Insecurities

Being an only child infused me with what some might think as an undeservedly high self-esteem. I'm the first to admit it. I rarely think twice about what people think about me because I've brain-washed myself into thinking that my way is always right. Has its pros and cons.
One area I am not entirely secure in, is food. I can always do better and I can always do more. However, my insecurities are never so strongly manifested as when I have to custom order something (like a sandwich or a pizza). This is a little bit of a Catch-22 as I only custom order things because I feel like whatever I can put together is much better than what I'm being offered. Yet, when I order it, I always worry about what the person putting together my order will deduce from my sandwich/pizza, thus my personality. See? Pros and cons.
It's always the same flurry of emotions. Like a food grieving process.
1. Disgust. "Bleh, no pre-thought sandwich here looks flavorful enough."
2. Doubt. "Will MY sandwich be any better? After all these are professionals."
3. Determination. "Yes, yes it will."
4. Indecision. "Can the roof of my mouth handle a crusty bread, say... baguette?"
5. Acceptance. "Hmm... that's going to be good."

I went through such a process recently at Whole Foods. The whole time I saw the lady making my sandwich I worried about what she could see of my personality. "Red onions...must be impatient. Tapenade... must be adventurous. Sprouts... must be a yuppy. Provolone...must be insecure."
The wait was excruciating.

In the end, I survived another sandwich order. The person who made my sandwich looked at me like I was normal and there would be no need for security. Here's what I ended up with.


It was: baguette, black olive tapenade, roast beef, provolone, sprouts, red onion, tomato, lettuce and cucumber. It was SSOOO... good.

COLDPLAY

I'm not going to brag, but I am.

On Tuesday November 25, 2008 Brandon and I had the great honor to see my favorite living band in concert and it ROCKED. Disclaimer: These are mostly from my phone, so sorry about the quality.


Pre-show were were really hungry but also stoked. We left way early and got there way early which was fine with me. We ate at Pedro's in San Clemente.


The color explosion during Violet Hill. It was awesome! I had a hard time sitting down the whole time.


Guitarist Johnny Buckland rocking out during Fix You. They were so sharp the whole time, it was like listening to their record but better. AND they reworked a lot of their older songs to sound even better. Just more grown up. Also I've never been at concert where audience participation has been so much fun. After Viva la Vida, the audience kept singing the chorus and eventually Chris Martin had to cut us off.


This is Death Will Never Conquer, a free download not on their CD. Will Champion (the drummer) sang it. Sorry about my voice. I sang and screamed so much that I was hoarse the next day.

Tag

Mel is right, talking about yourself is fun. I’d be a great talk-show guest.

8 Things

8 shows I enjoy watching:
1) Chuck
2) 30 Rock
3) Arrested Development
4) The Office
5) The Simpsons
6) That 70’s Show
7) Ugly Betty
8) Antiques Roadshow

8 things that happened yesterday:
1) I made butter
2) Went to Yoga night at Heidi’s
3) Took a shower
4) Cleaned the kitchen (post-butter)
5) Made a dent in Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.
6) Took Maggie to the groomers – that was a little bit of a fiasco
7) Ate at Chipotle
8) Christmas shopped a little

8 things I'm looking forward to:
1) COLDPLAY!!!
2) Half Blood Prince movie.
3) Dinner.
4) This weekend.
5) Thanksgiving.
6) A decision from Brandon.
7) Our next vacation alone.
8) 5 pm.

8 things I love about fall:
1) Stuffing.
2) Wearing jeans and cozy sweaters.
3) The Holidays.
4) Not worrying that Maggie is too hot.
5) Chocolate chip pumpkin cookies.
6) Winter squash ravioli
7) All the time off.
8) Seeing family.

8 things on my wish/dream/goal list:
1) To draw properly.
2) Make a tomato soufflé.
3) Make Hokey-Pokey for those I’m too cheap to buy presents for.
4) Have kids.
5) Teach Brandon Spanish
6) Be conversational in French
7) Make a millefouille
8) Travel up and down the California coast to write our coffee table book.

8 people I'm tagging:
1) Jose
2) Annie
3) Kelly
4) Kimmie
5) Sarah
6) Mirella
7) Tiffany
8) I’m tired of this…

Please go here

This blog made my day (sorry, I haven't figured out how to hyperlink): http://wongazai.blogspot.com/

Especially as a lover of all things with fur.

