I Like Food

I know I'm alone on this one, but I really like food. Ha! My weakness is for sweets, but I like food in general. Oh, I don't like every food, I'm famous (okay, that's overstating it) for my dislike of olives, cucumbers and feta cheese. But in general, I enjoy the sensation of eating and the feelings of warmth and comfort that food provides. I like trying different things and I hate food ruts. Some folks, especially in dieting mode, find success in repeating the same meals over and over, and it really works for them. They put together the same exact lunch or dinner five to seven days a week and find that it's easier to not have to give it more thought than that. I totally understand this on a visceral level, but I get bored easily and would sit in front of my third turkey sandwich and baby carrots lunch in a row and I would be suicidal. I thrive on variety.

Fortunately, I date a fishmonger. I'm telling you, ladies, if you like food, you should find yourself a cute fishmonger. Fish and seafood are notoriously high in protein (fills you up!) and low in fat and calories (slims you down!). There are a million different kinds to eat, so if you don't care for one fish, there's another one waiting to please you. One night this week I decided I wanted sushi, but I certainly didn't want all the work that is involved in making sushi - with its nori wrapping and rice and all. So I settled for an even healthier option - sashimi, just plain old raw fish. I stopped in at Coastal Seafoods and asked Doug to throw together a few samples of whatever was best that day, and I came home with raw redfish, marlin, and scallops that I dipped in a simple mixture of soy sauce and wasabi. Couldn't be faster or easier, or healthier on all levels. Last night my fishmonger Doug offered to make us some dinner and, of course, I got a little nervous because I'm in diet mode and everyone has a different idea of what that means. But I needn't have fretted because Doug put together an amazing and light soup of shrimp, sausage and poached duck egg with fresh herbs that was delicious. He made the broth himself and skimmed every bit of fat he could out of it in deference to my goals. The broth was light and flavorful and while I have a long standing aversion to soup (it acts like it's a meal but it's really just a beverage), this sort of experiment went a long way in changing my mind.

So my challenge for this weekend, food-wise, is that it's a super fun girl's weekend. I love hanging out with groups of my funny and smart women friends for the weekend, but I don't always make the best food decisions! I thought long and hard about what to bring because I don't expect anyone else to provide for me just because I'm trying to drop pounds, nobody else is responsible for my decisions. At first I thought I'd bring a veggie tray with a light dip of some sort, but then I remembered that I love a local fishmonger and should take advantage of that! Plus I like the idea of getting in some protein to fill me up. So Doug picked me up a couple of pounds of unpeeled shrimp and cooked them up simply with some peppercorns and bay leaves. I also got some homemade cocktail sauce from Coastal to serve with the shrimp. Yum. And I'm whipping up an Asian slaw. I love raw cabbage and how it holds its shape with dressing on it for a long time, unlike conventional lettuce that droops after one minute. I've never made this particular Asian dressing, but what can go wrong with tofu, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, honey, lime, and other delicious ingredients? So no matter what other foods are at the table today, I feel confident that I'll have great go-to food that I can enjoy, and so can my friends. Win - win!

Exercise Is Hard. To Fit In.

My gung-ho exercise attitude waned a little from yesterday. What can you expect? It's been two days! Nobody can expect to be healthy for two whole days in a row! Ha, I kid. But yesterday's bike ride to and from work plus a walk at lunch didn't repeat itself today. I felt dizzy all afternoon today and when I got home I planned to hit the sidewalk but all I could do was take a pain reliever and fall asleep for an hour. I woke up at 7pm, frantic, wondering how I could fit in some exercise and get my errands done, too. So I decided to walk to the grocery store and pick up needed items for my upcoming girl's weekend in a land far, far away called "Shakopee." While not a long walk to the grocery store - it's about ten minutes one way at a brisk pace - it was far better than the alternative, finishing out the evening on the couch never having moved. And it was muggy out, so I did sweat like Olivia Newton-John in her Physical video. Felt like I really did something as a result.

