I'm getting married!

Well, that sums it all up, doesn't it? John proposed this morning!

I'm going to be an auntie!

But I've also received a piece of very bad news. More on that later.

For now, I'm trying to concentrate on the good news--I'm going to be an auntie! In mid-July. I'm terribly excited about that (I bought my sister her first baby things), and have adjusted my vacation plans for next year to include a trip to see her and the baby after he/she is born. Also, my brother-in-law is getting out of the Air Force, official as of January 1, so no fears he'll be shipped off to Afghanistan or Iraq again.

This holiday--bad news aside--has been pure joy. Two solid weeks of hanging out with John's family and now with my own. It's the usual raucous holiday merrymaking, of course, I've been embraced by John's family, he's been embraced by mine, and everything is very casual and happy and filled with lots of eating and talking and hugging and cutthroat games of Spoons. The good news, coupled with the bad news, coupled with seeing everyone, have thrown my feelings about family into sharp relief. I'm still sorting that out, but I suspect my plans and goals for the next few years may change dramatically.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Let's review the last year, shall we?

Last year at this time, I was 1. single, 2. living in New York, 3. getting a salary. In the last year, I've been laid off, collected unemployment, travelled the country, met a wonderful man, and moved to California. I've started a new blog, and found a couple of new interests (photography, road-tripping). I haven't drawn a salary since being laid off, in February. I hope never, ever to give my hard-earned money to match.com or eharmony.com ever again. Last year at this time, I'd never been cross-country, never been west of the Mississippi (except for Vegas and San Francisco), never seen any of the most famous national parks. Now I've been cross-country four separate times (to the West Coast, back again, moving to California, now traveling back East) and getting ready to complete #5 when we return to the West Coast. My personal odometer will top 32,000 miles driven this year.

I'm still adjusting to the move, but I'm completely in love with Californian weather. I'm still struggling with some of the big questions that prompted the cross-country odyssey (What do I want to do with my life? How do I get from here to there? Do I want to start a family?, etc.), but I know it will involve cooking and writing in some fashion. This has definitely been one of the more eventful years of the last decade--perhaps the most.

The Second Big Road Trip of 2009

28 hours and 1,900 miles later, we washed up in Missouri. 28 hours is a lot of driving--but given that flying yesterday would have been impossible, given the snarls from the big storm on the East Coast (my folks got a foot of snow, btw), I feel confident that driving to Missouri was actually faster than flying. We slept and drove in shifts, ate out of the backseat, and saw seven states. I missed Arizona and New Mexico, unfortunately, as we drove through there in the middle of the night--but I can safely say that Texas and Oklahoma looked exactly the same. And, if possible, Kansas is even more boring in winter.

Bacon chocolate for all!

My homemade bacon chocolate was such a success this weekend that I'm sharing it with the world, here. I know I'm biased, but I think a couple pounds of bacon chocolate would make a great Christmas gift for someone you know!

My kitchen adventures have been particularly inspired in the last week, primarily because I'm cleaning out the refrigerator in preparation for Christmas travels. I can't wait to spend the next two weeks traveling, taking pictures, cooking for loved ones, catching up on my reading and writing (both for book and blogs), and hanging out with my nearest and dearest. I picked up a new freelance gig this week that I'm very excited about, I've got a stack of books and projects to keep me busy, and the library has graciously provided me with a free copy of The Professional Chef to peruse over the holidays.

And speaking of books--my hero and muse Anthony Bourdain has a new one coming out, the sequel to Kitchen Confidential. D-Day is June 8, 2010.

Genius, pure genius

A bacon chocolate bar.

I will definitely be doing some experimenting in the kitchen this weekend.

Christmas

Wow, has it been almost a week since my last post? I'm such a slacker. Sorry, guys.

A friend of mine recently commented on the fact that John hasn't shown up much in this blog. Don't worry, that's not a sign of trouble in paradise. Nobody wants to hear about our schmoopiness, but nobody wants to hear about domestic mundanities, either. Plus, he reads it, so I find it best to keep the really personal stuff off of there.

I will say that the other night, I had a dream in which I had a baby. Now, I've had dreams before where I was pregnant, but I think this is the first time a dream produced a babe-in-arms. I had a baby, I was holding out, and then I gave the baby to my dad to hold. He was ecstatic to be holding a grandkid, and I was pretty happy myself. Not weirded out, or trying to stuff my fingers in my ears, or holding the kid at arm's length to avoid spit-up. Doesn't take a rocket scientist there to figure that one out. I just can't decide if this is my long-absent maternal instinct finally making an appearance, or a sign of the apocalypse.

Speaking of the apocalypse, I officially have two (unpaid) weeks off for Christmas. We'll spend the first in Missouri with his family, and the second in Virginia with mine. Punctuated by A LOT of driving. I'm going to create a game called Holiday Bingo, with squares like I Have To Pee Again, Is There More Gravy?, Have You Gained More Weight?, I Wish You'd Taken That Teaching Job, and When Are You Going To Have A Baby? First person to get Bingo gets to stand up in the middle of dinner and randomly yell BINGO!

The Great Culinary School Debate

Last night I stopped by the San Diego Culinary Institute while I was out running errands. I chatted with one of the admissions ladies for a few minutes. She ran through the curriculum, and I was surprised to realize I already knew a good bit of it. I was also surprised to realize that the idea of going to culinary school has really taken hold.

Now, granted, if Culinary Institute of America were to offer me a full scholarship, I'd be there tomorrow. But that's not likely to happen. And much as I would enjoy getting and utilizing a degree from CIA, I can't in good conscience rationalize another $80,000 tuition bill. Or two and a half years of full-time study (but wouldn't that be fun? Spending two and a half years banging around in one of the greatest kitchens in the world?).

The cooking school in San Diego is considerably less expensive, and I could finish up in 6-9 months (depending on whether I went full-time or part-time), but I would still be looking at spending just over $20K. For credentialing, essentially, and possibly some improvement on my knife skills. Apparently my cooking knowledge is greater than I thought; one of the exams there is to identify, by taste and smell, 50 different spices. I already own more than 50 different spices, so no problem there. I can already make a bearnaise sauce, beef stock, souffle, and carve up a whole chicken. And frankly, my knives are better than the ones included in their chef's kit. Oh, and they offered no classes in wine or wine pairings. How is that even possible in a culinary school? Another checkmark for CIA.

While I have no idea how I would pull it off, financially speaking, I love the idea of cooking for a living. And of getting the requisite training, even if I already know a lot of the basics. But how to finance it, and my living expenses while getting the degree?

Thanksgiving 2009

Continuing the Great Thanksgiving Travel Tradition, John and I took in some California scenery this weekend. Admittedly, it wasn't nearly as exotic as previous years' excursions (Rome, Buenos Aires), but it was considerably cheaper. The road trip earlier this year pretty much entirely destroyed my travel budget for the rest of the year (actually, it destroyed pretty much all my budgets, but hey. It was worth it).

We started with Joshua Tree National Park, continued to Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, and ended the trip by coming down Big Sur and taking in Hearst Castle. It was great doing something that was in no way holiday related; as everyone else stressed over cooking the turkey and got caught in Black Friday traffic, we zipped through some incredible natural surroundings and ate potato chips and burritos. With almost no traffic.

Joshua Tree wasn't quite as alien a landscape as Badlands, but it was close. Strange trees, weirdly-shaped piles of rocks, desert. It was a beautiful clear sunny day, which provided us with some great views. And we saw a coyote. We spent the rest of the day driving up to Fresno, a convenient gateway to both Sequoia and Yosemite. Before I moved out here, I thought everyone in California was a surfer and a Democrat and smoked a lot of weed. You know, the classic stereotype. I was somewhat dismayed to discover exactly how many farms and farmers (and rednecks, and Republicans, and pickup trucks) there are in central/inland California.

We started the next day in Sequoia, where I got to drive some really twisty and fun mountain roads, and we saw some really big damn trees. Really. Big. Sequoia groves are eerily silent; maybe because the trees are so damn big, but I didn't hear any birds or see any other wildlife. No squirrels or chipmunks. The only spot of holiday traffic was in Yosemite; we got there about 2 pm on Black Friday, and apparently a great many people had the same idea, because it was really crowded. But it wouldn't have been a good day to visit, anyway; it was rainy and foggy, obscuring most of the famous views. All those people, and the rain, made me cranky. Fortunately, the rain provided an amazing double rainbow just outside the park's exit. I don't think I've ever seen a rainbow that was so bright or so close. Hearst Castle had a fair number of visitors, but there were only eight or so on our particular tour, and every other park/place we visited was almost entirely deserted.

It was great seeing Big Sur without all the traffic that I encoutered the first time I drove through; and it was also great taking the mountain roads there and in Sequoia without any traffic. John did at least half the driving, for which I was eternally grateful. It's very different seeing a national park from the passenger seat. He drives like my grandma, but it kept my road trip-related injuries from acting up (so I tried my damndest not to point out all the times when he was driving more than five miles under the speed limit). We road-trip very well together, my lead foot aside. Good tunes, an open road, and someone to share it with. What could be better? You can see the pics at Flickr.

Hearst Castle is the West Coast equivalent of Biltmore; an obnoxiously big and pretentious estate. There's some pretty stuff inside, but it's all thrown together. The house has no sense of itself. It's obvious Hearst was buying stuff just to buy it, to show off how much money he had, because why else would you ever put so much useless crap in one room? Decorative friezes, Greek vases, Roman statuary, medieval triptychs, Italian marble fireplaces, Renaissance portraiture, Turkish rugs, and Art Deco lamps have absolutely no business all being piled up in the same room. But there were amazing views, and I got the opportunity to drool over the enormous kitchen.

We got back late Saturday night and crashed (1700 miles in three days will do that to you). On Sunday, I ran errands and visited my friend Dave in LA. He works in a bar on Rodeo Drive, so I got to pretend to be well-heeled for the afternoon. We got in a quick drink at the Beverly Wilshire (of "Pretty Woman" fame) as well. I really like LA--I need to spend more time there.

John will be working late all this next week, so I'll be ramping up my cooking efforts and catching up on my reading. I'm eager to dive into the new Stephen King.

You know you're in California when... Part 2

I have just purchased earthquake insurance. Which, like flood insurance, is entirely separate and not covered in any standard homeowner's/renter's policy. It does not cover china.