Sigh...

I love Daniel Craig. Not just because he's Bond, but because he can do stuff like this an pull it off. I just about peed my pants at his sad faces.

War of the Milks

Things at the Jacobsen house have been tense - to say the least.

Let’s start at the beginning: I’ve always been lactose-weary so milk and I have been distant acquaintances. Recently however, milk and I had a reconnection and we’d been getting along quite nicely, or so I thought, until milk stabbed me in the back. Oh, you read right, it stabbed me in the back. And after I bought organic! The pain from milk was just too much. I was suffering for free. Actually no, I was paying like 10 bucks for a gallon and a half to suffer. Finally I said, “Enough is enough, this relationship is destructive and I can’t live this way anymore.” So I cut ties with milk. Now soymilk and I have had a healthy relationship ever since.

That is until Brandon wedged his selfish foot in our clearly shut-don’t-come-aknockin’-if-the-fridge-door-is-arockin’-door. He too has fallen for soymilk. He’s unabashedly playing the milk field. He’s a milk playa’, and yes, I’m a milk playa’ hater. If he wanted soymilk, I could have bought him his own soymilk, but instead he just steals from me. I don’t think he gets that drinking milk for me is physically painful, but it’s not as physically painful as it is to go to Costco to pick up some more. He has perfectly yummy regular organic milk. I don't know why he can't just drink that.

Anyway, this blew up a couple nights ago when Brandon went so far as to offer my milk to guests. My precious, expensive, soymilk. He didn't offer them the regular milk, of which we have a ton, just the soy. Witness the audacity:
Scene: The G's had come over for the dinner on Sunday night and we were all sitting down to a perfectly civilized meal when I noticed, as I was sitting down, my carton of soymilk sitting on the table.
N: What. Is. This?
B: What? I just put stuff out for people to drink.
N: This is MY soymilk.
B: Nat, relax, we have more.
N: Why didn't you put out regular milk for people to drink? Everyone else can drink regular milk, I'm the only one that HAS to drink soy. And it's expensive!
B: Nat, relax, it's OUR milk.
R: It's true, his money too.
J: Shut up.
N: I WILL NOT RELAX! You relax! You relax when I offer something that you bought specially for yourself! You relax when your have to live with a stomach ache!
B: Nat, calm down.
This is the part where I snatch up the carton of soymilk and hug it to my body. Then I walk over to the fridge door and safely shut my soymilk in there.
N: I will calm down when you stop being such an ass! Just pray so we can eat.
B: Nat..
N: PRAY!

Ok, I may have overreacted (and if the G's weren't such good friends, I wouldn't have exploded the way I did) but I hope you can see my point. That soymilk is my only source of calcium-enriched goodness. Without it, I can't eat cereal, oatmeal, or have shakes. As I told Brandon, "When you go to Costco and Henry's to get all we need for groceries and then lug them up the apartment without help, then you can drink my milk. I'm not asking for sympathy, I'm just asking for justice."

Healthy Eating part 3 – Playing with your fat.

VS



I love fat. I love fat more than candy, ask Brandon, I’ll take a fry any day over any sort of sugary sweet. I’ll take more chips before I head (if ever) for cake. I’m that person that eats the skin off the chicken and whose favorite part of said fowl is the drumstick because of all its juicy, fatty goodness. That’s exactly why donuts are the perfect snack, because even though sugar seldom tempts me, deep fried sugar always lures me in.

That being said, I recognize that I can’t eat like that everyday if I ever want to make it to 30. So that’s why I cook mostly from scratch, because I control exactly what’s going into what I eat AND (this is the important one), it gives me room to experiment – especially with fats. I don’t like to brag, but I’ve made it a point of studying cooking fats because I like to eat them so much.

The nice thing about fats is that not all are bad for you – if you know how to use them.
Let’s look at a few fats:

Omega 3 and Omega 6 – The holy grails. We all know that these are good for us. What some of us may not know is where to get them. And even scarier, some of us may not know that these two essential fatty acids don’t always get along. Allow me to explain.

