his weight struggle. "You don't see any deep fryers in Panera."

1. It's not the access to, it's the eating of french fries. I lost about 35 pounds at the end of last year in large part because I stopped going to McDonald's all the damn time. (Going to the gym helped, too.) It's cheap, it's convenient and it's even tasty, but if you're going to lard-butt in there every day for a large double-quarter-pounder with cheese meal, you have no one to blame but yourself.

2. For what I spend buying a Cobb salad and iced tea at Panera I could feed an adult and two small children at McDonald's. And I'm willing to bet that ingesting a daily Chipotle burrito with guac and sour cream will have the same ass-broadening, girth expanding properties as those french fries -- it'll just make the wallet lighter.

I hold no special respect for fast-food joints -- Taco Bell's recent marketing of a Drive-Thru Diet as a weight-loss option a la Subway's Jared was a moment of spectacular stupidity only surpassed by the fact that some people probably fell for it -- but for the most part they offer edible food for cheap prices.

If there are no grocery stores in a neighborhood, that's possibly something a local government should be looking at, and probably more effective than trying to get people to trade in their Baconators for overpriced (yet tasty!) panini.

Meat: It's what's not for dinner

I’m not a vegetarian but my husband is. Rather, he is now.

This has been causing some issues.

Now, I’m not the kind of guy who needs to wolf down some cow every day to reach culinary satisfaction. But as the main cook in the house, it has thrown a little cramp into my style. While I didn’t often do big meat-centric dishes like giant steaks served rare alongside a small salad that barely acknowledges the existence of vegetable matter in the human diet -- damn, my mouth just watered -- a lot of my basic repertoire includes meat, and that repertoire is now useless.

Stir-fry of rice noodles with ground chicken, scallions, peanuts and super-spicy sambal? Not any more. Penne pasta with salsa amatriciana? Nope, pancetta is no longer allowed.

Pancetta, people. Pancetta! What is my world coming to?

So, my cooking these days has focused on two things.

First, learning to cook more purely vegetarian meals beyond marinara sauce. Luckily, I picked up Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, so my horizons now include a bulgur chili, which is far, far better than it first sounds to the ears of a meat eater. I’ve also experimented on my own with simmering cactus with black beans -- thank you Goya aisle at Giant! -- for rice and bean burritos at home. And I’m really starting to love my capers-and-black-olives pasta sauce. So far, so good.

Second, I’m making sure Cavin at least eats some occasional seafood because I just believe it’s healthier that way. Yes, yes, I know the standard vegetarian riposte is, “What did the fish ever do to you?” Well, as far as I’m concerned the fish was pissing and shitting in the ocean I swim in, so the little s.o.b. had it comin’. So there.

On another still-food-related topic, I’ve been totally remiss in noting that I have not one, not two, but three friends now dedicated to the art of food blogging.

First off, my friend David has been documenting his own experience as a vegetarian at Just Vegging Out (he just got back from my home state, Kentucky, where meat eating is just about mandatory, yet he survived). He also posted my strawberry and spinach salad recipe, which is flattering, and he has a lot of veggie approaches I need to be checking out for myself.

Then there’s Jenny’s new NomNomNom, a food blog by a foodie who doesn’t cook. Funny, Jenny used to be a vegetarian back when she lived with me but now she’s all about the bacon. Mmmmm, bacon. Jen’s a witty and urbane voice you’ll find, um, tasty. Like bacon!

Finally, check out The Passion Fruits, one fruit of which, Joe, is all about getting fresh (I totally want to make a “getting fresh” joke here, but I’m going to fight off the urge). Joe and his co-fruit Luke have a more refined approach to food than, say, I do -- and that’s a good thing. And I know for a fact Joe’s food is excellent, so I’m happy to listen to what he has to say.

Especially if he tells me to eat more meat.

So, WTF have I been doing lately, anyway?

Excellent question! I wish I had a simple answer. So I’ll treat it as a multiple choice question where every choice is a correct choice because even though I’ve been away it’s still my blog and that’s the way I want to do it.

Focusing on myself: I know, I know, the idea of me descending into a solipsistic revelry is so totally not like me. But while I came back from my vacation feeling relaxed, I also came back feeling like...oh, how should I put this...a fat fucking cow. Not only did I demure from going to the beach with Cavin because I didn’t want to be the beached whale sunning itself next to his Jack Sprat, I managed to gain about 10 pounds of weight and more than an inch on my waist -- all that despite the fact that I was playing at least two hours of tennis a day for the first week and a half.

Yes, that means the food in Provincetown is really, really good.

All that said, I hit 215 pounds and I can’t blame it all on two weeks of buttered lobster and scallop rolls. And since it’s nobody’s fault but mine, I realized I needed to fully commit to hitting the gym, doing some real work, and eating healthier. Which I’ve done, at least for the past five weeks, and that's gotten me back down to 195 pounds -- not exactly svelte, but certainly a very noticeable difference in a short period of time. I have a ways to go before I’m where I want to be, but I feel more like I’m going to get there than I have in the past couple of years.