I texted Aaron yesterday and told him I was pretty sure I was winning the contest already. He replied that he had already lost 40 pounds by lopping off his right arm. This competition is on!

It Starts.

It came to my attention recently, when I looked in the mirror, that I'd let a few pounds ("a few" being a relative concept here) creep on in recent years. Maybe it's been more than just a few years, I'm not sure. Well, I'm kind of sure, but not really. That's because it's just easier to not think about it, to not notice it, to not look in the mirror. But maybe doing the easier thing is what got me here in the first place, and maybe it's time to work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not full of self-loathing. Fortunately I'm bright enough to know that my weight is not me. There's more to me - to everybody - than that. But like anyone else, or almost everyone else in America these days, I endure mornings when nothing fits right and everything feels wrong. I struggle when looking for special occasion outfits, though that might more have to do with my need for comfort than my feelings of self-worth, jury's out on that one. I purchase my clothes in what I call "uniforms," groups of the same clothes in different colors (but not entirely different colors because I like the dark colors better, or maybe I think they like me better. Again, jury's out on that one).

So what's a girl to do once she's acknowledged the obvious and decided it's really time to do something about it? That's right, she challenges her friend to a weight loss challenge. Aaron and me, a scale, a spreadsheet, and a gentleman's handshake agreeing that the biggest loser by percentage on Valentine's Day wins $200 from the other, who will also hopefully be a big loser. I went to Aaron's house last night where we officially weighed in and groaned at the number on the scale. But you can choose to let it get you down or you can change it. I'm choosing to change it.

Gear Daddies in Duluth

I've been listening to the Gear Daddies for over twenty years now and still they enchant during every live show. Last night was the quintessential summer evening of music and outdoors and water and beer on the shores of Lake Superior at the Duluth Music & Maritime Festival and Marty Zellar and the boys didn't disappoint. I'm pretty sure Doug got tired of me announcing at the start of each tune that "This is my favorite song!" but he played it cool. Time hasn't hurt the Gear Daddies, and I hope there are many more years of concerts to come.

Spinning

I love the pure joy of little girls, from all corners of the world, rejoicing in the raucous spin of a hula hoop at a local carnival.

A Summer Dusting

I love this shot of Doug sprinkling Creole seasoning on the first pile of crawdads, corn, potatoes, garlic, and Andouille sausage that came out of the enormous pot at yesterday's annual crawfish boil party. It makes me feel all kinds of summer-y.

Around the World in a Champagne Flute

A long time ago, maybe fifteen years or more, I happened to catch an episode of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days. The Monty Python alum had matured into a world traveler, visiting ports far and wide and reporting on them for his television show. In the episode I watched, Michael almost literally washed up on the shores of Hong Kong after an arduous journey by ship on the South China Sea. I didn't know much about Hong Kong at the time, just that it was an exotic, modern city of skyscrapers that either was or wasn't part of China. I'm much clearer on that whole topic now.

In the episode, Michael was picked up by car and whisked away to his friend Basil's apartment high in the sky. Basil was a cute Asian gentleman with nerdy glasses and a pretty wife carrying their newborn baby in her arms when they welcomed Michael in broad daylight to their home. Even though it was maybe lunch time, the first thing Basil offered Michael was a glass of champagne, which he happily accepted and they proceeded to enjoy the bottle on the balcony of the skyscraper apartment. I remember watching that and thinking it was about the most sophisticated thing I'd ever witnessed. I mean, who keeps a chilled bottle of bubbly on hand for visitors who happen to swing by? I was enchanted by the idea of a friend popping by to see me some afternoon and me suggesting we pop a bottle of champagne and sip the afternoon away. I vowed at that moment that I would always keep a chilled bottle of bubbly in my refrigerator, ready should a friend come by during broad daylight. I'd never seen that episode of Around the World in 80 Days again, but I'd thought of it often when I saw the bottle of bubbly keeping cool next to my butter and juice.