They’re called “essential” because we need them, but can’t produce them ourselves, thus we have to get them through foods. They can be found in oily fish, mono and polyunsaturated oils, and anything flax or egg. The thing is that we need a lot more Omega 3 than 6 but Omega 6 is easier to get AND it tends to suppress Omega 3 (a battle for the ages). So we need to learn how to balance our good fats so they actually are good for us and not in vain. So stay away from these oils: palm, soybean, rapeseed and sunflower. And instead use: canola and olive oil. There are more, but those two are the easiest to find and they’ll suit all your needs.

Butter, Lard, Margarine – I think that a good rule of thumb is that if the fat is solid at room temperature, please use sparingly. I personally am a butter fan because I feel good about understanding all the ingredients on the label which are: cream, salt. Plain and simple. Margarine may be made out of mono or polyunsaturated oils, but once they are hydrogenated they get scary and trans-fatty and saturated – so make up your own mind on that. And lard is… as bad as it can get, so only use that on special occasions or if you want to stealthily kill your dinner guests.

To Hate or not to Hate?

Aye, there's the rub.

I've been recently thinking a lot about the word hate. I think we throw it around too casually and it really can be hurtful, so I'm trying not to use it. Instead I will use dislike.

I dislike myself for going to the below-pictured's website because I dislike her so profoundly. But what I dislike the most is that she had good ideas on that said website. Nay, what I dislike the most is that I took an idea and used in real life. I dislike myself.

Argh!! She drives me nuts. She's probably the worst interviewer I have ever seen only due to the fact that she has to cut off her guest because she already knows how to do whatever it is they're explaining. And! She's got tips on how to make it easier. Dislike is bubbling in me just thinking about it.

Anyway I had to bring a spooky dessert to work for our Halloween Party and I couldn't think of anything because I'm not a great dessert maker. So I gave in and went to the afore-pictured's website because I knew she would have ideas. And she did so I made these cuz they seemed simple. I bought mix to make the cupcakes, and I bought pre-made frosting, both strawberry. I didn't even dare taste the frosting because I can't think of anything looking less appetizing. Bleh.

They're supposed to be little brains. I was told by my coworkers that they were good. I dislike that I've been defeated.

Silver lining = funny story. The only good thing that came out of this was something I thought was a funny comparison.

Having been my first attempt at making and decorating cupcakes, I had no idea how to transport them. So I kind of finagled them all on a plate and took them to work uncovered, hoping I wouldn't get rear-ended again (remind me I'll have to blog about the car accident). Anyway, this is for those devoted Arrested fans. Remember when Tobias wanted to become a Blue Man so he wore the Blue Man paint all the time? And remember how the house suffered because there were vestiges of a blue Tobias all over the place. That's kind of what happened except substitute house for new car and blue paint with pink frosting. There was proof of my ineptitude at transporting cupcakes all over the place. Needless to say Brandon, the neat-car freak, was not excited. He disliked it.

The Only Solace

The world is insane right now. The only thing that makes sense any more is food. The only thing that ever made sense was food. Why did I stray? Why, oh, why?

In any case, I'm back to my comfort zone. My salty, crunchy, perfectly browned comfort zone. Truth be told, I've been reading a lot of food literature (alright fine, that's pretty much all I read), so I've been inspired. But before we get to the food, I think this blog has been a little devoid of personal photos. So - to the shenanigans!!!

Not too long ago we went to Utah for two friends wedding (not getting marred to each other).

We went four-wheeling at Snowbird. Notice what I'm wearing, this was a total, whim thing, which is not uncommon for us, but it was windy and cold and as a bonus, rainy.


Then we got stuck on the backside of the mountain in the storm in a tiny shack. This was us leaving the shack to flee to safety (there was lighting). And because we were fleeing we got to drive really fast.


I fed a cute horse on the way.


Then we came back only to be love-mauled by dogs.


Then we carved a pumpkin. It's supposed to be a guy looking in a mirror, freaking out because he sees a skull. We won the contest by the way.


Here's me in Joselyn's outfit that I borrowed for Halloween. I would post a picture of Brandon but he went as a surf bum. And let's face it, that's not a stretch. At all.

While we're at it....

Since we're polliticking, I also have strong feelings towards Prop 2.



I just can't fathom the mistreatment on innocent, defenseless animals. I don't care about price. I don't care that some farmers might be put out of business (by the way they have 7 years to comply) because there is no excuse for such inhumane treatment of animals. And I'm not so worried about safety because the new law isn't going to force all animals outside, they are just going to have more humane living conditions.

Ok that's it. Let's just get this election over. Please!!!