Let Me Eat Cake

For almost a year, Barry and I have been eating a low-fat, low-salt, low-sugar diet.  By now we’re so used to the taste of healthier food that on the rare occasions we eat something really fatty or sweet it tastes disgusting.  And yet – today I’m sitting here jonesing for a piece of cake.

I’ve never really had a sweet tooth.  I do sometimes crave chocolate, but I prefer the dark, bittersweet varieties.  Today, though, I want cake.  A big wedge of sweet white cake thickly plastered with white buttercream frosting, topped with shell piping and a few pink sugar roses.

I blame Cake Wrecks.

For the past few days I’ve been browsing their archives in my spare time, and even though many of the cakes they feature look totally inedible, the urge to slice one up and devour it by myself has been growing by leaps and bounds.  I’m not quite ready to sell my soul to satisfy the craving, but I’d be willing to crash a wedding or mug a birthday child.

The grocery stores near my home sell individual cupcakes, but they use so much food coloring in their frosting that it leaves the eater’s tongue, teeth, lips and fingers bright orange (or teal or shocking pink) for two or three days - the dieter’s version of the Scarlet Letter. 

Today, though, I’m at an office in an industrial park on the other side of the valley.  I don’t know of any supermarkets in the area, but with the help of my trusty computer (really, I’m sorry I dissed you yesterday, I don’t know what came over me) I’m sure I can find one.  I’m hoping they’ll have at least one plain white cupcake with simple white frosting.

What do you suppose I should eat afterward so I don’t go home with sugar on my breath?

"I don't exactly know what it means to be ready. A cake when the oven timer goes off? Am I fully baked, or only half-baked?" - Jessica Savitch

Does HP Stand for "Hardly Performing" or "Highly Problematic?"

I bought my first computer almost 20 years ago.  It was slower and had less memory than my current cell phone.  Taking a screen shot and pasting it into a document crashed the system.  My current laptop is so much faster and more powerful that I should be ashamed to complain about it – but I’m going to anyway.

My first laptop was a Dell.  By the time the Dell was three and a half years old its hard drive was completely full.  I axed all optional software and stored every possible data file on an external hard drive, but big graphics still froze everything.  In retrospect, I should just have bought a bigger hard drive and some memory, but no.  I was a web and graphics professional.  I needed MORE!  This time I bought an HP, partly because I’ve always had good luck with their printers, but mainly because it was cheap.

Note the word “cheap.”  Originally I would have said “more affordable,” but “cheap” is the correct terminology.

Less than a month after its one-year warranty expired, the laptop started acting up.  The graphics card overheats and the system shuts down to protect itself.  To fix this I would have to ship the laptop to HP to have the entire motherboard replaced.  As a stopgap I purchased a cooling pad to use any time I’m going to be on the computer for more than an hour.

Now the battery has failed (the one on the Dell lasted five years) and the screen mysteriously cracked while the laptop was sitting quietly in its case in my office.  The built-in wireless receiver also constantly drops network connections, even when the router is less than 6 feet away.  This is not acceptable performance for a computer less than two years old.

I really can’t afford a new computer with the power I need, but the shipping and repair costs for this one would probably rival the cost of a new machine.  I can’t cadge a loan from Barry because he blew his budget for the year on the monster TV.  I can limp along with the HP for a little while longer, but I have to replace it before it dies completely; after all, without a good computer I can’t do either of my jobs, and I do enjoy regular meals.  I just need to decide whether Dell or Sony will have the honor of melting down my credit card.

"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."  ~Joseph Campbell

 

Not Really "Fall"

One of my grade school teachers told us that autumn is called "fall" because that's when the leaves fall from the trees. Later on, when Daylight Savings Time was instituted, so was the saying that our clocks should spring forward in the spring and fall back in the fall.

Now I live in the Phoenix area where the leaves stay on the trees year-round and we don't have Daylight Savings Time (we have so much sunshine that we don't need to save it). Despite the date on the calendar, this doesn't really seem like "fall" to me.