Focusing on my book: I don’t want say too much about it yet, other than it’s coming very soon. I had mentioned through Facebook or Twitter or something a few months ago that I was thinking about self-publishing a collection of my columns from over the course of Metro Weekly’s first 15 years of publication, and I got a surprising amount of positive response to the idea. I’ll have a lot more information on when, where and how on the book soon.

Reading other people’s books: As always, my reading pile is daunting and likely insurmountable, but I’ve been in a particularly good groove on novels lately -- credit, again, to free time in P’town. I’ve resisted the siren call of re-reading Infinite Jest once again, and finished off some of the science fiction I’ve had waiting for me. One hearty and enthusiastic recommendation from me to you: go read Iain M. Banks. Consider Phlebas is actually a couple decades old but recently reissued in a very nice trade paperback; I wish I’d read it when it debuted, because it flat out blew me away. This morning I finished his more recent Matter, which had the same effect on me, but more so. I’m not going to try to summarize them beyond saying that they’re extremely literary, densely complex and hugely entertaining.

That’s enough reason to go go, buy buy, isn’t it?

Refocusing by disconnecting: Not only have I been remiss in blogging, I’ve radically curtailed my Facebook and Twitter updates, as well as taking an unannounced hiatus from Bilerico D.C. None of this was particularly planned out in advance, but the more I realized my attention span was being destroyed by a million small, constant tweets and beeps, the more I realized I needed some time away from it. Perhaps in the future I can see these things coming earlier and actually plan for them or something, but that wasn’t the case this time and I just tuned out. And while it’s cost me some blog traffic and friend requests and followers and so on, I’m glad I did. Now let’s see if I can get tuned back in....

That’s it, no more? Of course there’s more: family events, lots of tennis, video games to catch up on (another recommendation: go play Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, it’s a blast), recipes to try, and, oh, yeah, a husband who takes priority. In short, I really don’t have anything to complain about.

For the moment.

Can I have a bite of yours?

While I enjoy heading out to new restaurants on occasion and trying new things, my luck with menu sampling tends to run toward the iffy. Saturday night we decided to have a late dinner with some friends at Chef Geoff's, a restaurant I've heard a lot about but I'd never been to. The chilled watermelon soup caught my eye, largely because I've been making a lot of watermelon salsa lately, so the savory aspects of the fruit appealed to me.

Unfortunately, what I got was pretty much an underseasoned bowl of watermelon juice with a smattering of julienned peppers. Disappointing. Meanwhile, Cavin was feasting on his appetizer of mini crabcakes with a mango salsa, which was delicious.

My main course, a seafood paella, was pedestrian with undercooked rice -- everyone else's main courses, ranging from tuna to pork tenderloin, were succulently fabulous.

Seriously, this happens to me all the time. I suppose I need to revert to childhood and just let someone else order for me so I can spend more time enjoying my own meals and less time eating off the plates of others.

I'm a martini superdelegate!

Yes, it's only Monday morning, but you're already thinking about what you want to do tonight, right? God knows I usually am. But in this case I have something pretty cool lined up -- I'm a judge for tonight's "Best Martini in D.C. Contest" at Beacon Bar & Grill (17th St. and Rhode Island Ave., NW), alongside luminaries such as our own D.C. Council Member David Catania. I hope he doesn't threaten to drink me under the table, or else I'll have to pwn his ass.

Just joking David! I promise I'll let you win!

So, when you get off work from downtown, sneak out early from the Human Rights Campaign office, skip your trip to the gym or drive in from the 'burbs, come out to Beacon and help us choose the best -- your vote is guaranteed to count more here than in the Democratic primary.

UPDATE: I suppose it helps to mention what time, just in case you don't click through the link -- it's from 6 to 8 p.m. See y'all there.

Be careful what you put in your mouth

I have watched my dinner die.

To grow up in farm country is to have a better understanding of the connection between the meat on your plate and the animal you see grazing in the field outside the dining room window. While my parents weren't farmers, my grandparents and aunts and uncles were, and our rural Kentucky home was surround by fields: an uncle's field across the road, my grandfather's pasture along the creek, a second cousin's rows of corn out back. We all had gardens, from which we all traded fresh vegetables -- and, yes, home-grown tomatoes are superior to the generic ones you find stocked in your grocery's produce section.

I never saw a cow slaughtered -- though I did have a small hand once in helping convert a bull to a steer by slicing off his testicles -- but I understood the cow-to-hamburger process. Chickens, though, were a food source I understood even better. Granny had a chicken coop behind the house, where I would sometimes go with her in the mornings to collect the big brown eggs from the nests. And I watched from the kitchen window as Granny took a hatchet to a chicken's neck and the headless bird briefly ran around the yard in a bloody slapstick routine.

It really is the kind of chore where you want to be sure the dogs are put up before you start.

For Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, this up-close experience of the food chain should make me -- potentially, at least -- a better, more careful eater.