San Diego Wine and Food Festival

This weekend I went to the annual San Diego Wine and Food Festival, held in Embarcadero Park, overlooking the ocean. First, let me just say that as far as I'm concerned, that is an ideal way to spend a Saturday. 70 degrees, sunny, on the water, wandering from booth to booth sampling great food, great wine, exotic liquors, artisanal chocolates and oils, cigars, craft beers, etc., not to mention collecting all the free swag (magazines, recipes, coupons, pens, blah blah blah). I discovered a lot of new and small wineries, and got some great ideas to apply to my own cooking (notable flavor combinations and ideas include: scallops with edamame puree, tuna tartare with lemon confit, gnocci with duck ragu, and hummus with pomegranate seeds).

I ate a lot, drank a lot, and took some great pictures of the water. Craft vodkas and tequilas were big, as were Mexican fusion flavors—I had at least twenty different variations of the classic fish-and-chile combination. I tasted a lavendar liqueur, wine jellies, and smoky mushrooms cooked in a Big Green Egg (which, FYI, I am seriously lusting after right now).

Favorite finds included:
Eclipse Chocolat. A local company specializing in some really awesome chocolates. Chocolate bar flavors include Sweet Basil-Mint, Gingerbread Crumb, Sea-Salt Nib, Blackberry Sage, Coconut Lime, Mango Masala, Orange Peel Anise, Espresso Walnut, Chile Hazelnut, Moroccan Spice, Macadamia Ginger, and Kyoto Green Tea. My favorite is the Sea-Salt Nib—big chunks of sea salt, with a hint of lavendar, spread throughout the chocolate bar. Sounds bizarre, but trust me, it is really really good. Especially for a salt fiend like me.

Temecula Olive Oil Company. Artisanal olive oils and vinegars, made from 100% California olives. Yum.

Forlorn Hope Wines. A small-batch Napa winery. Their La Gitana Torrontes is the only Torrontes I've ever had (including all the ones I had in Argentina) that wasn't cloyingly sweet. Phenomenal balance and fruit. The Mil Amores blend was also spectacular. I like wines like this—made from uncommon grapes, by a winemaker who's more interested in quality than quantity. The downside of that is that these wines will be hard to find—I'll probably have to break down and order them directly from the winery. But well worth it, in my opinion.

As an added bonus, the winemaker is really cute.

Peltier Station Wines. I'm not usually one for dessert wines. They also tend to be cloyingly sweet, and served with desserts that are already cloyingly sweet in themselves. But Peltier Station USB is one of the few fruity-but-not-sweet dessert wines in the world. I really liked this. It's 100% Zinfandel, technically a port, but called USB because a new EU rule dictates that wineries can't use the word "port" unless the wine was made in Portugal. So they called it USB instead...Get it? USB? Port? In another outstanding bit of geekery, the binary code on the front of the bottle translates to "Peltier Station." Awesome.

Caliza Winery. Azimuth: a blend of Rhone varietals, Syrah, Grenache, Mouvedre, Tannat and Alicante Bouschet. Very well balanced, and apparently Robert Parker's favorite of the bunch. Kissin' Cousins: another Rhone blend of Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Viognier.

Bonus points for their excellent font.

Vinni Bag. Why the hell didn't anyone think of this before?

Bledsoe Gallery. Because I'm a sucker for good travel photography—and pictures of wine corks.

You know you live in California when...

Last night I called a petsitting agency, to book someone to take care of the cats while John and I are traveling for Christmas. Here's an excerpt from that conversation...

Petsitter: "We can arrange to bring in your mail and water your plants, in addition to feeding the cats and taking care of the litterbox."

Me: "Oh! I hadn't even thought about that. If you could water the plants too, that would be great."

Petsitter: "Just so you know, we can't water any plants of the illegal variety."

Me: (...Pause.) "All my plants are of the garden edible legal variety, thanks. But...Really? Is that an issue? Does that come up a lot?"

Petsitter: (Darkly.) "Oh, you'd be surprised."

I had to laugh.

Holiday changes

OK, so, John's son will not be joining us for Christmas. H's mother neatly killed the idea of him on an epic road trip. It's sad, but I suppose the good news is that John and I no longer have to kill ourselves on the driving part to keep it as short as possible. We can stop and see things, and if we decide to keep driving, one of us can stretch out and sleep in the backseat. I hope to get a week (or close to it) with his family, and a week (or close to it) with mine. We may still have to haul ass on the way back, as I'd like to spend New Year's in Virginia. But having done this once by myself, I'm excited about doing it again with a co-pilot. I wonder what it's like going cross-country in the passenger seat.

In other news, I think I've officially settled in here. Since I've moved, I've been beset with troubling dreams (exes coming back to haunt me, my hair falling out), held captive by strange anxieties (I never, ever made the bed before, and I find myself needing to do it here. Why is that?), and just been generally tense about the future. Residual stress from being laid off/the road trip/moving? Perhaps. Intense laboring to get out from under the shadow of my past relationships? Probably. I've been here long enough now to have established a comfort level, and now the anxiety falls away? That's part of it, too, I'm sure. One day this week I woke up totally relaxed and happy. No more bad dreams, no more weird stressing about cleaning or making the bed, no more wondering if I'd done the right thing. I have. And it's amazing.

Oh, OH! And this weekend I'll be attending the San Diego Food and Wine Festival! All day Saturday! Look for happily drunk, drooly, generally inspired food-and-wine-related blogging in a couple of days...

Food, food, food...Christmas...some other things...food again

Hopefully everyone's had an opportunity to check out the new blog, www.brokefoodie.com, in which I wax rhapsodic about food, cooking, wine, food, and food. ("Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam..." okay, not Spam.) It's fun thinking about food all the time. I mean, I pretty much do anyway, being the glutton that I am, but now I have a reason to think about food outside of stuffing my own face. The site's still a little rough, but I'm slowly building it. Please let me know what you think! I'm also trying my hand at food photography. The results have been a little amateurish for my taste, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

In other news, my Christmas shopping is done. "Done?!", you say. "It's not even Thanksgiving!" Which is why it's done. I hate lines, I hate crowds, and most of all, I hate combinations of those two things. The internet is the best thing that ever happened to Christmas shopping. Somewhere in late October/early November, I order everything I need (can you say amazon.com? 'Cause I can), wrap it, and shove it in a closet. There. Done. I'm always appalled by those people who wait until December 23 and then storm the mall. Hello? Christmas is the same day every year. It's not like it's a surprise.

And speaking of Christmas, I may be able to get a little more time off than I'd originally bargained for. Which would be awesome. I'm excited about the next cross-country road trip--well, of course Iam. I'm an old pro at this by now. John claims he's excited, too, and hopefully he actually is. The success of this plan hinges upon us driving and sleeping in shifts, so he'll need to be excited about it to get through. I think it'll be neat, driving for 28 hours straight between here and Missouri, but then, we all know I have strange tastes. He also claims his son is on board with the plan, though his ex is most definitely not. I'm continually amazed by how risk-averse some people are. I learned a long time ago that life is change; to claim otherwise, or to try to prevent change, is to fight a losing battle. The only way to get through is to embrace the change and uncertainty and ride it out as best you can. When I got laid off, I whined for a while, then I got off my ass, embraced the change, set out on a road trip, and completely changed my life for the better. Next time I won't even bother whining--I'll just look for the opportunity.

Okay, I'm veering off-topic here. My brain is a little all over the place these days. Once I stop thinking about food/blogging, suddenly it's like, "Oh wait! I have these other 49 things to think about," and then it's chaos for a while. But it's very nice to have a project, and something to fill my days other than just work/dinner/TV/a good book before bed. I've also got two trips to plan (Thanksgiving, in which we go to Joshua Tree National Park/Yosemite National Park/Big Sur again, and Christmas, in which we drive to Missouri and Virginia and become intimately familiar with I-40). And we all know how much I love planning trips.

Announcing my new blog!

www.brokefoodie.com

It's a little rough, graphically speaking, but it's out there. I'll be updating it regularly, and adding pictures/playing around with format. That'll be my cooking/food blog, and this will continue to be my everything else blog.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Ugh

John and I are both recovering from a nasty bout of food poisoning. Thank God for two bathrooms, that's all I have to say. Whatever it was made us both want to curl up and die, so I'm hoping it's run its course. Don't worry, it wasn't my cooking. It usually takes food poisoning about 72 hours to kick in, so I'm blaming the burgers we both had on Sunday night. Which puts all those recent articles about E. coli in ground beef into sharp perspective.

In other news, I'm offloading all the Broke Foodie entries into their very own blog. It's not operational yet, but I hope to get it up and running later this week. I also got a 2 TB external hard drive, and moved my iTunes onto it, freeing up about 85% of my C drive. Now I can start a long-planned iTunes expansion project. I'm feeling particularly tech-savvy this week. Noodling around on the computer is one of the very few things you can do while dealing with food poisoning.

Broke Foodie: Short rib ragu

OK, short rib ragu is not exactly the most economical choice, given the average cost of short ribs these days. But I discovered that Sam's here carries both short ribs and oxtail in bulk. I used to make this ragu with lamb shanks, but since short ribs are cheaper here than lamb shanks, hence short rib ragu.

Start by searing 2-3 lbs of short ribs on both sides in a little oil in a big cast-iron Dutch oven. You then remove the ribs, and saute a chopped onion, a couple of chopped shallots, and a few diced carrots and celery ribs in the same pot. When soft, deglaze with 1/2 cup or so of ruby port, and then add 2 cups of red wine. Let the wine cook down to about half, and add beef stock, several peeled whole garlic cloves, and seasonings (rosemary, bay leaf, thyme, etc.). Put the short ribs back in, and cook in a 325-degree oven for about three hours. Remove to the stovetop and remove the short ribs, letting them cool. Meanwhile continue cooking the sauce on low. When the ribs are cool enough to handle, strip the meat off the bone and add back to the pot, along with pasta of choice (penne or papardelle works well). When pasta is done, serve with lots of freshly grated parmesan cheese.

It's certainly not a light meal, but it's very filling and you get a lot of entertaining bang for the buck. Depending on how much you pay for the short ribs, you could conceivably get 2-3, possibly 4, quarts of ragu for under $10.