Signs of Autumn

	Up North	Arizona
Clothing	Unpack hats, coats, gloves, boots, heavy sweaters, corduroy pants, thermal underwear	Unpack a sweater, just in case
Car	Add antifreeze; put blanket, shovel, bag of sand and emergency kit in trunk	Pack a book for snowbird-induced gridlock on the highway
House	Turn on furnace	Turn off air conditioning
Pool	Drain and cover	Test heater
Yard	Rake leaves	Rake rocks
Halloween	Choose costume for warmth	Choose costume for ventilation

Ah, well, one thing remains constant - I'm going to buy twice as much chocolate as I actually need for trick-or-treaters, just to be sure we have leftovers.

"No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring."  - Samuel Johnson

Ourselves Under Pressure

I mentioned in one of my early posts that I started blogging to bleed off a backlog of frustration and sarcasm before my head exploded.  The good news: It seems to be working; I feel much better, thank you very much.  The bad news: Relieving this built-up pressure has apparently also impaired my sense of humor.

This is reasonable, if you think about it for a moment.  When life sucks because I've lost my wallet and found an extra 10 pounds, satire is easy.  When everything is flowing smoothly, I start thinking happy thoughts about cream-colored ponies frolicking under a rainbow in clover-scented meadows, and what's funny about that?  For those among you who do think ponies are funny, here are some additional examples:

Bad Times - FUNNY	Good Times - NOT AS FUNNY
Losing 13 right-handed mittens and one left-handed glove during a single winter	Moving to Arizona so I’ll never need mittens or gloves again
Accidentally washing one of the red napkins in the white load, permanently tinting the best tablecloth and all the underwear bright pink	Investing in paper napkins and plastic tablecloths which never need to be laundered
Forgetting baked beans in the pressure cooker until it blows, leaving the kitchen looking like a victim of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre	Buying Bush’s beans and a can-opener
Breaking out in head-to-toe hives at a professional conference after receiving a penicillin shot	Having the last word with the doctor who said, “It probably won’t kill you.”
Nightmares of being chased through the streets of post-apocalypse Manhattan by giant moaning credit cards	Dreams in which the noise of Barry’s CPAP machine becomes the roar of the Caribbean pounding a white sand beach

I guess I'll just have to wait for disaster to strike again; based on past experience, I shouldn't have to wait very long.


I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five. ~ Stephen Wright

Update: Back in the Soup

Although I haven't posted anything about it since I talked about making nabe, my giant box of Japanese soup stock and I have not been idle. I've been experimenting with variations on our old favorite, miso soup.

As part of our commitment to eating better, Barry and I usually start dinner with a large green salad or a bowl of low-calorie soup.  This helps fill us up so we're less likely to pig out on the more calorie-dense main course.  Low-sodium miso soup is one of our regular choices, but until our trip to Lee-Lee Asian Market, we were stuck with the instant version.

The dehydrated miso soup in our local supermarkets contains miniscule pieces of dried tofu, green onion, and seaweed.  According to Naomi Moriyama, though, miso soup really only must contain dashi (the bonito-flavored soup stock) and miso; beyond that, the cook can be as inventive as he or she wishes.  Here are some of the things I've been combining, a few at a time:

• Wakame or nori (dried seaweed) - unfurling from little dried shreds to big green squares
• Diced tofu, regular or fried
• Mushrooms (shitake, enoki, or crimini)
• Daikon (Japanese radish, sweeter than regular radishes) or sliced red radishes
• Bonito flakes (as a garnish)
• Green onions
• Fresh spinach

Normally Barry will taste whatever soup I give him and pronounce, "This is good."  Since I've started serving my miso experiments, he's been repeating "This is really good" several times during the soup course. I think I'm on the right track.

Now, would it be heresy to serve Naomi's Japanese Country Power Breakfast soup for dinner?

"Beautiful Soup!  Who cares for fish,
 Game or any other dish?
 Who would not give all else for two p
 ennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
 Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
      Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
      Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!

 Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
 Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!"

-Lewis Carroll, second verse of the Mock-Turtle's song from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland