This recipe was printed on the back of my bag of frozen strawberries.
Let’s see … to make one strawberry smoothie you’ll need one cup of strawberries, one banana and ONE STRAWBERRY SMOOTHIE.
Gah!
Month of fun: Days 18-20
September 20, 2011Day 18
I made one of my favorite snacks: Yummy eggplant chips.
Eggplant chips are a healthy way for me to achieve what I want (DIP!) while keeping fat, preservatives and all kinds of nastiness to a minimum. Think of them as corn chips, but without the regret.
They are also far more delicious than they sound. The eggplant loses any kind of bitterness, soaks up the salt and condenses into a mild, but tasty, background for my favorite salsas. They never achieve the same kind of crunch as potato or tortilla chips, but they’re another entity entirely.
Want to try them yourself? Good. They’re incredibly easy. Just slice an eggplant into thin rounds. Sprinkle with a little salt (or seasoning of choice), then dehydrate for a few hours — just until the chips lose their chewiness.
Here’s what they look like in the beginning:
And here’s the final product.
No dehydrator? No problem. Set your oven to the lowest temperature and keep the oven door cracked while the chips are drying. They will still take several hours to dehydrate completely.
Day 19
Fun manicure!
This was my first time making dots on my own nails. Some were look great, but a lot of them look smudgy and warpy, like bubblegum crying. I think I’ll keep trying.
Day 20
Goofing around with the Photo Booth on my MacBook.
Month of fun: Day 17
September 17, 2011The Husband and I went to a screening of “Drive” last night, followed by a Q&A with Ron Perlman.
The neon noir thriller stars Ryan Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver by day, a hired getaway driver by night. He is stoic and seemingly emotionless — his job is to drive, no matter the outcome.
“Drive” has very little dialogue, but what’s there is important and evocative. The use of sound and light is downright inspired. All that, plus Ryan Gosling. Fuck yeah.
I’m not typically a fan of movies with a lot of action, violence and car chases. With a different director at the helm, this one easily could have been a definitive miss for me. As it is, this flick is understated and thoughtful, coming to a slow boil and then quickly spilling over.
Unlike big-budget Hollywood blockbusters with heavy-handed narration and CGI, this film doesn’t assume the viewer is dumb. Nicholas Winding Refn, the director of “Drive,” allows the audience to use their imagination, fill in the gaps and come up with their own ideas about ethics, morality and revenge.
It’s gritty, tender, terrifying and unnerving all at the same time.
Ron Perlman, who plays a Jewish crime boss, did a fantastic Q&A after the screening, giving us a little insight into how he became attached to the project and what it was like making this small-budget piece in just six weeks. He said Hugh Jackman originally intended to turn this script into a glitzy, glamorous film, where the driver lived in a penthouse and only pulled off very fancy heists. For one reason or another, that idea was scrapped and that version of Drive was never made.
Eventually Ryan Gosling stumbled upon the story tracked down some old, early drafts of the script and set out to get this thing done.
Lucky for us.
Month of fun: Day 16
September 16, 2011Fun thing for the day: I pulled on my ugly Nikes and went for a run.
Yeah, you heard me. A run was my fun thing for the day. That’s pretty shocking coming from me, since I’ve suffered from a tragic running allergy for many years. (Don’t laugh. Someday there will be a telethon for people like me, and I’ll ask you for money.)
It’s only recently that I started to overcome this severe, but extremely rare, medical condition.
I was slowly making progress, doing my run/walk thing a few times a week. And just as I was making the transition from “Do I have to go running?” to “Yay, I get to go running!”, I injured myself.
Somehow I did something mean to that tendon that wraps underneath your foot from one side of the ankle to the other, and it was incredibly painful. So I took a couple weeks off, felt better, and yesterday I did a quick test run.
This morning I was back in action! I jogged out the door, ran around Ruth Hardy Park and started the day with a little sweat.
OK, a lot of sweat.
It felt so good to be in motion, planting my feet down and springing forward, all while listening to old-school De La Soul. And as I made my way back home, a guy on the street called out to me, “Bitchin’ shoes!”
Month of fun: Day 15
September 15, 2011Today I took my gas grill for a walk down one of the busiest streets in Palm Springs.
Normally I wouldn’t advocate pushing a filthy grill down the street as a fun activity. But the situation was just so ridiculous, so stupid and so hilarious, it ended up being a highlight of my day.
Here’s how it happened:
The Husband and I were in the home stretch of our great migration. All I had to do was make a final walk-through of the old apartment, hand over the keys to the landlord and go home to my new place. I was just about to lock the door when I remembered the gas grill on the back patio.
The ridiculously oversized gas grill. The cumbersome, heavy gas grill. The freakin’ albatross of gas grills.
I tried every which way to load the stupid thing into The Husband’s Honda Civic, but it just wasn’t happening. The trunk looked like a sweet Kentucky girl making her first porn — it actually puckered up and recoiled at the sight of the BBQ. There was no way that thing was going in that hole.
Now I was in a pickle. I had a very limited amount of time left to hand over the keys to the landlady. But the grill had to be gone before I could hand over the keys. And the grill wouldn’t fit in my vehicle. I do have friends with trucks. But I didn’t know anyone who could give me a hand in the middle of a workday on such short notice.
I brainstormed a few options: Call an airport taxi van. Beg a nearby moving company for a cheap rate on one item. Make a “for sale” sign and try to sell the grill real quick.
In the end, there was only one thing I could do. I pushed the grill more than a mile down the street to my new apartment. In 100+ degree weather. While I was wearing a dress and high heels.
I don’t know if you’ve ever pushed a grill for any long distance, but let me tell you, it is miserable. Grills are not built to be strollers. They shake and rumble. The wheels get stuck. The metal clangs with a fierceness that pierces right through the eardrum, rattling the threads that hold brain to skull.
It’s like pushing the bad shopping cart at WalMart — except the cart is full of iron anvils and you’re on an endless stretch of bumpy asphalt in hell. Oh, and Satan is carrying a stopwatch.
About halfway home, the grill got stuck in an empty lot. The wheels sagged in the soft sand. Broken glass cracked under my shoes. I almost tripped and fell over a couple of broken concrete blocks. A man passing by stopped and lifted the grill enough to get it back on track. I thanked him and moved on.
In front of the hospital, a white-haired security guard in a golf cart eased to a stop. “Where ya’ goin’ with that barbecue?”
I quickly explained that it was my barbecue. I was simply moving it from one apartment to another because it wouldn’t fit in my car.
“Wanna lift?” he said.
The back of the golf cart flipped out to make a wide, padded bench, and we hoisted the grill onto that surface. The security guard then drove me to the edges of the hospital property, as far as he was allowed to go.
“I hope that helps a little,” he said.
“Oh, it did,” I assured him, and then I thanked him profusely.
“I just hate to see a pretty woman pushing a grill down the street,” he said.
“Well, who doesn’t?”
Then he asked me out on a date. I declined and waved goodbye.
I felt like there was some sort of lesson to be learned here. This was either a story of determination — or it was proof that I keep pushing my burdens around.