Broke Foodie: Pate

Pate is one of those dishes that sounds impossible to make, but is really pretty easy and inexpensive. I like to make it when I'm entertaining, and when I'm having a particularly bad foie gras jones.

1 container chicken livers, rinsed and patted dry
1 apple, peeled and grated, with all the juice squeezed out of the shavings (I like Granny Smith)
2-3 shallots, diced
2-3 T Calvados
2 T heavy cream
1 stick frozen butter, in pieces

Saute the shallots and apple in a tablespoon or so of butter, until soft. Dump this into a food processor. In the same pan add a little more butter and the chicken livers, cooking til brown on both sides. Add the Calvados and flambe until the fire is gone. Add the chicken livers to the shallot mix in the food processor (pouring off any excess liquid) and add the cream. While pureeing, add the frozen butter a piece at a time, letting it incorporate. Salt to taste. Pour this into a Pyrex loaf pan, cover with plastic wrap so that the plastic wrap touches the top of the pate, and let sit in the fridge for several hours. Serve with crackers or fresh crusty bread.

Chicken livers run about $2 for a container, another 80 cents or so for the apple, and the other ingredients I always have on hand. So for $3 or a little less, you too can have delish homemade pate. It makes a particularly decadent breakfast.

Birthday! Part 2

The rest of my birthday day was largely uneventful. After all, a birthday can only be so exciting if you have to work. John and I discovered a cute neighborhood bar in La Jolla. On Friday, T arrived from New York, and we spent the rest of the weekend exploring San Diego and La Jolla. My going-out budget is now shot all to hell, thanks to T, but John's entering a month-long crunch period at work, so I don't think I'll be going out too much anyway.

She was staying at La Valencia, which has the greatest seafood brunch ever. We ate our weight in fresh oysters, drank unlimited champagne, and looked out at the ocean. I've decided that if John and I ever have a really big fight, I'm going there for the night. We spent an afternoon at the zoo, and discovered an actual adult sit-down restaurant hidden away within the zoo. Saturday night John and I hosted our first party; not many people, but aren't those the best? When you can sit and eat and drink with people, and actually talk with them?

Birthday! Part 1

Temperature check: 70. Sunny.

Every birthday I've had for the last ten years, it was between 40 and 47 and raining. Possibly longer than that, I can't remember back that far. Today: I'm walking around in a tank top and bare legs. And I haven't touched an umbrella since I moved here.

Thanksgiving update: A big foodie extravaganza seems unlikely. John implied our chances of getting non-family to come over for Thanksgiving dinner was slim to none. Thanksgiving seems kind of beside the point without family, anyway, doesn't it? And while I'd love to cook a feast for the two of us, I suspect we'd both choke on the leftovers within six days. It's just not a proper holiday without a crowd. That's one of the reasons I've been traveling on Thanksgiving the last few years (well, that, and you can get amazing international deals then). So now I think I'll revive my travel tradition, rent a car, and see some national parks.

This may not sound like the most exciting vacation at first, but I missed quite a few of them my first time through California, and it'll make for a great frugal last-minute vacation. My plan so far is to rent a car and see Joshua Tree and Yosemite National Parks, then come back via Big Sur (I didn't get any pictures the first time) and Hearst Castle. We can pack sandwiches, sleep at the Motel 6, and photograph some amazing scenery. Looking through Ansel Adams' pictures of Yosemite, I'm pretty excited about this plan. Plus my National Parks Pass is good through May, so I feel obliged to get some more use out of it.

Thinking about Thanksgiving

I realized the other day that this will be the first Thanksgiving in a few years that I've even been in the country, and many more years since I've actually celebrated Thanksgiving (thank you, bad breakups). So naturally, I'll have to do something this year. Ideally, I'd like to invite over a bunch of people who don't have family plans already and do a big traditional dinner, complete with football and turkey and pumpkin pie. We'll see if I can manage to pull that off--perhaps John and I will just be eating Thanksgiving leftovers for the month of December, because I'll probably cook the same amount of food regardless.

D'Artagnan is selling fresh, free-range, organic, heritage breed turkeys. They're exponentially more expensive than the supermarket sale turkey (Safeway frozen turkeys, 8-12 lbs: $5), but guess which one tastes better? Also, can you really trust an entire 12 lb turkey selling for $5? D'Artagnan may end up getting a lot of money from me this month: they're also selling wild boar, tasso, quail eggs, duck bacon...I'll stop before I drool all over the keyboard.

Here's a possible menu:
Turkey and gravy (duh)
Butternut squash soup with fried sage leaves
Shittake mushroom stuffing
Beet-mashed potatoes
Cranberry and apple terrine
Bacon and almond quinoa
Edamame salad with beets and greens
Creamed spinach with truffle oil
Roasted sweet potato and okra salad
Possibly bourbon corn pudding
Fresh pumpkin pie

With a couple of nice pinot noirs. Oooh, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Now picture the above, and then compare it to this:
The 20 Worst Kids' Foods in America

Broke foodie: Zucchini "crab cakes"

I found zucchini on sale last week, so I bought a few. This week I realized I still had the zucchini, so it was time to eat them. Broke Foodie Tip #12: Don't throw food away. Try to use it up before it goes bad.

So I decided to try a new recipe--essentially I was making crab cakes, but substituting shredded zucchini for the crab. They were much better than I thought they would be--and except for the obvious green of the shredded zucchini, I may have been hard-pressed to know these weren't crab cakes at all. Proof positive that if you add enough Old Bay to anything, it will taste like crab.

Start with 2 cups shredded zucchini, with all the water squeezed out. Add 1 cup breadcrumbs, and mix together. In another bowl, mix together 1 egg, 1 T Dijon mustard, 1 T plain yogurt or mayo, 2 t Old Bay (I added more, I like Old Bay), 1/3 cup milk (I substituted slightly diluted cream, as I was out of milk), and chopped parsley (I used cilantro instead, I use cilantro in regular crab cakes and also I was out of parsley). Stir into the zucchini mix, form into patties, and fry just like you would crab cakes. Which is to say over medium heat, 3-4 minutes per side, in olive oil and butter.

Total cost: I doubled the recipe, to use up all the zucchini, and it yielded 8 big patties. $1.50 for all the zucchini, 13 cents each for the eggs, pennies for the additional ingredients...let's say $2.00 for everything. That's 25 cents each for the fake crab cakes. I served them plain, though you could serve with a variety of sauces or salsa, with a pear cobbler for dessert (to use up all the pears I got on sale).

We'll file these under "Duh"

The BBC is reporting on a study linking depression to processed foods.

And check this out, particularly this paragraph (italics mine):

In spite of their pledges to reduce unhealthy marketing to children, the large cereal companies continue to target children with their least healthy products. Child cereals contain 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium when compared to adult cereals. In fact, not one cereal that is marketed directly to children in the United States would be allowed to advertise to children on television in the United Kingdom. Only one, Cascadian Farm Clifford Crunch, would be eligible to be included in cereals offered through the USDA Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. In addition, 42% contain potentially harmful artificial food dyes.

Is it any wonder kids can't concentrate in school? Now, I'm not going to get all up on my high horse, because I've eaten several handfuls of Halloween candy in the last week. I will say, however, that I do not eat candy as a general rule; and if my heart races and my ability to concentrate plummets eating that amount of sugar as an adult, I can't even imagine what it must be like trying to process that much sugar in a 40-lb body.

Dad, this one's for you:
Junk food is as addictive as heroin.

Finally, a play

My refrigerator and my hard drive overfloweth.

Obviously these are separate issues.

This weekend, I decided to strike out on my own a bit and I rented a car for 24 hours. Zipcar operates within walking distance, but they’re best for quick, last-minute errand running, an hour or two at a time. For longer-term (and unlimited mileage) rentals, there’s an Avis counter at a hotel nearby, also within walking distance. Tres convenient. I walk to work every day, and there are several small errands I can run that are also within walking distance (library, drugstore, bank, drycleaners, the gourmet grocery store, etc.). But for groceries and bulk errand running, I’ve been dependent on John to drive me around on the weekends. I was tired of feeling like a mooch, so I took myself back out on the open road. I hit Sam’s, Ralph’s, and discovered a Trader Joe’s nearby. Then I drove up to South Coast Rep in Orange County to catch the new Noah Haidle play.

It was the first real driving I’ve done since I moved here (Labor Day weekend, for those keeping score). And as a side note, let me just add that rental cars have improved exponentially in the last few years. I can remember renting an economy-class car and getting just that--a car. Maybe a radio. No CD player, no AC, no power windows, nothing. These days, an econo rental will come standard with iPod hookup, GPS, and sunroof. Plus AC and power windows. Driving around town in a cute little snappy car buying groceries is one thing; taking it out on the open road for the 75-mile drive to Orange County is quite another. I’d driven that stretch of I-5 on the road trip, between San Diego and Los Angeles. The traffic was much heavier this time, but it’s still a fun drive. I always enjoy finding a highway where I can go 90 and people still pass me like I’m standing still. Especially with the sunroof down and the tunes blaring. Especially when completely independent, at least for the day. I’m going to have to do that more often.

South Coast Rep is a great theatre; I’m going to enjoy seeing other stuff there. I’m hoping to convince John to take his son and me there for some family-friendly fare in the near future. Saturn Returns had the usual regional theatre issues; an intimate small-cast play on a cavernous stage, in front of an audience of blue-hairs, with the glib slickness that so often accompanies these productions. The play was a little maudlin for my taste; but I’m glad I stuck it out, there was an emotional payoff at the end. It did seem to be a departure from Haidle’s previous work. Plays like Kitty Kitty Kitty and Mr. Marmalade were edgy and unpredictable; Saturn Returns seemed written specifically for the regional theatre audience. Perhaps it was; I was chatting with the bartender before the show and I noted that the crowd seemed sparse. He said that Haidle’s previous play there, Mr. Marmalade, had been very poorly received. “Oh, but it was such a great play, and he’s a lovely writer,” I said. “Yes,” said the bartender, “but the language was too salty for most people.” WTF? I moved away from the South to get away from shit like that. John keeps telling me Orange County is the DC of California, but I didn’t believe it until now.