And now, more than fifteen years later, I still keep a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge, just in case. Of course, I've never had the opportunity to casually pop open a bottle because my friends aren't really the pop-in types and I'm usually at work during the day, but still I keep restocking a new bottle when I inevitably drink the other bottle myself because I don't want it to get too old.

Fast forward to Hong Kong, March 2011. The country is now back in the possession of China after a long stretch under British rule and, more importantly, I'm going to visit for the first time to see my dear friend Lisa and her husband, who moved there a couple of years ago for her job. After ten long, hot, beautiful but challenging days in northern India, my parents and I arrived in Hong Kong where a car picked us up at the airport and whisked us off to Lisa and Kwesi's apartment high in the sky. As we settled into the comfortable leather furniture on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, Kwesi offered to pop open a bottle of champagne. My head started spinning, I had certainly never shared the Michael Palin story with Lisa and Kwesi, yet here I was in Hong Kong, in broad daylight, high up in a skyscraper overlooking Victoria Harbor, drinking a flute of champagne with friends. It was like my life had come full circle and some unintentional self-fulfilling prophecy had come to fruition.

Fast forward again to Minneapolis, April 2011. Upon returning home I shared this story with my sweet boyfriend, Doug. I told him how magical it was to feel like I was walking in the shoes of Michael Palin, going around the world and serendipitously repeating a part of his journey that had meant so much to me. Just recently Doug and I were out for a walk and went past the wine and spirits store in my neighborhood. We ducked in to see what looked good and Doug purchased a really nice bottle of Moet & Chandon champagne, even though I protested that it cost too much. When we returned to my place, Doug placed the bottle of bubbly on the counter and next to it a new DVD copy of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days, so that I could watch the Hong Kong sequence once again after all this time and relive the magic that I had lived in real life just weeks before.

Feel free to stop by some afternoon, the champagne is on ice.

Quantum Leap

I get just a little bit too excited about winning stuff, even if it's just a can of pop or a balloon or something. So imagine how over the moon I was when tonight I found out I won a cool $60 scale!

I have a blog roll that I follow pretty regularly, all sorts of blogs about food, photography, travel, and anything else that tickles my fancy. From time to time certain bloggers have giveaways but I'm not usually interested in the products. This time, however, I was intrigued when Ex Hot Girl, a photographer and weight loss blogger, posted a giveaway of something called a Quantum Scale. So I left a comment on her blog, which doubled as a drawing entry, and when I visited Ex Hot Girl's blog tonight, I saw my face staring back at me with the announcement that my comment had been randomly chosen as the winner!

But I didn't win just any scale, it's the Quantum Scale and instead of registering your weight, it only registers the amount you've lost (or gained, gulp). When you step on it for the first time, it secretly records your weight and then every time you subsequently step on it, it lets you know how much your weight differs from your starting weight, without reminding you what that actual number was or is. So, in theory, you can just keep track of the amount you're losing without obsessing about your exact triple digits. I know it might just be a mind game, but I'm excited to give it a try - for free! Woo hoo!

What's Being Missed

Just over one and a half weeks into a month of eating vegan and people are asking quite often what foods I miss most. Honestly, I don't really miss too many foods, partly because it hasn't been that long and partly because I know I can have them again in a few weeks. But that said, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I might be missing chicken, at least a little bit. Everywhere I turn there's chicken. A new cooking show called the Spice Goddess introduced me to a dish of chicken and yogurt and spices that made me swoon just a little, and an article in a work publication today about the expansion of the delicious Portuguese chicken chain Nando's almost pushed me over the edge. Which got me to thinking about the wonderful Amish chicken I had at Cafe 128 the night before this month started (photo above). Oh, that chicken with blue cheese mashed potatoes was good. It's just a few more weeks, right?

The Weekend Vegan

My first vegan weekend wasn't as bad as I worried it would be. That's probably because I'm not a healthy vegan, but rather I take it as it comes. What I mean is that I don't mind supplementing my healthy, green vegan lifestyle with Puffcorn and vegan chocolate. Hey, life is short.

