Monthly Archive for July, 2007

In The Key Of Gnocchi

Published on July 21, 2007 in Well-Being. 2 Comments

I’ve been lucky enough to have access to fresh pro­duce from a com­mu­nity sup­ported farmshare my friends Mike and Christy are a part of while they’re gone: The 47th Ave Farm. Last week I received turnips, baby red pota­toes, fen­nel, arugula, mixed salad greens, baby onion, gar­lic, farm eggs, and a strange goat cheese vari­ety. All fresh, all organic, and all cut the day of pick-up. The farm is local and this is def­i­nitely some­thing I look for­ward to invest­ing in in the near future.

Using the baby red pota­toes I was able to make a dish I from a recipe I recently found in The Oregonian FoodDay sec­tion from July 10. Written by Leslie Cole, the arti­cle was called “A Knack for Gnocchi” and the dish took about 3 full hours to pre­pare but yielded one of the most sat­is­fy­ingly light lunches I’ve ever assem­bled. Surprising since it’s really just pota­toes and flour, but as usual it’s all about the process.

Reminiscent of pasta, Wikipedia states that gnoc­chi, pro­nounced “no-key”, is the “Italian word for dumplings”. If you decide to try the dish, I rec­om­mend work­ing with a part­ner and using “light flour and a light touch”. The fresh tomato sauce is super easy and deli­cious, espe­cially with some fresh basil, but don’t for­get that it has to sim­mer for 45 min­utes. I didn’t have a food proces­sor and so did not get a chance to make the Arugula Pesto but sub­sti­tuted it for an aver­age pow­dered pesto mix.

Finally, if I had to do some rec­om­men­da­tions they would be as fol­lows,
Music: Don Ellis “Live at Montreux“
Beverage: Guayaki “Magical Mint” Yerba Mate
Day of the Week: Sunday
Time of day: 12:30PM
Accompaniments: Light salad with bal­samic vinegar

Ve: Aggression Release Party

Published on July 18, 2007 in "Guy Stuff". 1 Comment

Last night I par­tic­i­pated in Veneer Magazine’s Release Party. And by release party I mean a paint­ball “party” where the writ­ers of the arti­cles read­ing their work over a mega­phone were defended by three edi­tors while every­one else (act­ing as the read­ers) pelted them 10 times.

For those of you who do not know, Veneer is a new mag­a­zine, the first, put out by Marriage Publishing House. This party was Flint’s idea and he was extremely excited for it. He is the man behind Veneer and he put together the first few games. He also got the worst beat­ing of anyone.

It was the first time I had ever held, pointed, or shot a gun of any sort and I got really ner­vous when we started putting on masks and the guys started mak­ing fake cups. I had no idea what to expect. Suddenly we all were trans­formed into super-crazy-gun-wielding-combat-soldiers all instructed to aim for each other. Some peo­ple were way into to. The entire field was wild as well. Totally cov­ered in grease. Totally. The arena floor was com­posed of about two feet of bro­ken paint­ball shells which are filled with what seemed to be a very greasy sub­stance that cov­ered all our clothes and gave every­thing a gross slick coat­ing. That is what we were run­ning around in, squat­ting, snip­ing, cre­at­ing chaos in…grease.

I must say that it was thrilling. I must say that it was also very haunt­ing. Extremely sav­age and fierce. Although some played it safe at the begin­ning and would chill when the horn was blown, some went for the glory, not giv­ing a fuck and not duck­ing behind shit! Straight up in your face run­ning directly towards you shoot­ing 200mph pel­lets right toward your head!!! Our nog­gins were all cov­ered with masks which were fierce-looking SWAT team type of hel­mets and allowed no air cir­cu­la­tion at all. I thought about the masks a lot today. The way your breath was right in your face, the heavy pant­ing and the loud shots of fire whizzing by. The way a ball would bust open on your mask was one of the most innocu­ous yet ter­ri­fy­ing things I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. It only hap­pened once but made my heart skip a whole mea­sure of beats before I real­ized that I wasn’t in pain, just amaz­ing slow-motion shock.

We all got hit a bunch of times as most of the games ended when every­one had either a) been hit (either in a cer­tain place on their body or num­ber of times), or b) hit every­one else and was the only per­son remain­ing. Flint, the poor-guy, took it deep with the welts and bruises, some of them look­ing really gnarly today. I am def­i­nitely sore today but my hits weren’t too deep, the worst and most sore being on the fatty part of my legs. Even the one that some­how snagged me on my ass was pretty mel­low today.

