Unfair Fortune

My family recently frequented our favorite Chinese restaurant, and as usual the meal ended with fortune cookies.  Disappointing, disappointing fortune cookies.  Observe:

Fortune 1:  A friend will bring you a surprise soon.

Is it a big bag of money?  With a dollar sign on the bag?  *scans the room hopefully* 

Dammit.

Fortune 2: No one can walk backward into the future.

WRONG.  My kids walk around backwards all the time, but time marches on.  You can't explain that.

Fortune 3: Not just live and let live, but live and HELP live.

OMG, THE FORTUNE COOKIE PEOPLE USE ALL CAPS JUST LIKE I DO!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!

Fortune 4: Now go for it!  It’s ready to be pick. 

Well now you’re not even trying.

You Don't Win Friends With Salad!

One of the nice things about moving back to Madison is its farmers' market.  Touted as the "largest producer-only farmers' market in the country," it stretches around the Capitol Square like this:

I SO have a future in cartography!

And this is a picture of me at the farmers' market.

Note the lack of cash, the invisible bag to carry produce home in, and, well, ME.

As much as I'd like to go to the farmers' market every week, I only manage to get there once or twice a month.  You see, unless you arrive around 6:30 in the morning, the place is packed with people dickering over the number of strawberries in a pint, interrogating the egg vendors as to whether their chickens have access to a grassy yard and possibly some sort of spa, and well-meaning mothers pushing their kids around in the WORLD'S LARGEST STROLLER.

All of these behaviors make my head explode, which is really messy but pays for my psychiatrist's kid's college fund.  So unless I can get my rear in gear in time to get to the farmers' market at the butt-crack of dawn, I don't go at all.  This makes me sad, as I love fresh, local produce.

So, in an unprecedented move of advance-planning I decided to join a CSA (community supported agriculture.)  You sign up with a CSA in the spring and pay them a few hundred dollars straight up.  Then throughout the summer and early autumn (June through October in my neck of the woods), you head over to your host's pick-up site to retrieve your box full of already-paid-for vegetables. It's like it was made for people who are too lazy and inept at obtaining quality fresh produce, just like me!

So for a couple of weeks now, I've gotten a large box full of fresh vegetables.  And thanks to the unusually cold spring, these boxes have been full of lettuce.  And lettuce.  And more lettuce.  There are a few radishes and white turnips thrown in for good measure.  And then more lettuce.

I like lettuce.  Everybody in my family will eat salad, even my kids.   But as of date, I am the proud owner of two LARGE bags of lettuce.  They are so large THAT I AM FORCED TO USE ALL CAPS TO DESCRIBE THEIR MAGNITUDE.  I also have a good-sized head of bibb lettuce, a humongous head of romaine lettuce, and two smaller bags of spinach.

The spinach, I can work with.  Spinach can be a side dish.

This is still healthy, right?

You can sneak spinach into a lasagna or a casserole

Surprise!

But I'm having a hard time dealing with all this lettuce.  Lettuce can turn into a salad.

Hello, there!

Or a salad.

Hello, again!

Or a salad.

Have we met?

Even though there are lots of different kinds of salads, in the end they are still salads and I am suffering from salad ennui. We have had salad at every dinner and most of my lunches, and we've only plowed through half of the lettuce.

So dear internets, please tell me: What do you do with 500 pounds of lettuce? More importantly, would you like some lettuce?  After all:

This Post Is An Exercise In Self-Indulgence. It Is Also About Pudding-Pops.

I write.  I've filled a myriad of one-subject notebooks, journaling about being depressed, being manic, being lonely, being afraid.  I've taken some of this frenzied journaling out of the dark and imposed it on a mostly bored public.  

But I can't write when I'm angry.  Not publicly. Not privately. Not at all.  

Actually, I can write but all that comes out is, "OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS I CAN'T EVEN GAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!11111!!!!!"  

Seriously, my brain stutters.  

The thing is, the thing that I still struggle with after too many years of therapy is that I don't allow myself to feel angry.  What I allow myself to feel is:

I'm angry!

Crap! I can't be angry!

I have nothing to be angry about.  EVER.

Because people who are angry are not happy.

And I can't let people know I'm not happy.

I might hurt their feelings.

They might think less of me.

Because I'm not happy.

And I'm supposed to be happy.  ALWAYS.

And now my therapist is a millionaire.

So I'll never be able to send my kids to college.

You're on your own, kids!