Friday night Doug and I spent a lovely evening walking to Chipotle for a little din-din. Chipotle has great vegan options, like their black beans, fajita vegetables, rice, salsas, and guacamole. A big salad was in order downed with an undrinkable, skunky Corona beer. Didn't finish that, to be honest. Then we walked to the movie theater in my neighborhood to see Cedar Rapids (funny and local!) and I enjoyed a nice bag of Sour Patch Kids (naturally and accidentally vegan!). Doug got popcorn but poisoned it with butter, or buttery topping. I'm not sure if my local theater does the real thing or not, but I don't like my popcorn with any sort of liquid topping. I'm a salty purist, so it wasn't tempting for me to cheat.

Saturday morning my parents arranged a breakfast out for the whole family, and to accommodate my vegan lifestyle, they chose the Triple Rock Social Club. Yes, the Triple Rock is known for Free Bacon Wednesdays, but they also have tons of vegan menu choices. I opted for a mush of potatoes, fake nacho cheese sauce, scrambled tofu, and toast with vegan butter. Oh, and two delightfully large vegan Screwdrivers. After that we ventured on to a couple of meat raffles. Yes, that's wrong for a vegan, but to be fair, I didn't win any meat. Doug did, and lots of it - ha! But I shan't eat it until next month. Dinner was a delicious Thai vegan curry feast from Sen Yai Sen Lek that I would love to try again because just a little while later it was all gone when I barfed my guts out against my will. Curses! A perfectly fantastic vegan meal - gone!

On Sunday I tried to eat a little, a vegan banana pancake from the Seward Cafe, but while it was absolutely delicious, my stomach wasn't ready for it. Instead I watched Doug down the vegan biscuits with mushroom gravy and vegetables. The color of the gravy, I won't lie, was a bit off-putting, a weird gray hue instead of the usual whitish with peppery flecks. Doug, who was being nice and ordered something vegan, said that it wasn't horrible. He said the gravy lacked a certain depth but he liked the hearty biscuits and the unusual inclusion of vegetables.

The rest of my first vegan weekend was uneventful because no kind of food was good. Barfing makes it much easier to eat vegan because you don't miss food of any kind. Lesson learned.

Please Don't Mock Me

Eating vegan for three days hasn't provided any insurmountable challenges, it's just that you have to think/talk/dissect food so much! "Is this vegan? Does it contain milk solids or egg whites or honey?" In a way, that's probably a good thing. It's easy to sleepwalk through your food life, eating whatever you want whenever you want - which isn't the healthiest way to go and something I'm very guilty of. Veganism has forced me to consider every bite. It's made easier by having backup options always available - Holy Land brand jalapeno hummus and vegan crackers, plantain chips, peanut butter, Ezekiel brand sprouted grain bread, and fruit are always available to fill the void with little thought. But vegan woman does not live by hummus alone. Sometimes one must branch out and try canned mock duck.

Canned mock duck, available at Asian grocery stores like United Noodles, sounds disgusting. Truth be told, it looks disgusting, too. The producers add that duck-like skin texture to the mock duck that is both intriguing and creepy at the same time. Doug has used canned mock duck in the past and though he warned that it can have a canned flavor, he volunteered to make us a mock duck lemongrass soup from a vegan website that I had found. He released the mock duck from its tin environment and marinated it in shallots and soy sauce and ginger and other delicious things and then finely julienned red peppers and onions and created a plate of toppings that included fresh mint and cilantro. Meanwhile, organic vegetable broth from an aseptic package simmered on the stove with fresh ingredients that Doug had added. At dinner time he put them all together with rice noodles and made a pretty nice bowl of soup. To be honest, the vegetable broth left something to be desired, now we know this particular brand wasn't anything to write home about. But the rest of the meal was quite delicious, including the mock duck. I was surprised, but I liked it. Doug separated the remaining mock duck from the soup when we were done and I think it will make a great salad with all the same fixings, just not the broth.

So, while I would love a big Buffalo chicken sandwich, the alternatives are not so bad. Canned mock duck - who knew?