Sunday involved a trip to the La Jolla Farmer’s Market, to pick up the first CSA box. I got fresh lettuce, Swiss chard, green beans, radishes, apples, guava, yellow pear tomatoes, and a huge bunch of dill. I didn’t do any other shopping, but I made some mental notes on the other stands there so that I can do some in the future. Coupled with the other grocery buys this weekend, the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator are all filled to overflowing. Which is fine with me. Nothing improves my mood so quickly as food and beverage largesse. The pantry is stocked twenty deep with non-perishables, the freezer is so full I had to remove some ice trays, I have two cases of cheap wine for everyday use, and the refrigerator now smells like a huge bunch of fresh dill. Yum. Plus the bowls of fruit, onions and garlic, and winter squash on the counters. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up poor or just because I’m a glutton at heart, but seeing all that food in my kitchen is deeply satisfying.

My hard drive overfloweth, as well. My iTunes folder has now officially eaten up my entire hard drive. It looks like the only solution will be to offload all those files to a much bigger external hard drive--and possibly I’ll also need to purchase a larger iPod at some point in the near future, as well. 80gb doesn’t go as far as I’d like. So I’ve been cleaning up my iTunes this weekend--deleting corrupted/duplicate files, completing partial albums, adding stuff I need that I don’t have, etc. I also had a bunch of stuff that I’d copied wholesale from ex-boyfriends, that I decided I would never actually listen to and could finally be deleted. It’s bad enough I once dated someone who owned the entire Enya catalogue--I don’t need that cluttering up my hard drive. The less said about the Megadeth albums I found, the better.

John and I have just gotten hooked on Mad Men. So much so that it completely derailed me from watching Lost. Well-written, well-acted, well-produced TV shows are so rare, aren’t they? I can count on two hands the number of TV shows ever produced, ever, that I think are worth owning/watching repeatedly. To wit: The Simpsons, South Park, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Entourage, Freaks and Geeks, Slings and Arrows, and now Mad Men and Lost. Possibly Twin Peaks. Possibly Deadwood.

So this week I’m looking forward to a) fun with food, b) further fine-tuning of my music collection, c) my birthday!, and d) T’s impending visit! Yes, my first East Coast visitor will be here this weekend, just in time for my inaugural party. We’re currently on track to celebrate the first birthday without rain in...a significant number of years. I would like to point out that I had lunch today, outside, in short sleeves and bare legs. Last year on my birthday, it was 45 and pouring. Oh, and I got stood up. On my birthday. What a difference a year makes, huh? This year I’ll be celebrating with my SSO (Sexy Significant Other) in 75-degree sunshine. Turning 34 never felt so good.

Prom

I know, you're thinking, "Enough with the bean soup already, post some real recipes and a real update, dammit." Quite honestly, I haven't been cooking much this week--a big project has been building all week at work, meaning the guys I work for have been working some very long days and nights, meaning I've been ordering lunch and sometimes dinner too for the whole department. Couple those leftovers with the nine metric tons of Halloween candy floating around the office, and you have the perfect Broke Foodie meal: free leftover deli sandwiches and salads. But this weekend I will tackle the monthly grocery shopping, in addition to the new Thomas Keller cookbook, so new cooking adventures await.

And now you're thinking, "You only go grocery shopping once a month?" Without a car, it's easier to do a big blowout of shopping once a month than worry about how to get around every week. I've also joined a CSA, which will provide me with a large box of locally grown, organic produce every two weeks. (Note: CSA stands for Community-Sponsored Agriculture, not Confederate States of America, as John opined when I brought it up. Too funny!) So between the once-monthly shopping for staples and the box of fresh greenery twice a month, I have no need for more frequent shopping trips. Especially since I've been getting back into menu planning, which means I've got dinners for the next two weeks mapped out in my head. Menu planning is essential for using up things before they go bad.

But I digress. The office I work for has a tradition of making Halloween into a BFD: this year, the theme is 80s Prom. For the past two weeks, fake senior prom posters, trophy cases, streamers, and banks of lockers have been going up around the office. It's already led to prom-induced dreams of prom and high school. The other night I dreamed that I ran into a group of people I went to high school with, who decided they were going to all crash the senior prom. The whole dream was punctuated with me thinking, "A bunch of 35-year-olds crashing the prom is the most pathetic thing I've ever heard of," followed by, "Wait. I don't have a date. THAT'S the most pathetic thing I've ever heard of." When I told John about this dream, his inexplicable reaction was, "Well, conceivably, in a few years, we could go to the prom, as chaperones," which caused a large mental dry heave on my part. I don't know which part was worse: the fact that we're both old enough to be prom chaperones, or that he was serious.

So this morning, when I got dressed, I had to get creative with my now very minimal wardrobe. Never fear, though: an 80s look can be had with the combination of the following very common wardrobe elements. One denim skirt. One pair legwarmers. One old black concert T-shirt, paired with a big slouchy belt. One can AquaNet. All the bangles, rings, and chain necklaces I currently own, all worn at once. One great big earring--just one. One blazer, with popped collar. Blue eyeshadow. Body glitter. Rinse and repeat, as necessary. I haven't been so over-accessorized since 1991. Last night I actually uttered the words, "I have to get up early tomorrow morning so I can tease my hair." I definitely haven't said that since 1991.

John's taking his son for Halloween-related activities tomorrow, so I'm treating myself to a full day of Me. I'm renting a car for the day, running various errands, and then taking myself to see my first play here in Cali: the new Noah Haidle at South Coast Rep. Then Sunday I'll get up early and go cruise the La Jolla Farmer's Market. I can't wait.

Broke Foodie: Roast chicken, and resulting chicken broth

I consider a whole roasted chicken one of the easiest things to cook, with the most bang for my buck. It's versatile; it's cheap; the carcass yields plenty of homemade broth; and it invariably impresses guests. Usually I get something like, "You cooked a whole chicken for me?" I try to refrain from telling them just how easy it really is.

Between shopping at Sam's and working the sales, I can usually get a whole chicken for $2 or $3. Compare that with the usual price of boneless skinless chicken breasts here: $6.99/lb. Keep in mind these are chicken breasts that have been pumped full of water, and harvested off Frankenstein genetically-modified factory farm chickens, to make them seem bigger and more impressive than they actually are. Whole chickens at least are not pumped full of water, and I think they're easier to cook than chicken breasts. Really. When was the last time you cooked a chicken breast that didn't taste at least a little dry? (It's because all that water they pump in evaporates during cooking.)

So, here's my standard recipe. First, put the chicken breast-side-up in a roasting pan. Stuff the inside of the (thawed) chicken with half an onion and half a citrus fruit (lemon, lime, orange). Save the other half of the onion for something else, and squeeze the other half of the lemon/lime/whatever over the top of the chicken. Next, add some liquid, maybe 3/4 cup or so, to the pan. The liquid can be white wine, red wine, any kind of juice, red/white wine/cider vinegar, vodka, rum, beer, whatever. The possibilities are endless. Essentially it's whatever you have on hand. Then add some seasonings to the top of the chicken. Again, it's whatever you have on hand. It can be some combination of green herbs--parsley, basil, oregano--or spicy herbs--paprika, chili powder, cayenne pepper--or a prepared mix, like steak or Thai seasoning. Whatever. Don't scrimp.

Throw the chicken into a preheated 375-degree oven. In an hour, flip the whole bird over in the pan, so the breast is now soaking in the liquid. In another hour, flip the bird back over. Wait 15 min or so, long enough for the breast to re-crunchify, and take it out. Let it sit for another 15 min or so before carving. Eat.

That's it--maybe 3 minutes of prep work, and 1 minute's worth of doing something to the bird while it cooks. Total cost: $3, or however much you paid for the chicken, since the other ingredients can be cobbled together from what you already have. After you cook it, you can serve it whole; or pull the meat off and use it in any number of other things (chicken salad, soup, gumbo, etc.).

Be sure to save all the bones, and the liquid inside the roasting pan, for chicken broth. To make the broth, just throw the carcass (and the onion from inside the chicken) into a large stew pot. Add bay leaves and salt. At this point you can cook on low for several hours until the broth is a pleasant medium-brown color. You can also add vegetable leavings (peels, onion ends, celery leaves, pepper insides) for a more full-flavored broth. I keep a Ziploc bag in the freezer for the vegetable leavings--you can throw everything into the broth frozen, and you don't have to worry about your trash can smelling like onions. When the broth is appropriately brothy, strain out the chicken bones and pour the broth into something. I save old jars, but you can also use Tupperware or Ziploc bags. The added bonus of Tupperware/Ziploc is that you can freeze the broth until you need it, freeing up room in your fridge. The broth tastes so much better than ready-made versions, and it doesn't have all the sodium/preservatives.

It occurs to me that these entries would be much more helpful with pictures. I'll start taking some when I cook.

Broke Foodie: Beef stew

Are you sensing a theme yet? It's "soup." Even though it's 75 degrees here, I'm still craving winter foods. I guess it's that time of year.

Prep work for beef stew involved taking some frozen stew meat out of the freezer. (Stew beef, bought in bulk at Sam's Club and broken down into roughly 3/4 lb pkgs for easy freezing) Standard soup procedure, I threw an onion and some garlic in bacon fat and let that cook down. Then I added the thawed beef and let that sear a little while I added seasonings (BBQ rub, salt, pepper, chili powder, cayenne, dried red pepper flakes, cumin, etc.). Add one big can of tomatoes and some broth. I also added about 3/4 cup of dried mushrooms, reconstituted in some Long Island red wine (I threw the wine in, as well). Let cook maybe twenty minutes. Add about three handfuls of frozen peas and half a box of orzo. When the orzo is done, so is the soup!

I could also have added carrots and celery to the first step, but I didn't have any. They're nice additions to soup if you have them on hand, but if not, I usually find the soups don't suffer.

Broke Foodie: Black bean soup

Last night this was actually black bean soup with venison, thanks to a packet of venison from my mom. Thanks Mom!

A local grocery store here, Henry's, sells a lot of bulk drygoods. I can get quinoa and dried beans there in bulk, which is nice. I usually start a bean soup a couple days in advance. Day 1: soak the beans overnight. Day 2: rinse beans, cook them all day in a Crock Pot on low. Just add water, no seasonings. If you cook them twice, it cooks out all of the, shall we say, undesirable side effects of beans. Two days of prep sounds like a lot, but really it involved about three minutes over two days, two minutes of which were getting the Crock Pot down.