And don't get me wrong, I know.  I know it's unrealistic to expect myself to be happy all the time.  That it's ok to feel angry, every one feels angry sometimes.  No one expects me to be happy all the time, just as I don't expect others to be happy all the time.  That in expecting myself to always be happy, I set the bar for myself so impossibly high that Superwoman would never reach it.

But all of that logic doesn't stop me from hurling myself back down that shame-spiral time and time again.

FYI: I'm not particularly angry about anything. I just wanted to explore my hang-ups about being angry while I'm in a relatively stable state of mind.  And you get to read it!  Lucky you?

Ok, fine, I'll get angry about something.  Growing up I ate Jello Pudding-Pops all summer long, and then they stopped making them.  Now they make them again, but they're not the same.  If the same thing happens to Nacho Cheese Doritos and Clue (board game AND movie) I'm going back and getting a new childhood.

Bastards.

This Is What Happens When You Cook During Crazy Time

Before we get too far, I want to state that despite the following story, and despite the fact that I can’t bake, I am generally considered by family and friends to be a good cook.

But more importantly, I am an adventurous eater.

So the other day, when a craving for Indian food hit, I decided to try making it at home instead of getting take-out.

I’ve never cooked Indian food before, but I didn’t let that daunt me.  I found a recipe for coconut chicken curry, gathered the necessary ingredients, and began to cook.  The recipe called for (among other things) curry powder, which I was reasonably familiar with, and Garam Masala, which I was not familiar with. 

It also called for optional red pepper flakes.  My family, even the girls, like a little heat in our food.  In went the red pepper flakes.

I also took the initiative to add some frozen peas to the curry.  My girls love peas.  When Preschooler was a baby, she’d eat an entire can of peas in one sitting.  In went the peas.

So far things were going exceptionally well, considering the time of day.

Four o’clock in the afternoon in my house marks the start of what I like to call, “crazy time,”  meaning the kids are hungry and they are tired of looking at me all day.  They are in no mood to listen, much less be jolly and entertain themselves quietly so I can make dinner. 

Because of this, my cooking skills have been lacking as of late.  If I was given some sort of Iron Chef challenge such as:  Here are some squid, eggplant, and chanterelles... what will you make?  My answer would probably be: frozen pizza.

But the curry was bubbling away, and my house was smelling AWESOME.  The last step - make some rice.

I put rice and water in a glass bowl.  The top for that bowl was dirty, so I covered the bowl with some plastic wrap instead.  I punched a few holes in the top of the plastic wrap for ventilation, and set the microwave to 25 minutes.

Thirty minutes later I checked in on the rice.  It had scorched.  And the plastic wrap melted on top of it.  I’M JUST THAT GOOD.

We ate our curry with tortillas. 

Well, at least Husband and I ate our curry.  After 5 minutes of chewing and sweating, we decided that maybe that extra red pepper was not necessary.  Preschooler picked at it, but didn’t eat any (which was fine with me.)  Toddler tried to eat it.  Oh how she tried.

You see, there were peas in the curry.  Beloved peas.  She’d reach in for a pea, eat it, grimace, and try again.  After 3 or 4 peas, her face was beet red, and she was visiablly distressed.  We took the plate away before she could inflict further damage.

Bon Appetit.

Why Does My Food Keep Talking To Me?

Why does my food keep talking to me?

First it was Dove Promises sending out inspirational messages.  I understand that. I’m often inspired by chocolate.  Inspired to eat more chocolate.

Surround myself with loved ones?  You mean more chocolate?

Thanks, Dove!

But today I opened a new  carton of sour cream, and the foil seal was inscribed with the message, “The most precious thing one can make is a friend.”
 

Can I be your friend?

How does my sour cream know I need more friends?  Is it that obvious?

Maybe my food doesn’t want me to be depressed.  But that doesn’t make sense; when I’m depressed, I eat more.  You’d think this would be a good thing for the food (unless maybe it’s displaying an act of self-preservation.)

So, since I always want to be on the cutting edge, I came up with my OWN inspirational messages to common foods*:

You can be the wind beneath any one’s wings.

Be happy.  No exceptions. Ever.

Infiltrating yourself into every aspect society of  NOT make you a whore.

See? Advertising is easy.** Someone should pay me for this.

But then again, I think someone should pay me for everything I do.


*My jokes are lame. I won't be offended if you don't get the joke.  Because it's lame.

**Note: I actually think REAL Advertising is probably damn difficult.  Otherwise, why would they hire some of my smarty-pants friends to work for them?