I Guess Camel Meat Is Out

I work in a creative workplace where food ideas are constantly being bounced around and dissected and reworked, so I shouldn't be surprised when I open my big yapper and end up agreeing to eat vegan for a month!

Recently my coworkers and I were having an important (ha!) discussion about our favorite TV show, Top Chef. Our favorite chef on our favorite show, Richard Blais, had returned to the all-star edition looking much thinner than he did during his season of the show. There was an article about him in one of our work magazines and he explained that he kick-started his weight loss by eating vegan for one month in order to sort of detoxify his body and get back to the basics. Without much thought, I innocently volunteered that we should try that, but I don't think I really meant it at the time. However, Lizzie, ever the willing subject when it comes to food experiments, leapt at the idea and said "Let's do it!"

Still cautious about enlisting myself for this silliness, I suggested we really figure out what it means to eat vegan. Most importantly, could we still drink alcohol? Turns out we can, and so the decision to do it became that much easier! There are alcoholic beverages that are not vegan, but most are, so even if eating vegan sucks, we can drown our sorrows in booze to forget the pain. We tried to encourage our coworkers to join, but after a few false starts, only three of us are in. Chickens.

We agreed to start on Monday, March 28 so that I would have one week after returning from a whirlwind three week trip around the world (Amsterdam, India, Hong Kong and Borneo) to eat all my favorite meats and cheeses that I had dearly missed while traveling. We will continue through the end of April. Before agreeing I totally forgot that Easter falls in the month of April this year. No Easter ham, no deviled eggs, none of my mom's sweet bread, no seven layer salad, no buttery mashed potatoes. I could go on and on. As I am usually in charge of preparing some of the desserts, I have already researched one vegan dessert to make (lemon coconut bundt cake!) so that I can have something, and will have to make some side dishes as well! I will happily make non-vegan food, I just won't be able to eat it. Phooey.

I'll Be Back

Remember me? Me neither. It's been awhile, I've missed you. I wish I had a good explanation as to where I've been, but I would be lying. I'm just here now.

I'm not much for resolutions, which is the thing people say right before they announce their soon-to-be-failed resolutions, but I'm really going to try to get back into this blogging thing. Not sure why, as the digital world has already heralded the death of the blog. Guess blogs are too wordy, if we can't express ourselves in 140 characters or less, we don't have the patience. But I want to buck that trend, to keep my little wordy corner of the world alive regardless of what social media gurus have to say.

So while I don't have time to post a real entry right now, I am posting something - anything - to show that I mean it. I'm back. And to prove it, here's a photo I took in a market in Cuernavaca that I manipulated in ColorSplash on my new iPad. Too much fun.

Please stop by again soon, I'll be back.

That Thing I Love Too Much

It's been awhile since I've written about one of my favorite topics, nachos. That's because generally there's not much to report. There are a lot of monumentally bad nachos stinking up this world, and I usually choose not to report on them because it's so much more fun to talk about the good ones. Too bad they're so few and far between.

Recent events have changed all that. The first was a visit to Acadia Cafe on Cedar and Riverside, kitty-corner from the 400 Bar. Acadia Cafe is definitely a college hangout, super casual and borderline dumpy without going all the way there. They host live music and boast one of the most amazing beer lists around. Last week Doug and I went there for dinner before a beer tasting event at the nearby Cedar Cultural Center. We settled on a grilled cheese with bacon and tomato and an order of the nachos, because we were eating healthy. Ha! Anyway, the chips for the nachos are fried on the premise and it shows in the final result, there's a definite homemade taste to the chips that is quite delightful. As for toppings, they were basic, but generous. Cheese, black beans, tomatoes, with a side of salsa and sour cream. They're not going to win any awards, but they're solid and deserve a chance.

