Vegetarian eating for lazy people

For the past few months, I’ve cut out nearly all meat (fish included) from my diet.  Since my man is vegetarian, it’s easier this way and honestly, I feel that it’s healthier for me.  I’m allowing myself ‘meat vacations’ but only when it’s really really good quality stuff.  So that way, if I ever end up with a slab of medium rare Kobe beef in front of me, I don’t have to cry salty tears.  

Here’s the deal though: finding non-crazy hippie guides to being vegetarian is difficult.  I’ve been searching for a veggie Bon Appetit style magazine but it simply doesn’t exist.  Most of the veggie lit out there is aggressive, preachy, and is directed at people who are already vegetarians.  Where’s the bridge?  I can’t find it.  

In the meantime, the internet has been my friend with websites like this:

Twenty for Twenty Vegetarian Edition

This particular site gives you 20 staple ingredients for vegetarian cooking and with those, you should be able to make all the recipes they list later. The man quickly pointed out that this list is leaning heavily towards the Mediterranean diet but since that’s my favorite style of eating, I didn’t mind.

Do any of you have good vegetarian resources? I’m already familiar with the PPK and vegan cupcakes. Also, I’m not going vegan…just vegetarian!

The internet is for cats

By now, it should be common knowledge that God created the internet so that all of creation could easily and quickly share videos and pictures of cats doing silly things.

I don’t even remember how I found this website (which is especially sad since it only happened about 40 minutes ago) but holy goodness, I’ve hit the motherload of silly pet/cat videos: Pet Project

Here are some of the highlights I’ve found thus far:

This one isn’t on the blog but it’s one of my favorites.  OMG.  I can watch this anytime anywhere and end up in a pile of giggles:

Pleasure, music, and the WHY.

If you can just get your mind together
then come on across to me
Well hold hands and then well watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea

But first, are you experienced?

My mom did me a great favor as a kid by forcibly removing the New Kids on the Block cd that was illegal contraband cleverly delivered to me by a well-meaning grandparent in a Christmas stocking.  That stuff wasn’t ‘music’ in my mom’s ears.  I got a rocking good education on everything from old time real country a la Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, to blues by Muddy Waters and Bessie Smith, and then, of course, the music that rocked her world as a teen and early 20’s girl: ROCK.  Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, all that stuff.

What’s my point?  My point is, when I first heard Jimi Hendrix, I had this crazy feeling inside.  A rush, of sorts.  I was a young kid who blasted the ‘Annie’ soundtrack on my record player and yet I could totally appreciate the guitar riffs and marveled at my mom who would go into a sort of musical dance trance while washing dishes or something.  

Most of us have had an experience like this.  Why?  A friend posted this journal article from 2001 and it was so great that I thought I’d pass it along here:Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in the brain regions implicated in reward and emotion.

Turns out, the brains structures that provide that euphoric feeling when you listen to music also go nuts with other stimuli such as food, sex, and ‘drugs of abuse’.

Interesting, no? Musical euphoria has come up for me a lot lately because a) I’m making a lot more music than I have in a great long while and b) I’m dating someone who loses the ability to focus on anything else or even speak when music comes on. Seriously. I do not hold him responsible for anything he agrees to, says or doesn’t say, or even gestures about when he listening to music. Now I know why.

And here’s a live video of Jimi Hendrix just to bring it back ’round. I couldn’t find a video of him singing the song that started it all (for me), Are you Experienced? but here he is singing ‘Hey Joe’

All my grandpa would say is: Get a hair cut’

The best thing I’ve read all day (+ the best thing from yesterday too)

I discovered Wired Magazine today. What took me so long?! It’s awesome! It’s like Nature without all that lofty snobby ‘abstract’ horse pucky.

The website included the best thing I’ve read all day in their article entitled : 7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs -

“You might think of nuclear weapons as just the most fearsome weapon ever invented by humans, but that would be seriously underplaying their versatility.”

C’mon.  That’s just priceless.

Read the rest of the article here: 7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs

The best thing I read yesterday was the back of a book entitled ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ by Seth Grahame-Smith. Behold:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.”

The book cover ain’t bad either:

Things that make you say “Mmmmomigod! GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!”

Yes, that’s how strong my desire for the new cookie book ‘Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treats’ is.

It’s not so much a desire as an intense yearning leading to frustration and angst because, as of now, the book is not resting in my lap as it should be.

I made the mistake of looking at the PPK Blogand it set it all off again. Look at the pictures! I gots to have me some pecan bars and iced grapefruit icebox cookies!

Only three words succinctly express what I feel right now: NOM NOM NOM

And in case you aren’t already writing on the floor in complete agony and desire: Gingerbread Waffles w/ Carmalized Figs:

Hurts, doesn’t it?

Disturbed.

I noticed the other day that my post about the Mandelbrot Set has been seeing an unusually high amount of traffic lately. Through the magic of the ‘People found your blog through these links’ feature of WordPress, I found out that people have been finding my blog by clicking links on a blog about…. Intelligent Design! I guess a pro-Intelligent Design blogger made a post about the Mandelbrot set and somehow linked me in there somewhere.

Odd but ok.

Postcards from your momma

Robotbugs ruined my day. In that, he sent me the best new time wasting website and now I’m totally hooked. It’s called Postcards from Yo Momma and is sort of like Post Secret but it’s a website filled with various electronic communications between moms and their kids.

Gems like:

“I’m glad you arrived safely and take care. I love you have a good school year.
Love,
Mom
p.s. stop being picky and get married”

-and-

“Mom: Checking On Something be right back
Me: ok
Mom: The little box keeps saying in RED that “Holly is busy. You may be interrupting.” Obviously they DON’T REALIZE that I’M YOUR MOTHER!!!!! going to have some lunch now and the do a few errands. It was nice having a little IM session with you. We Will chat soon. Lots of Love MOMMA”

-and-

“I’m not sure if I’m Tweeting or Twatting, what’s the difference?”

I could fill an entire website with the texts and emails my mom and I send to each other now that we’re coworkers. I never ever in my wildest dreams thought I’d end up working with my mom but it’s actually completely great. So far, I’ve introduced her to the YouTube, explained who Beyonce is, taught her how to text, and I keep her up with slang. She’s now started to say ‘Oh SNAP!’ whenever we get a big order.

Anyway, enjoy!

Applied Science: Pancake Edition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend, I was treated to a near perfect pancake.  While they were cooking, I admitted to Pancake Maker that I was completely incapable of making them.  Seriously. I can make Christmas dinner for 15 but I can’t make a stupid pancake.  Oi.

However, since Pancake Maker knows my love all things nerd, he gave me this in an effort to show me that, yes, I can make pancakes. I only need science!:

Mathematical Formula for the Perfect Pancake

That’s all well and good and I do believe in science but I’m still going to let him make the pancakes.

Danger.

Danger danger…tango is nibbling at me again.  I was recruited for a tango performance at a local theatre which then led to ‘Hey!  You two should choreograph your own piece together!’ and then led to ‘Hey!  We need two tango dancers for another show in two weeks.  Can you do it?’  And, of course, I said yes. 

So now, the symptoms of Tangoitis are starting to show.  Signs?  Drooling over tango shoes online.  Going through your closet looking for the perfect dress that glides between the line of ‘too revealing’ and ‘elegant’.  Choreographing tango to any and every song you hear (has anyone ever tangoed to Tool?).

It feels nice.

Mind the Gap.

My friend Mahalie posted this and it was so cool that I couldn’t help but re-post.  It’s a subway map of the universe!