So, Day 3: standard soup preparation. I sauteed an onion and some garlic in bacon fat, added a jar of canned tomatoes and the venison, and all the beans. Add stock and seasonings (in this case, chili powder, cumin, red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika). Let cook on low for, oh, let's say, 20 minutes. Serve with sour cream. Total prep time: about 30 minutes. I've also made this same soup with ground beef or sausage; just add the meat to the onion and garlic and let cook before adding the tomatoes and beans.

Total cost: tomatoes and venison were free. Black beans: maybe 75 cents worth? Pennies for the onion, garlic and seasonings, all bought in bulk. Broth: homemade. Sour cream: actually also free, as it was leftover from an office lunch meeting (burritos). So total cost of soup, being generous: maybe $1.00. At least six servings' worth.

Broke Foodie: Refrigerator soup

I've had a lot of people ask me how, knowing my tastes and proclivities for things like fine wine and foie gras, I can feed myself on less than $100 a month. First, you have to have a fully stocked pantry; my food costs right now are higher than that, because I'm in the process of building the pantry. Oh, and because I'm feeding two people instead of one. Second, you have to eat your leftovers, all your leftovers, and not be afraid of things like beans and soup. Third, no liquid calories (other than alcohol). I'm continuously amazed at how much people spend on soda, juice, Red Bull, Gatorade, etc., and also amazed at how these same people usually wonder about how much weight they've gained/how much their dentistry costs. I'd rather save my calories for the food. Fourth, and most important, you have to know how to cook.

Which is usually the sticking point for most of the people I know. But it's easy, it really is. The human race survived for millenia without convenience foods, and in the amount of time it takes a Lean Cuisine meal to heat in the microwave (5-7 minutes), I can throw some things into a pan on the stove and serve up a hot, fresh, homecooked meal. Without a lot of preservatives and chemicals I can't pronounce. So I'm starting a new thread on this blog, called Broke Foodie, in which I'll share all my favorite (cheap) recipes.

So, one of my standby recipes: Refrigerator Soup. This is a catch-all term for "a soup which uses up all those random, seemingly unrelated things hanging out in your fridge." I call it minestrone for other people. Obviously, what goes into it will vary, but the basic shape remains the same. Saute a chopped onion and some garlic (maybe some carrots and celery if you have them on hand) in olive oil or bacon fat. Then add a can of tomatoes, a can of beans (any kind), a package of frozen spinach, and whatever else you have handy. Last night I threw in some leftover spaghetti sauce, a handful of dried fusilli, and a handful of quinoa. Any vegetables you have that are in danger of going bad can be added. Then add broth to the pot, about 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches above the food line, and whatever seasonings seem reasonable. (Sam's makes an all-purpose Italian seasoning mix that I like to use for soups. I put in that, plus bay leaves and salt, last night.) Cook till everything's heated through and the pasta's done, maybe 15-20 minutes.

There! You've made soup. Easy as pie and very cheap and filling. Serve with freshly shredded parmesan on top. I guarantee it tastes far better than anything Campbell's or Progresso ever made.

Total cost: Let's see...maybe .50 each for the cans of tomatoes and beans (bought in bulk), pennies for the onion and garlic, about $1.00 for the frozen spinach. Call it another $1.00 for everything else (handful of pasta, spices, etc.). The broth was homemade. So $4.00, max, for eight servings of soup. That's fifty cents per serving.

Still 75 and sunny

Well, I didn’t get the job I wanted. And the temp job is not paying anywhere near what I used to make. But life is pretty good, regardless. John and I worked out finances, at least until the temp job goes perm (when I can hopefully start making more money). My container-garden tomatoes on the patio are starting to take off (in October!) and I have some freshly planted pea shoots that are going bonkers. Exciting stuff. Best of all, I can walk to work in a t-shirt, in the bright California sunshine (last week in New York: 43 and rainy. Last week in San Diego: between 70 and 75 and sunny). I have yet to break out a jacket or an umbrella. I’m currently on track to celebrate the first birthday I’ve had without rain in…more than a decade? Early November in New York is always rainy and miserable. I’m considering going to the beach on my birthday this year. The beach!

Speaking of which, I thought about having a house party, but then upgraded that idea to a night out in LA. Most of the people I know in SoCal are in LA, anyway, and I haven’t been there since I moved. We’ll have dinner at Ford’s Filling Station, and then go out to some really nice but not crowded or expensive bar afterward. Does such a thing exist in LA? We’ll find out. And any West Coasters that are reading this, you’re all invited. I think I’ll save the house party for an actual housewarming sometime later in November, and I’d also like to put together a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone I know that, like me, will not have other family commitments that weekend. Thanks to the San Diego library, I’ve been drooling over the Alinea and Thomas Keller’s sous vide cookbooks and now I really want to cook for people. There’s a new tabletop sous vide small appliance coming out that I’m really excited about, retailing for $399. I’m wondering, though, if I can’t get essentially the same results with a sous vide temperature regulator (around $150) and a Crock Pot. Of course, I’d need a vacuum sealer ($150) either way. So as much as I’d like that, I think there will not be any bison tenderloin sous vide for Thanksgiving. (Mmmmm...bison tenderloin sous vide...) Which now makes me want to plan a menu.

Walking down to the library last night, I realized just how small your world is with no car. My world has shrunk down to a mile in all directions. I feel like a loser, having been here for close to two months with no good intel on local restaurants/bars/shopping, etc. And in a sort-of-unrelated note, I’ve been thinking about career moves lately. An old idea is burrowing back to the surface, and the more I examine it, the more I think I like it. More on that later.

Oh, and we've decided to drive cross-country (and back) for Christmas. Even with gas being what it is, it's cheaper than flying for three people to two different destinations. Hopefully both John and his son will adapt to road-tripping, and I will not want to kill all three of us by the time we make it to Virginia.

I didn't get the job

Peg, you're right. Thursdays suck.

Oh, if only

Last night I dreamed that I was at home, having dinner with my parents, when Pockets called me. She told me that enough time had passed, that she was sorry, that everything could go back to the way it was before. She came over, and we hugged.

Then I woke up.

The thick early morning fog here that rolls in off the Pacific is really beautiful.

Brief update

The temp job continues apace. Still no word from the job I want--I touched base with them yesterday and they're still checking references/in process. Grr.

Spending a lot of time writing, thinking about money, thinking about the future. Part of me wants to give my brain a break and get out more, another part wants to just hole up and hunker down. But the writing is going well and I'm cooking a lot.

Sorry this post isn't more informative/interesting. That's the bane of working life, isn't it, one day just bleeds into another, they're pretty much the same... which is not to imply that I'm depressed or bored stiff. Far from it. I'm just...floating. For a little while.

Money (insert opening bars of Pink Floyd song here)

I just realized this is the first full week of work that I've worked since Easter. I don't like it any better now than I did then. And while I was bored and restless for that month here in San Diego, waiting around in my apartment for something to happen, it was infinitely preferable to being bored and restless in an office. Then again, it was the same feeling I had in New York before the road trip, just waiting around for something to happen. Lesson: something should always be happening. And not in the "I need you to schedule nine meetings for me with these 12 people" kind of way. Lesson: quit whining about it and make something happen.

That being said, my financial situation is nigh untenable at this point. Thanks to the trip, I've recouped all the debt I managed to pay off earlier this year. What I'm making as a temp now is better than nothing, but it's not enough per month to pay all my bills, and I'm not including food, transportation, or electricity in that. But now I'm just really, really tired of having to work bullshit jobs to pay my creditors. I want to be able to take a $12-an-hour job in a kitchen if I want, or to hit the road for a few days, or to be able to save money toward a house, or whatever. And John has debt, too, so I think we will need to come up with a game plan to tackle all this and get it wiped out as soon as possible. I'm not too proud to reuse Ziploc bags and make my own dishwasher detergent in the meantime, and I'm no longer interested in spending a lot of money on clothes and shoes (that's the good thing about California being so uber-casual; I no longer feel the need to continuously update my wardrobe the way I did in New York. Hell, I wear clean pajamas to the grocery store, I'm doing better than half the people there already), and I already know how to make delicious rice-and-bean variations, so hopefully it will just be a matter of carving out the game plan and implementing it.

Speaking of ways to cut back, I have discovered that San Diego has Zipcar. O happy day! I can walk or take public transportation to work, and then use Zipcar for my occasional errand-running/going out needs, completely eliminating any need for owning a car. Now, one day I'd like to get my A3 back; but even if I had a car (and the money to support it), I think I'd still want to walk or take the bus to work. I'm not a patient person, and traffic makes me want to shoot people. I don't need to deal with rush-hour traffic every day, I'd blow a gasket. At least on the bus I can read and ignore it. Plus it's cheaper.

I did break down and buy a new watch. I lost my old one, the one I'd had for ten years, somewhere in the Vancouver hostel. I've been without one ever since, and while for the most part I did fine without it, I did miss it. My arm always felt a little naked. Now it doesn't anymore.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of fiscal responsibility, I priced out Christmas plane tickets from San Diego to St. Louis to DC and back to San Diego again. The cheapest I could find was $600 apiece, with about nine different connections. So, fine, but $600 x three people = too much. The crappy-ass airlines don't need any of my hard-earned money, thankyouverymuch. But get this--it's actually cheaper to rent a car and drive three people cross-country and back again, even with gas prices being what they are, than it would be to fly during Christmas. What's that all about?

It's all about the little things

One of the things I love most about not living in New York is being able to shop at Sam’s Club again. I know, I’m weird, but something in me rejoices in having large quantities of pantry basics and non-perishables around. Why buy a 5-lb bag of flour for $4 when you can get 25 lbs for $8 at Sam’s? It’s interesting seeing the regional differences—in Mississippi, I can get red beans and andouille sausage in bulk; in New York, I can get five different kinds of pasta and egg creams; in Virginia, I could always count on pine nuts and country ham. Here, there’s a bare minimum of pasta and no beans at all, but I can get tripe and beef cheeks in bulk. I’m attributing that to the fact that I’m about 15 miles from Mexico. But it does mean a bit of a readjustment in my shopping list (okay, I can’t get penne or pine nuts or red beans in bulk anymore—but I CAN get short ribs). I went to Sam’s this weekend and loaded up on some yummy stuff—short ribs, sausages, avocados, tomatoes, nectarines, crab (which is expensive on the West Coast, even at Sam’s, and I can no longer get fresh never-previously-frozen shrimp), dried fruit, etc., etc. It’s been a couple of days of good eating, much to John’s lunchtime delight. He seems new to this whole eating-leftovers-for-lunch phenomenon. Bachelors are funny creatures.