The other nachos I tried recently could win an award, if there were such a contest out there. And if such a contest exists, I beg to be invited to judge. Friday night I celebrated my upcoming birthday with the Hags - my girls, my peeps. Originally I had wanted to go to Bar LaGrassa, but that is not the place you go with a big group on short notice. All of the Twin Cities wants to be there and they make early reservations, which we couldn't. So instead I chose a place where I hadn't been in years but remember enjoying, a place centrally located for all of us in downtown Minneapolis, a place where reservations wouldn't be an issue. Eli's Food & Cocktails is on the periphery downtown, at 13th & Hennepin, but has the most important thing a restaurant downtown could have - a free parking lot adjacent! Love that.

The menu at Eli's is substantial, with great appetizers and entrees and specials that include ingredients like pork belly and duck confit. The atmosphere is laid back, with Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles crooning in the background, and the lighting is subtle. We decided to share a few apps to get things started and, thankfully, Maria suggested a half order of nachos with chicken. The menu says they fry their chips at the restaurant but I couldn't tell. Still, these nachos may just be my new favorites in town! Just the half order was a good size, piled high with chips and cheese and spiced chicken and the requisite tomatoes and onions and salsa and sour cream on the side. There wasn't a big pile of dry chips left at the bottom, the sin committed by so many restaurants. I truly didn't want the plate of nachos to end and briefly considered ordering another plate for my dinner entree. But I came to my senses and realized I could actually return to Eli's and enjoy them again. Which I will be doing, soon.

A Beautiful Reminder

Anyone who knows me well understands that I pretty much always want to be anywhere but here. Certainly I am here, but my head is usually in the clouds dreaming of faraway places, countries where I could be working and playing and living and loving. But plans don't always work out the way you thought they would and life moves in mysterious ways. You don't always turn into the next Sebastian Junger or Annie Griffiths, you don't always write the great American novel. There are no guarantees.

But it's certainly not with a heavy heart that I remain here in Minnesota. Yes, I complain bitterly each year as the gales of November come early, yelling "I'm moving!" to anyone within earshot, but I have a million reasons to love living here as well. I love my family, my friends, my sweetie, my gigantic kitty and just the quality of life here in general. Still, I need reminding now and then just why I haven't left my birthplace. This past week I received that reminder, in spades, during a two day vacation on the North Shore (that's local speak for the stretch of shoreline on Lake Superior that runs northeast of Duluth). Even during this cold month, when the leaves have blown away and the grass has faded, the beauty of this area of northern Minnesota cannot be denied. At one point during a drive from the lodge where we stayed in Beaver Bay north to Grand Marais, I couldn't help but think that the beauty was so alarming that people living on the other side of the world could come here and be bowled over by what they saw, by what they were missing back home. That's the reminder I need to take with me, that as beautiful as the rest of the world is - the pyramids and the walls and the mountains and the seas - that same beauty resides right here under my nose, just waiting to be encountered.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Recently Doug had the day off from work and picked me up for lunch. It was beautiful out so, after an unsuccessful attempt to get anyone to acknowledge our presence at Sushi Tango and walking out, we found ourselves sauntering into Uptown Cafeteria & Support Group, the new and oddly named restaurant in Calhoun Square. The Cafeteria has windows that open completely, so even though you're inside it feels like you're outside, which is fantastic until some loser's car alarm goes off ten feet away for twenty minutes. Suddenly you find yourself longing for the dark, cavernous booths of a local burger joint.

Nonetheless, we were happy to be enjoying the late summer warmth and ordered, somewhat foolishly, two bleu cheese menu items - a bleu cheese salad and the bleu cheese nachos. Both came with an (over?)abundance of bleu cheese, something I never thought I could feel. Too much bleu cheese? What? But the salad was covered, absolutely covered, in bleu cheese crumbles, and sometimes more is actually too much. Perhaps if we had only ordered one or the other I'd feel differently, that might have been our mistake, but I'm pretty sure each were overkill nonetheless. The nachos were a fun twist on traditional corn tortilla/cheddar/salsa nachos, with bleu cheese sauce, crumbles, bacon and green onions atop crispy fresh homemade potato chips. The bacon was a fantastic addition, but the chips suffered from an all too common nacho issue - chips drenched in toppings while many others went without any. Still, I'd order them again with just beers and no bleu cheese salad and share them with several other people because a little goes a long way with these.