A little bit of Buggery for you

If you've been around here for a while, you probably already know that I buy more books than I'll probably ever be able to read. They're just so pretty and shiny and they feel so good when you pick them up and they smell really nice. They also, you know, contain some information you can absorb if you open them up. This week's Buggery column at Metro Weekly tries to explain my passion for the printed page and, as a bonus, make up a new word,"arboranity." I have a  feeling it won't be the new word of 2008.

I've also got a new Gears up on the 2008 Mini Cooper S. In short, there's a lot to love about the Mini, and the new enhancements, mostly stylistic, don't do anything to change that. The new Mini Clubman -- a larger version of the car that should address some of the Cooper's problems with storage area and back seat passengers (it doesn't have any and it doesn't hold any) -- is out soon and I'm awaiting my chance at the wheel. Given the interest in the car, though, I don't expect to get a crack at it until mid-summer at the earliest.

Because I've been sort of slacking on the one hand and obsessing about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the other, I totally forgot to highlight a couple other recent pieces. First, I have a quick overview of my video game obsession, Rock Band -- although I'm not playing it around the clock at the moment, as I'm in the midst of working my way through Lost Odyssey and leveling up some characters in World of Warcraft -- more on those later. Second, I had my first Food article for Domestic Partner, with suggestions for putting together an easy but impressive Valentine's Day dinner.

I do like to keep my interests broad.

That's enough about you. What about me?

Even despite my New Year's (not exactly a resolution, but more a limited commitment) pledge to update the Buggblog on a more regular basis, things have been pretty light around here as of late. The simplest excuse is one that makes sense for a newly self-employed, libertarianish kind of guy like myself: Work that generates money takes precedence over work that generates diddly-squat.

Unless I need to do some serious procrastinating, in which case all bets are off.

I've also been dealing with a few trips the dentist, culminating this week in a two-word procedure -- first word describes a vegetable that grows underground, second word is often preceded by "Suez" or "Panama" -- that was kind of horrifying while it was going on, but wasn't nearly as bad afterward as I'd feared. The fact that I find my new dentist really cute didn't actually help much while I was struggling to control my gag reflex with a Michelin-sized rubber bite block in my mouth. I wish I could say the whole ordeal was over, but other procedures loom on the horizon.

Kiddies, take my word for it: Don't smoke. I stopped years ago, and the person who was working on some of my teeth asked me, "Do you smoke?" If I could just go back and slap some sense into my teenage self -- but then I'd probably offer my older self a Marlboro Light and a Bud and fire up some Zeppelin and I'd totally forget what I came there for in the first place.

Work has been shaping up interestingly for 2008. I have my first wedding client as part of Ascribe Catering, which is awesome and nerve-wracking and exciting. It's a gay wedding/ceremony/reception on a boat taking a three-hour tour -- I'll pause here while you sing the song to yourself -- so I'll say it'll be an interesting challenge. I've got some non-Ascribe irons in some fires as well that I won't know about until later, but if they come through it'll be cool. If not, well, I'll find some other fire to be sticking my iron in.

Obviously, I've been posting some stuff as more primary elections roll by, and I'm pretty psyched by the way things are turning out at this point. I'll save some of my thoughts for later, but in general, I'm very hopeful that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. While I appreciate facts like John McCain's opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, I pretty much don't trust anything come off the "Straight Talk Express." Funny how once you pass 65 or so, being ill-tempered, cranky and crotchety stops being a character flaw and starts being charming.

Enough for now. I've got some lunch that needs eatin'.

It's so nice, you can eat it twice

The FDA has decided eating cloned foods is a-okay. No word if they considered whether, in the future, one repeatedly cloned cow would eventually become aware of the existential crisis of being eaten again and again and again and again and again. Not that it'll stop me from eating them.

Interesting compare and contrast: the Post article on cloning approval with Stephen Pinker's much discussed New York Times piece on the components of human morality. Certainly seems like the innate concern for "purity" is driving the no-clone people. Well, that and the trade protectionists.

Where, oh where, is my gingerbread man?

Having undergone a career change from an editor-in-chief to a caterer/editor/automotive-writer/jack-of-all-trades, my daily list of to do's has also changed. For the past few days I've been on a search for a gingerbread man cookie cutter so I can make some Sweet Transvestite cookies. Hey, it's that time of year.

You'd think a classic gingerbread man cookie cutter would be one of the easiest things to find in Northern Virginia's vast array of gourmet cooking outlets, department stores and craft centers. You'd be wrong. I found angels out the wazoo, plus Texas, dinosaurs, a rhinoceros and a ballet dancer. But no gingerbread man with his happy little head and stunted little legs, despite trips to every store within driving distance. I found one on the Web -- in order to get it delivered to my house by the time I needed it, it would cost $45 for shipping a $3 piece of shaped tin.

Crap, for $20 more in gas I could drive to my sister's house in Kentucky and borrow hers.

Last night, however, Cookie Monster smiled upon me during a repeat trip to Sur la Table where, under a pile of holiday knick-knacks, a gingerbread man lurked. Filled with joy, I can now move forward in determining just how high his fishnet stockings should be.