Anyway, so the other night we had crab cakes with mango salsa on sautéed rainbow chard; last night we had lamb chops with a corn-cilantro-tomato quinoa; and O Joy of Joys, I found a foie gras connection. The nearby Bristol Farms, a gourmet supermarket which has the advantage of being within walking distance, has some very good smoked bacon. Normally I get bacon at Sam’s (bulk bacon!) but the selection on Saturday was more bacon fat than bacon, so I wandered down to Bristol Farms after work yesterday to replenish. I gabbed with the meat counter guy for a while about the possibility of ordering fresh shrimp (no) and pork belly (yes), and then noticed they sold foie gras.

Now, I could only buy foie gras in whole packages in New York. One whole liver tends to be about a pound and a half, and at $80 a pound, that was too rich for my blood. Every once in a while I could find canned foie gras somewhere in small tins, but you know my feelings about anything canned. But the meat guy agreed to give me an eighth of a pound of fresh foie gras last night, in beautiful thin slices, which meant I had a mini-gorging session when I got home. It was all I could do to save some for John. This is a very exciting, but potentially very expensive, development for me.

Tonight I think I’m going to use up the last of loaf of French bread to make French bread pizzas, and then make a mango-avocado salad to go on the side. A mango-avocado salad in New York would be the height of fruity decadence; but they’re so cheap here, it’s almost like eating beans. Tomorrow I foresee a butternut squash and roasted shallot risotto with a dandelion greens salad on the side.

Zombies and lardo

I'm down to one of two final candidates for the dream position; just in time for John's birthday, on Friday. We celebrated at The Linkery, which makes its own sausage and blends its own red cask wine, which, YUM. The clear winner of the evening was the lardo ice cream sandwich--ice cream made from cured lardo, between two big chocolate chip cookies, with candied bacon on top. Now I have to learn how to make lardo ice cream. We finished the evening partying with the young college kids in the Gaslamp district. These kids today, I tell ya. Not one of them can actually dance. (Not that I can.)

Yesterday was spent recovering from a Friday-induced hangover and grocery shopping. It's sad, but one of the highlights of moving was the realization that I could once again shop at Sam's. I can't even begin to tell you how cheap avocados are here, in bulk. I've also learned the joys of the San Diego library system--all the books I wanted in New York, but available faster! We ended the day with John's co-workers at Zombieland. This really actually is a totally awesome movie. I was skeptical at first, but when one of my all-time idols made a cameo appearance, I was won over.

"If you loved me, you'd update your blog."

...was the message I got on Facebook today from not one but two friends. So okay, okay.

I'm temping in a financial firm, doing almost exactly the same things I did in my last two jobs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I am now firmly convinced that I would rather make no money than ever hear the words, "We need to put together a presentation deck for the year-over-year cost analysis recap meeting," ever again. But it's a paycheck, and the job is within walking distance, so that's a very nice perk. Still. I'm interviewing again tomorrow for my dream job here. Offer sacrifices to the God of Theatrical Jobs for me, will you?

I'm starting to get a little restless. Once the apartment was put together, I really wanted to get out and explore the city, check out the local restaurants and bars, hang out at the beaches, etc. But it's hard to do that when you have no car and your boyfriend works all day. We're going out for his birthday dinner tomorrow night, to a local gastropub which makes its own charcuterie and specializes in craft beers. I know, it has "Jenny" written all over it. But so far as I can tell, he has no restaurant preferences. When I told him where we were going, he said, "How do you know this stuff? You just moved here." To which I replied, "How do you NOT know this stuff? You've been living here for two years!" Which is not meant to be a criticism--people have different spending priorities, and I'll be the first to admit that my restaurant/going out expenditures often make mere mortals hyperventilate. But it's a little hard to adjust my sightlines from New York to...the rest of America. (To which you will say, "Didn't we do this once already? Did you not learn your lesson last time?" To which I will say, "I'll be able to spend Christmas by the pool here. So there.")

Quite a few of the things I really loved about New York are missing here. There, it was considered normal to go out every night of the week, for men to own multiple pairs of $200 designer jeans, to not have cable, to not have a car, to be able to talk intelligently about current world affairs. Here, you're considered dressed up if you wear an unwrinkled polo shirt. No one my age seems to go out more than once a week, max, and my walking less than a mile to work has already earned me more than one "Wait, you WALKED? Where's your car?" (Okay, rant over.)

That being said, the weather here really is spectacular, everyone's much friendlier and more laidback than in New York, and no one (even in finance) works past 5. And I can grow basil and tomatoes on my deck year-round. I will just have to learn not to grit my teeth when I see 40- and 50-year-old men wearing baseball caps and Tevas with socks. But I'll be damned if I give up hanging out in gastropubs and wine bars. (Grin.) Now that I have a job, I hope to start frequenting some of the places I've been reading about--even if I have to take the bus there. I want to go OUT. A LOT. See, that's me. I'd rather spend my money eating good food in interesting places than own a car. I know, I'm weird.

Employment! Sort of

I have a temp job! Starting Wednesday. Whew. It doesn't pay what I'd like, but it pays a lot more than I'm making right now, which is nothing. And it's within walking distance. And I had a great interview last week for my dream job, so fingers crossed. Hopefully in a week or two I'll have a permanent job (maybe even the one I really want) and will actually be bringing in some money.

But in the meantime it's nice to be interviewing and learning the bus system (which is actually pretty decent). I'm spending my days cooking and poking at the container garden of herbs on the balcony and writing and watching bad TV (I have cable again for the first time in years). Well, until Wednesday.

We have movement on the job front!

...Finally! I'm starting to interview at various places, and I have my fingers crossed for one in particular. It would be perfect for me, but I'm not saying any more, lest I jinx it. Hopefully I will be gainfully employed within the next couple of weeks.

And home life has moved very nicely into the "Domestic Bliss" phase. The first couple of weeks were a little rocky--not because of domestic relations, but simply because it took longer for me to recover from the move than I thought it would. Driving 25,000 miles in four months left me with a gimpy knee and chronic joint stiffness. I'm just now able to wake up in the mornings and not feel like I've been run over by a truck. The move itself smeared itself across my psyche; now I have recurring anxiety dreams about packing, and moving, and needing to get somewhere but not being able to find my purse, or my car, or whatever it is that I need in that particular dream. So my mornings for about two weeks were all about dealing with residual physical and mental sludge. It's not a good way to start a day, trust me.

But now that everything's unpacked, and the apartment is officially a home, John and I can spend a Sunday curled up on the sofa in our pajamas giggling at several hours of VH1's "Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the 80s" rather than going to Lowe's, or Ikea, or storage, or whatever. The gorgeous and unchanging weather has helped immensely, as has being able to cook again for the first time in four months. I'm starting to write my book, and we have movement on the job front. It's wonderful being able to think about the future in rosy terms again, for the first time in...well, a really long time.

That being said, we watched "Thelma and Louise" last night and I found myself longing to get back on the road and go back to Utah, where much of it was filmed. Just when you think you've managed to kill the wanderlust for a little while...

San Diego update

Let's see...since the last post, the apartment is approaching 85% complete. My cooking mojo has returned. The cable and internet has been finally hooked up, all electronics have been wired together, mutual furniture has been purchased, herbs have been planted on the balcony, and we weathered our first fight. I even survived a weekend with John's son--I had to keep reminding myself that he's a normal 10-year-old boy, and that I should not take it personally when he didn't want to eat my cooking, didn't say please or thank you, put his shoes on the furniture, ate with his hands instead of his fork, left wet towels on the bathroom floor...you know, all those things that would be unacceptable behavior coming from an adult but are perfectly natural from a 10-year-old boy. My experience with children has been severely limited up to now (on purpose, I might add, although my friend K insists on calling me "The Baby Whisperer"), so I think the biggest challenge will not be adapting to brown carpeting or even finding a job but will be remaking myself into stepmother material.

Speaking of jobs, I've ramped up the search this week. I'm excited to learn the Old Globe is hiring; and in the meantime, I'll be blanketing the restaurants within walking distance with my resume. I also sent my resume to every temp agency in town. I'm tired of waking up in the middle of the night and panicking about my employment situation.

I set up a digital picture frame with all the photos from my trip this summer. I'm continually surprised by how beautiful most of them are, although my wanderlust is already heating back up. At least the AmEx points from the trip yielded me a 14-inch All Clad Professional nonstick frying pan, courtesy of Williams Sonoma.

Oh, and I got that Shun knife set. Best. Knives. Ever.

Moving once is like dying twice

...as the Germans say. I made it cross-country in one piece, but I don't ever want to do that again. Ever.

The trip from Gulfport to El Paso was the longest 16 1/2 hours of my life. There's nothing more demoralizing than driving for nine hours, only to see a sign that says, "El Paso: 551 miles." I was driving through the night, and I managed to stay awake, but only just. However, based on what I saw the next morning when I arrived in El Paso, West Texas is just as boring in daylight as it is in moonlight. The cats managed to settle, for the most part, once the novelty of the truck wore off. The drive itself was uneventful--too much so. Finding fuel for the truck wasn't a problem. Even though there's nothing to resemble civilization between San Antonio and El Paso, most service stations left the pumps on all night. However, that also meant there was no place to a) pee, and most importantly, b) buy coffee between San Antonio and El Paso. I'll admit to peeing behind a couple of gas stations in the middle of the night. Not being able to find more caffeine presented a much more serious difficulty.

I crashed once I hit El Paso, though not nearly for as long as I would have liked. Then it was off again for the final push that night, to San Diego. Fortunately there was a full moon; driving through the New Mexico and Arizona desert by moonlight was strangely beautiful. And New Mexico had a series of very Zen road signs: "Dust Storms May Exist." And "Zero Visibility Possible." I think they were actually meant to be a metaphor for life. If you think about it, many road signs can be metaphors for real life. Watch for Other Drivers. Caution: Rough Road Ahead. Yield. Merge. Road Ends.