I had a fun time and although I’m not instantly an avid paint­ball enthu­si­ast I am glad that I was able to be a part of this expe­ri­ence. On a whole other spec­trum of thought about the event check out Claire’s thoughts and pic­tures on the offi­cial Veneer post.

Not Hot Smoke (Ciggy Puffs, Fuck Off!!!) 2007 Full Body Tour

Published on July 3, 2007 in Well-Being. 5 Comments

So for those of you who did not know, today is day 3 of my indef­i­nite “Not Hot Smoke (Ciggy Puffs, Fuck Off!!!) 2007 Full Body Tour”. I’ve thrown in the damp stinky towel of cig­a­rettes. And I didn’t do it for Lent, I didn’t do it for Jesus, I didn’t do it for my Mom, I’m doing it for myself. There are some obvi­ous rea­sons and some not-so-obvious rea­sons for my sched­uled deci­sion and I’d like to tell you some details.

First of all, Brother Caleb kicked me down with some infor­ma­tion about the Georgia Tobacco Quit Line (1–800-NO-BUTTS) which is a government-run pro­gram that sets you up with quit­ting plan (mostly a date), a coun­selor (not annoy­ing at all, in fact, mine was very com­fort­ing to talk to and kept it real), and pro­vides healthy men­tal and phys­i­cal alter­na­tives (breath­ing exer­cises, bev­er­age switches, etc.) which means…that’s right: free patches or gum — and it’s open to peo­ple from every state, they’ll set you up with the right per­son. The GTQL has been around for three years or so and they’ve helped 35,000 or so peo­ple with their addic­tions. ANYWAY…the patches are work­ing pretty well and, when I chose July 1st for my quit date in early June, I decided to space them out since I only got one box of Step One Nicotine Tranasdermal System Patches (14 patches at 21mg each — that’s a lot of nicotine=1 1/2 packs of Parliament Lights).1 They keep a sort of “deep buzz” going all through­out the day and give your tongue a parched sense that makes water taste like gold.

Secondly, my friend (and, loosely termed, “boss” at Marriage) Curtis gave me some Nature’s Plus Tea Tree Toothpicks that not only pack a pow­er­ful punch but also help with keep­ing my hands busy dur­ing those tough crav­ings. Helps with the onion breath, too!2

And finally, as many of you know I have type 2 dia­betes which, with it’s proven links to high-risk heart dis­ease and stoke, puts me in a place where with the build up of “fatty mate­ri­als” in the lin­ing of my blood cells is akin to me already hav­ing had a heart attack (more). I don’t need no tar clog­ging up my flow, so obvi­ously it’s not a good place for a smoker to be in.

I’m really not try­ing to advo­cate quit­ting (even though the tooth­picks are nice treat for even the most smoke­less per­son), I am just ready to stop. If you have thought about quit­ting, def­i­nitely give it some seri­ous thought and pick the right time — that’s very key. I wouldn’t rec­om­mend quit­ting on an impul­sive decision.

Alright, ’nuff about all that, time for breakfast.

Love,
Jordan

1. Right on the box, it clearly states that “if you have vivid dreams, you may remove the patch at bed­time and apply a new one in the morn­ing”. Well, fuck­ing hell! Bedtime is when I’m most prone to light­en­ing up cig and so I’ve been putting on new ones before I go to bed. Thus, I have been expe­ri­enc­ing some incred­i­ble dreams! Such as a) nar­rowly divert­ing the explo­sion that an 80-year-old decrepit Jack Nicholson and I set up in a 5-star hotel ele­va­tor shaft where appar­ently Princess Diana was stay­ing, and b) not only play­ing Futsal with the Uncle Joey, Uncle Jesse, and Danny Tanner from Full House but rock­ing the goalie posi­tion as well with one assist! Seriously, these dreams are like incred­i­bly lucid, multi-sensory, technicolor-type-of-LSD-trippin’-shit. They are actu­ally turn­ing into one of the most inter­est­ing “pluses” of quitting.

2. I had ini­tially bought a large amount of cin­na­mon sticks, before hear­ing about the tooth­picks, for the same “oral fix­a­tion” rea­son. Cinnamon is a nat­ural neu­tral­izer of blood sug­ars and the sticks are pretty intox­i­cat­ing after a cou­ple of min­utes when some of that saliva gets soaked in and you get real juicy squirts. On a side-sided note, Isucked my thumb when I was a lit­tle to middle-aged kid and have be enticed by sim­i­lar actions ever since. When I was six or seven the thumb-sucking got so bad my front teeth were start­ing to come in wrong and my mother had to put a dis­gust­ing, ran­cid nail-polish on my thumb to get me to quit.