On the other hand, The Uptown Cafeteria & Support Group has something really wonderful to offer its guests - the best table sauce selection I've seen in awhile! Always at the ready no matter what you order, soy sauce and bright green jalapeno Tobasco sauce share the caddy with Sriracha sauce and a giant, shiny bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's syrup. What more could a diner need?

Thank You, Mother Nature

As regards weather in Minnesota, there is a lot to complain about. Our winters are long and cold and frustrating, we can get some awful heat waves in the summer, tornadoes in the spring and fall can sometimes last about an hour and a half. But this summer and fall have been spectacular, and I must give credit where credit is due. Thank you, Mother Nature, you have been very kind to us (or those of us who don't live in southern Minnesota where everything is underwater).

Doug and I took a road trip a couple of weekends ago, just for the day, to St. Peter. The air was warm but not too warm and the fields were gorgeous as we drove on and on past one after another. Then last weekend we spent in northern Minnesota on a golfing weekend with my best friend and her husband. I was pretty sure the weather would be bad and mentally planned alternative activities that we could do while the rain fell, except that it not only didn't fall, but the skies were the most beautiful shade of blue and dotted with puffy white clouds that reflected off the cold lakes like a mirror. On top of that, the leaves were changing color, from deep greens to vibrant shades of yellow and orange and red that looked like classic paintings. Today we visited the farmer's market and then an apple orchard in Delano, a lovely brisk and sunny drive due west on 55, and once again couldn't believe our good fortune. The sun shone on us the entire day, lifting spirits that can so often be down during overcast Minnesota weather.

Thanks again, Mother Nature. We owe you one.

Debbie Is a Carpenter

For years now, my brother has given me tools for my birthday and Christmas. Hammers and saws, screwdrivers and Leatherman tools. He actually did have to buy me a Leatherman, one of those all-purpose Swiss knife-type things, on two occasions, because I forgot I had one in my purse at the airport in Beijing shortly after September 11. Nobody was fooling around about possible weapons being brought on board and now some nice Chinese family is hopefully getting lots of use out of my first Leatherman.

As of today, I am getting a lot of use out of my power drill! Dave gave it to me last year and, I'll be honest, I never even opened it. While I own an impressive array of tools, a collection that would make any handyman pretty proud, I usually hand them to my dad or brother and let them do the tough stuff. But all that changed when I purchased a roll-out lid holder recently for all of my cooking pot lids. I've always kept the myriad lids precariously perched atop one another in a cupboard next to the stove and every time I went for one, it was pretty much a lid avalanche onto my foot. But small spaces need tremendous organization, so I invested in the lid holder, not really knowing I would need to use a power drill to install it.

Last night I pulled out the drill instructions and then spent a good hour trying to extricate the drill from its plastic prison. Man, they don't make it easy to get stuff out of its plastic packaging! But when I finally did I was very excited to start drilling, until I read even more instructions, this time for the drill itself, only to learn that the drill would have to charge for seventeen hours before I could hope to use it. I was a little concerned that I would never actually do the project, as I'm prone to procrastination when I am not granted immediate gratification, but when I got home from work tonight I found myself picking up the instructions again. Nobody was more surprised than I was.

I was especially shocked when I read that not only would I have to use my cute little power drill to drill in simple screws, but I would also be required to use a 1/8" drill bit to drill a starter hole before that! Yikes. Thankfully, Dave also gave me a pack of drill bits that included a 1/8" bit, or else I would have been out of luck. I pretty much guessed what to do and how to do it, and when I was finished I had used an Allen wrench, a Phillips screwdriver, and a power drill with various attachments to install my lid rack. I would be lying if I said that every screw went in perfectly straight like it does every time on HGTV, but they all went in well enough that the roll-out rack glides with ease from its tiny cupboard space. And I'm no longer in danger of bruising my foot when I open that cupboard to grab a lid! What will my next power tool project be? The sky's the limit! Or else maybe I'll just hang a poster. Either way, I'll be ready.