Moving-in day presented a whole new challenge, as I'd had maybe six hours of broken sleep in the last 48, almost 30 of which had been spent driving. We managed to get everything inside, with the help of John's friends, and then I went to bed at 4:30 in the afternoon and slept for 14 hours.

Everything since then has been non-stop unpacking, rearranging, and more unpacking. I have a large and varied catalogue of aches and bruises, but the apartment is finally beginning to resemble a place that people might actually live, rather than just a collection of boxes. It's going to be awesome, once it's finally done. I went grocery shopping last night, and went to Sam's Club and Target today. Let me just say that those three trips involved a retarded amount of money, but now I have a full-fledged pantry again. It's been a long time since I had a full pantry (and liquor cabinet) at my disposal; since before the road trip, in May. I haven't yet summoned my mojo and cooked something, but it's coming. Just looking at it all gives me a feel of deep inner peace. And I took all the prints and posters and photographs I collected on the trip to be framed today. When I finally get all that back in two weeks, it will be the final glorious layer of icing on the apartment. No, that's not true. It will be more like a layer of rolled fondant, with swirly things, and a sugar castle on top.

On the road again

I retract what I previously said about missing my calling as a long-haul truck driver. Road tripping is one thing. You can set the cruise control, relax, eat while driving, whatever. Driving a truck requires a level of hypervigilance that's exhausting. Especially when you have two cats in the truck with you. The truck is big, it handles poorly, it's almost impossible to multitask, and most damning, it has no cruise control. So I'm constantly driving, constantly evaluating my space needs relative to the cars around me, and constantly dealing with the cats. They're beginning to settle a little, now that the novelty of being in a truck is wearing off. But I had to fashion a leash for Sarah--she kept trying to crawl in my lap, I kept having to toss her back in the passenger seat, and she kept coming for my lap. If there were an Olympic medal in cat-tossing, I would be the world champion. Finally I leashed her and tied the leash to the passenger side door, so that she could only come halfway across the truck cab. So yesterday she went exactly to the very end of the leash--which turned out to be on top of my cooler--and stayed there.

My right knee is killing me, and it will only get worse. I'm already on an ibuprofen regimen, and I'm thinking of cadging some muscle relaxants and 800-mg Motrin from my sister. When I got to Gulfport yesterday, after close to 14 hours of driving, I went to bed at 6 pm and slept for 12 hours. When I finally hit El Paso Friday morning, after 16 hours of driving, I don't doubt I'll sleep for another 10 or 12 hours. Plus, for the amount of money I'll spend on gas to get this gas-guzzler across the country, I could almost have hired professional movers. It's getting 10, maybe 12, mpg, which means I'm spending $150-200 a day in gas.

But all this bitching aside, it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. My stuff is packed very tightly in the back (apparently I own exactly one 12-foot truck's worth of stuff), so I'm not worried about it sliding around. There's air conditioning, an iPod hookup, chargers for my iPod and GPS, and enough room (just) in the cab for the cats and my stuff. I have to stop often enough to get gas to get me out of the truck on a regular basis, and I won't have to worry about traffic between here and San Diego, since I'll be driving at night. And pretty soon, I'll be in SD with my man, happily unpacking and rearranging furniture and nesting to my heart's content. I had a moment of panic when I left NY--"oh no! I just gave up my cheap apartment! In BROOKLYN! WTF was I thinking??"--but then I remembered palm trees and love and getting free reign in a new kitchen and I was okay again.

Speaking of love and kitchens, my sister has just gotten the 11-piece Shun Ken Onion knife set. For those of you that don't automatically know what I'm talking about, this is the Holy Grail of knife sets. It retails for about $1500 (though my sister didn't pay anywhere near that, being my sister). I used to dream about new Jimmy Choo shoes. Now I dream about top-of-the-line knife sets and copper pans. I immediately fantasized about having my own $1500 knife set, in my own kitchen, in my own house, with my own loving husband hovering behind me complaining about when dinner was going to be ready. If driving my tired ass cross-country for two more days gets me any closer to that fantasy, I'll consider it a fair trade.

Almost time

I may be in danger of overloading on nostalgia. Anything that has a picture or reference to Brooklyn on it is now like heroin to me--I must have it. I bought two really overpriced pillows, one with a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge on it and another with a map of Brooklyn, a tray with the skyline of Brooklyn (compliments of Fishs Eddy), Brooklyn coasters, the list goes on and on. Can you tell I'm nesting? I'm nesting in a big way.

But maybe this is a good sign. The last time I left New York, I just packed up my things and left. There was no effort to collect things that would remind me of home. On Wednesday I went to the Brooklyn Bridge Park and took about 9,000 pictures of the bridge and Manhattan skyline, with the intent to frame the best ones. Hell, I even got a new subway map so I could have that in the new place, too. Maybe this is a sign that I really am saying goodbye for good. I've also been saying goodbye to all my friends here, and I've decided that although saying goodbye sucks, I also haven't had to buy my own drinks in two weeks. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Tomorrow I really say goodbye, at my going-away party, and then Sunday I once again hit the open road--this time with everything I own and two miserable cats in tow. I'll try to update from my sister's place in Gulfport, which I'm officially designating as the halfway point. I arrive in San Diego (God willing and the creeks don't rise) next Saturday morning. Everyone pray for me in the next week. Pray that my knee holds through multiple days of 16-hour driving, pray that the cats don't howl the whole way, pray that the truck doesn't break down somewhere in the middle of the night in West Texas, pray that none of my dishware or glassware breaks en route, pray that this really is a Cinderella story and I don't get suckerpunched like I did last time. Pray also that I can find a way to hook up my iPod to the moving truck, because I don't relish the thought of having to depend on the radio all the way there.

Which reminds me--I should go trim the cats' claws so I don't end up in San Diego in small pieces...

Ohio; and moving update

I just spent six days in Ohio with John's family, and I have to say, they are without a doubt the most entertaining and laidback family I've ever experienced. Now, when my extended family gets together, we can all get rowdy. Even my dad loosens up a little then. But I can't relax completely around them, perhaps because it's my own family. I always feel like I'm being judged, like I have to watch my language, and not talk about sex or politics or religion. Perhaps that's the downside of hanging out with your parents as an adult--they never really see you as an adult, and you never really feel like one.

But in Ohio, I was welcomed completely. They made me feel like I was already part of the family, and no one judged me for telling dirty jokes or swearing. In fact, I spent the better part of the six days sitting around the pool drinking beer, listening to other people tell dirty jokes and swear, so of course I fit right in. No one gave me disapproving glares when John and I disappeared for long stretches of time or when I was drawn into a discussion of the finer points of wheat whiskey. There's something to be said for being able to relax completely with a group of likeminded people.

Moving preparations continue apace. I'm still nervous about the long drive out with the cats, but what the hell. I just drove 19,000 miles, I can do this, too. I've officially found a replacement roommate, finished off the last of the liquor cabinet, and am in the process of saying goodbye to all my friends.

It's funny--almost as soon as I started the road trip, I could turn around and watch my old life cracking off in big pieces. It's a scary process to molt like that, but it's also transformational. It's very rare that I feel like I'm doing the right thing, as I'm doing it. My inner monologue of doubt and fear usually drowns that out. Which is funny, because when I was at home last time, my dad told me he felt like he had to worry extra about me because I was so fearless. I almost laughed out loud--I've never thought of myself as fearless. Rash maybe, occasionally impetuous, but not fearless. So this is my opportunity to live fearlessly, to enjoy my decisions and not constantly overanalyze them. It almost makes me want to unpack all my kitchen gear and whip up something big and complicated to celebrate.

The adventure continues

I still feel like I'm on the road trip, in a way. Home no longer feels like home, it just feels like the place where all my stuff is. And now all my stuff is packed up, so I might as well still be living out of my car--the vast majority of everything I own is now inaccessible. It took about four days to do a thorough purge and then pack everything, which really is a very short amount of time. When I first started, I thought it would take forever, but I guess I don't have as much stuff as I thought. It helped that most of my wardrobe and book collection went the way of the dinosaurs.

So now I'm concentrating on the intangibles of the moving process--hiring a truck, changing my address, sending out resumes. I mapped out my moving process, which involves a night in Virginia, a night or two with my sister in Mississippi, and then barreling across West Texas on I-10. I'm terrified of leaving the moving van overnight at a cheap motel while I sleep (that just screams "steal me, everything I own is in the back") so I think I will drive at night and sleep at a cheap motel during the day. I'm hoping that will eliminate most of the temptation for thieves. My plan is to make it to El Paso from Gulfport (16 hours), sleep for 8 hours, then make it the rest of the way to San Diego (11 hours) in time for move-in day on September 5. I will be a cranky mess on September 5, but I also want to cut down as much as possible on travel time for the cats. They'll be a cranky mess too.

Home isn't

Home doesn't feel like home anymore. It just feels like the place where all my stuff is. That's to be expected, I guess, since I haven't lived here for nine weeks. But I didn't expect to feel quite so unmoored.

I've been purging, and what a purge it's been. At least 65% of my book collection and roughly 80% of my wardrobe is now gone, donated to the Salvation Army or sold off on various online outlets. (Those of you who knew my former book collection, I'm down to about 10% of the all-time high.) If I had any residual doubts about moving to California, they disappeared the instant I jettisoned all the wool kneesocks. Goodbye forever, 14 pairs of wool kneesocks! See ya, 19 pairs of flannel-lined dress pants! Sayonara, 27 pairs of black tights! Not to mention the silk long johns, the boots, the gloves, the sweaters...I didn't realize how extensive my winter wardrobe had gotten until I got rid of most of it. There's not much wardrobe left now, but that's okay. Even though I'll be driving a moving van cross-country, I still want there to be as little as possible inside the moving van. I'm stripping it all down to the bare essentials.

I can't bring myself to get rid of my cashmere sweaters, though. If anyone is willing to give them a good home and love them them the way I loved them, let me know. And the herbs I planted in the backyard grew like wildfire while I was gone. It pains me to leave them behind, too, but I'm trying to console myself with visions of basil growing year-round in Cali.

All this purging, though, and I haven't started packing yet. Maybe that's why I still don't feel productive.

"Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run."