No Man's Land

Note: I was going through old electronic files tonight looking for some information when I stumbled across this essay I wrote after returning from my first lengthy trip to Ghana, West Africa in 1991. What you're about to read is all completely true, and horrible. I clearly didn't finish writing the tale, because if I did it would have included an account of the angry border agent who threw my and my friend Lisa's luggage out into the rain and my semi-illegal re-entry into Ghana without a proper visa, but still it's an amusing story. Maybe someday I'll expand on it. Hope you enjoy...

I can think of few things less glamorous than being attacked by a fierce colony of swarming black flies as you empty your bladder in a makeshift toilet in West Africa. It happened to us while we loitered impatiently in that stretch of land where one country border meets another, a place literally referred to as No Man’s Land because it belongs to no one, perhaps in the case I refer to here because no one wants it. This particular No Man’s Land is at the border where the western post of coastal Ghana meets the eastern post of Ivory Coast in sub-Saharan Africa. Lisa and I were simply trying to survive the brutally long car trip west from Ghana’s old, boring capital, Accra, to Abidjan, the contemporary capital of Ivory Coast. After several months hanging around provincial, small town Accra, conducting research for our college degrees and at the same time trying to stay healthy, we were excited to visit a city where we’d heard stories of skyscrapers and croissants and nightclubs. To us at that time, Heaven didn’t hold more promise than Abidjan.

The journey to the Promised Land was a rough one at best. Our overstuffed hired vehicle raced down roads impossibly laced with deep holes, like a highway made from Swiss cheese and dirt. Every few miles our car was stopped in the rain by military police men looking for something to break up the monotony and, if it was a good day, a bribe as well. As we sped past villages comprised of mud huts and an occasional lonely tree, we ran hard over a fleeing chicken. Normally something like that would have been devastating to me, but after three months of being rudely awakened at four in the morning by the roosters outside my window in Accra, it felt like some sort of karmic justice. That was the first animal ever hit in a car I was in, but in Africa, sadly, it wouldn’t be the last.

By the time we reached the border to Ivory Coast six hours after leaving Accra, both Lisa and I were more than ready to use the facilities. There at No Man’s Land, a local (of which country I wasn’t sure) pointed a bony black finger towards a cement structure free of the usual dust that permeated most buildings on this part of the continent. The old man proudly declared that the toilets there were new and very nice. Delightful! We ambled down the rain-soaked path to the new concrete box that would certainly compete with the bathrooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the nicest bathrooms I had ever seen. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Inside the box were smaller, door-less boxes and in each box a single hole in the ground and a box of crumpled-up newspapers. Ouch. We each entered a stall and commenced doing what you do when you’re in a small concrete box with a hole in the ground in West Africa. Seconds later there was a roar coming from somewhere nearby, a sound unlike anything either of us had ever heard before. I thought it sounded like a train careening down the tracks and said as much to Lisa. Since there were no doors in the structure, just walls, she was able to hear me, but just barely over the roar. Before I even had the opportunity to consider that there were no trains in that part of the continent, the source of the noise became only too clear. Giant black flies came shrieking out of the cement holes, obviously disturbed by our presence and bent on revenge. Without any discussion, Lisa and I adjusted our clothing and ran screaming from the nice new toilets, trailed by flies the size of gold finches. Filthy, disgusting, disease-ridden gold finches.

Ginger the Bear Cub Potato

I hate starting each new post with an apology for not having written sooner, so I won't. Instead, I present you with this peace offering - a potato that looks just like a bear cub! See, you feel better already.

This potato, which I named Ginger because of her uncanny resemblance to a nice big knob of ginger, came out of the ground in Byron, Minnesota, on the farm of the Hanson family. I didn't notice it till I got home, but the second I took her out of the sack of potatoes, I couldn't believe my eyes. Much how you might be feeling right now.

Because potatoes don't last forever, I had some professional shots done of Ginger. You know, just in case the Letterman Show calls. So far, not so much.