It’s been an amazing journey. I burned through every last red cent I owned in the world, and I am now officially flat broke, but it was worth every penny. This trip was, without a doubt, the best thing I’ve ever done (and that includes not getting married when I was 21). Before I left, I was miserable. Unemployed, single, worried about money, going through some sort of midlife crisis, dealing with unexpected emotional fallout from my last relationship, and stuck in a variety of ruts. I found myself thinking things like, “I just have to wait until 4:00, that’s when the bar opens, then I’ll have something to do.” Never a good sign.

Now? I’m happier than I can ever remember being. And I finally feel like myself. I feel present in my own life, doing exactly what it is I’m meant to be doing. I’m completely head over heels in love with a man who reciprocates that feeling totally, who is already more open and honest with me than—-well, anyone I’ve ever dated. I’ve made some amazing friends on the road, reconnected with many old friends, and learned that I’m not the socially maladjusted awkward lump I so often felt like in New York. And I finally scratched that deep, burning wanderlust itch that one-week vacations just weren’t scratching. Granted, I didn’t get to explore anything really in depth, I just didn’t have the time. But that was never the point. The whole point of this trip was always the Greatest Hits of America. And even the worst days, when I was logging 600 or 700 miles and not seeing anything worthwhile, were infinitely better than being stuck in an office.

So...things I’ve learned:

1. Pee when you can. This is absolutely Rule #1 of Successful Road-Tripping. If there is a flush toilet within 500 feet of you, use it—even if you don’t think you need to. Because you do.
2. Do not attempt to eat lunch out of your lap unless you are wearing black pants.
3. Baked-on windshield bug goo is permanent and cannot be removed even with a sledgehammer. Why can’t they build planes out of this?
4. You have more friends than you think.
5. This is a big damn country.
6. If you are cranky and tense, stop. Get out of the car. Eat something. Reassess.
7. It is advisable to bring a fleece—-and not wear flip-flops—-to any national park which features the word “Glacier.”
8. RV owners are actually evil alien warlords in disguise, intent on disrupting normal traffic patterns so that they can take over the world. Avoid all RVs at all costs. I’ve started flipping them off just on general principle.
9. A sign saying, “Caution: Rough Road Ahead” is probably accurate.
10. Cheap hotels offer far more for your dollar than expensive hotels. A $40 room at the Motel 6 will get me a refrigerator, microwave, coffeepot, wi-fi, free breakfast, and a bunch of cable channels. Plus laundry facilities. A $600 room in Vegas—-or even a $200 room at the W in Chicago—-gets me a bathrobe. That’s it. An internet connection is $15 a day, I get three cable channels, and just try getting a coffeepot. Why, God? Why?

I’ve become an expert at doing things other than driving, while driving. Which is very, very bad. Kids, do not try this at home. But I can now drive and eat, drink, program the GPS, switch the GPS charger with the phone charger, fiddle with the iPod/radio, make phone calls, text (VERY bad, I know, but I never did it when there was another car within half a mile of me), put things in the backseat, get things out of the backseat, read a map, get stains out of my shirt and/or pants, read guidebooks, put on makeup, tweeze my eyebrows, file my nails, put a jacket on, take a jacket off, floss...well, you get the idea.

I’ve also perfected my karaoke skills (one of the many benefits of road-tripping alone) and can now rock the house to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” The Eagles’ “Already Gone,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” Cowboy Junkies’ “Miles From Our Home,” and Van Halen’s “Why Can’t This Be Love.” Lest you think my musical tastes completely antiquated, I’ve also been working on Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” Gorillaz’ “Dare,” and The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.” I can do a pretty decent air-guitar (while driving) version of AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You),” and I discovered that Smashing Pumpkins makes for surprisingly good road trip music.

Other songs included on my iPod “Road Trip” playlist:
“Running on Empty,” Jackson Browne
“Against the Wind,” Bob Seger
“Here I Go Again,” Whitesnake
“Go Your Own Way,” Fleetwood Mac
“America,” Simon and Garfunkel
“Dirt Road Blues,” Bob Dylan
“On the Road Again,” Canned Heat
“Sweet Virginia,” Rolling Stones
“Where the Streets Have No Name,” U2
“Into the Great Wide Open,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
“Hit the Road, Jack,” Ray Charles
“Don’t Look Back,” Boston
“Ramblin’ Man,” Allman Brothers
“Free,” Concrete Blonde
“Freedom,” George Michael
“Freedom,” Jimi Hendrix
“In A Big Country,” Big Country

And a little summation:

Most Beautiful Sights:
1. Grand Tetons, Wyoming
2. Big Sur, California
3. Sunset over Badlands, South Dakota
4. Sunrise over Malibu, California
5. Sunrise over Monument Valley, Utah. Actually, Utah in general.
6. Atlantic Ocean at night, Massachusetts
7. Early morning fog in Glacier National Park, Montana
8. Green Mountains of Vermont/White Mountains of New Hampshire
9. Fourth of July fireworks over La Jolla Beach/Pacific Ocean, California
10. The NYC skyline. Home.

Favorite places:
1. Southern California
2. Chicago
3. Montana/Wyoming
4. Seattle/Vancouver
5. Utah

Worst Roads:
1. California
2. Maine
3. Texas
4. Any state which touches a Great Lake.

Most Worthless States:
1. Maine
2. Yellowstone (not a state, I know, but you can definitely skip it)
3. Wisconsin
4. Iowa
5. North Carolina
6. Michigan
7. Alabama

Favorite Stretch of Driving:
Interstate 15 south, from Montana into Idaho and then from Salt Lake City south

And should you be tempted to do this yourself:

Good Things to Have in Your Car:
1. Road food. Beef jerky, granola bars, dried fruit, trail mix, etc. Also bottled water, tea, and powdered Gatorade for hangovers. A travel mug and a cooler.
2. GPS, iPod and iPhone. Chargers for all the above.
3. Road atlas and maps.
4. Camera.
5. Sunscreen.
6. Flashlight and umbrella.
7. Tissues and paper towels.
8. One of those windshield visor things that keeps your car from overheating.
9. Advil, chewable Pepto, chewable fiber, and those sticky heating pad things you wear all day. Great for tense shoulders and hips.
10. Zagats’ “Best Restaurants in America” 2009.
11. Cash for tolls and emergency cash, plus quarters for laundry.

Things to Pack
All of the above, plus:
1. Two weeks’ worth of clothes. Shorts, tank tops, t-shirts. A pair of jeans for when it gets chilly at night. Flip-flops, tennis shoes, one nice pair of shoes. Bathing suit and towel. Fleece. Laundry detergent. A hat.
2. Laptop.
3. Passport.
4. American Express card.
5. Books, DVDs (to watch on your laptop), a deck of cards.
6. Sleeping bag, pillow, beach chair, air mattress, camping supplies.
7. Assorted toiletries—shampoo, conditioner, lotion, deodorant, etc.—plus backups of each thing. Also basic medical supplies—Band-Aids, Ace bandage, Neosporin, etc. And extra sunscreen.
8. Something to distribute to your hosts. I couldn’t sleep on someone’s sofa empty-handed; I usually brought a nice bottle of wine, and kept a case or two of assorted wine for such purposes. (Also for my own drinking pleasure, of course.) Don't forget corkscrew and bottle opener.

The things I absolutely, positively could not have lived without: GPS, iPhone, camera and my American Express card. And sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen.

Final mileage logged: a shade over 19,000.

New England

Vermont and New Hampshire definintely have character, even while it's pouring. Maine--not so much. It poured all the way from Burlington to the Maine-New Hampshire border, and then from the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border into Boston. Once I left New York to go on this road trip, it rained exactly four times. Savannah, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Denver. That's it, until I hit Missouri. Then it started raining, torrentially, every other day. I'm tired of rain. The good news is that all the rain has washed some the bug collection off the front of my car.

Driving through the Green Mountains in Vermont and then the White Mountains in New Hampshire was pretty neat, even in the rain. I'm sure it would have been spectacular on a nice day. I had high hopes for Maine, but...ew. Small-town Vermont and New Hampshire was quaint; small-town Maine was just small. The roads were dreadful, I saw no particularly interesting scenery, and once I got to Portland, I discovered that Maine does not cherish its waterfront. I had visions of finding a beach shack, eating a lobster roll, and taking pictures of lighthouses. Now, such a thing may exist somewhere in Maine. But from Portland south, the waterfront is all industrial. A city that lets its waterfront go industrial is not an interesting city, and certainly not a cultural city. The whole part of the state I saw was backwoods and boring. As far as I can tell, the only good things Maine ever produced were lobster and Stephen King.

So I headed south, to Boston, to see an old friend. We spent the night in Gloucester in a beach house, where I got delightfully relaxed. We walked along the beach at night and listened to the waves in the moonlight. It was the perfect end to the road trip.

Well, not exactly the end--the next morning I got up and drove 11 hours to Roanoke, VA. The last long-haul stretch of driving. I drove right past New York. Hello, New York! My only lasting love affair. And God bless the drivers on I-95. From mid-Connecticut south, people actually knew how to drive. Everyone, and I mean everyone, drove 85, used turn signals correctly, and stayed out of the left lane except while passing. It was glorious. At one point the entire road zoomed by a cop (me included), going 85 in a 55. He never even blinked. No one bothered to brake. Like I said, God bless people who can actually drive. I could go fast and not have to worry about some yahoo in an RV pulling onto the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Well, I shaved at least 45 minutes off my arrival time in that stretch, then I hit Jersey, and it was all downhill from there. And 81 is officially one of the worst interstates I've driven on. Too much truck traffic and too many yahoos driving slowly in the left lane.

I was hoping to get some good relaxing in, on this, my final night before I head to my parents' house to pick up my cats. I did, somewhat, but I'm also trying to puzzle out a particular dilemma that's reared its head in the last couple of days. I thought I'd made a decision and put the dilemma to bed, but the decision continues to bother me, which is probably a sign it's the wrong one. Well, I suppose I should get used to that. Now that the road trip is over, I have to start thinking and living in the real world again. Sigh.

Yes, folks. It's OVER. And I'll be spending the next couple of days in the technological dead zone that is my parents' house, so don't expect any blog posts for a bit. But I'll be working on the "What I've Learned," etc., while I bond with my cats.