My Dog is Chelsea

Me: I want to make a bolognese sauce with the ground yak I bought at the farmer’s market.

My brain: But you don’t have any pasta.

Me: So?

My brain: Go to the store and buy some — it’s only a few blocks away.

Me: No way! I’ll make pasta from scratch!

My brain: That will take forever, and it’s hard work.

Me: So?

My brain: Really hard work.

Me: I’m doing it.

My brain: Hmm, you know, that pasta you’re making is awfully thick.

Me: So?

My brain: Might want to make it thinner.

Me: No way! I’ve been rolling this dough out for an ETERNITY. I am SO done!

My brain: Well, just make sure you cook it long enough!

Me: What?! It’s been cooking FOREVER — like five whole minutes!

My brain: Not long enough. See that dry spot in the middle of your ridiculously thick noodle? That means it ain’t cooked.

Me: Liar! It’s fine.

My brain: Dumbass. You just spent two hours making pasta from scratch and you can’t wait another three or four minutes?

Me: Who needs you anyway?

My brain: Clearly not you.

Me: Fuck off.

My brain: Not to say I told you so, but whaddya know? This pasta is awfully chewy.

Me: Shut up.

My brain: I mean, this is one hell of a yak bolognese — fuck, damn near one of the best I’ve ever tried — and really, when have I ever tried yak bolognese? — but for crying out loud, I shouldn’t need to eat this pasta with a steak knife.

Me: Just chew harder, whiner.

My brain: Just sayin’.

The gas station cashier where I picked up the Uhaul sold me a few moving boxes.

“Moving? You buy house?” he asked. An older Asian man, he was not a native English speaker and his sentences a little choppy.

“Yep! I did. And now I have to move,” I said. And then, because I’ve been stressed out to no end about this whole packing-moving-unpacking endeavor: “Moving’s such a pain in the ass.”

“But you buy house! You should be happy!”

“You’re right,” I said. “But I will be happier once this moving stuff is over with.”

“But we never happy. We always move things around and change everything. You move and then you unpack and move things again. There is always work to do, because we never happy!”

So true.

It’s time now to go unpack. And make myself a little happier.

As you may recall, back in September I posted about how I was trying to buy a house. It’s been quite the journey since then. I’ve seen the insides of what feels like half of all of the homes in Portland. Three accepted offers, three inspections, three appraisals. Two deals fell through. (And one dragged on for three months before I finally gave up.)

But last week? I got the keys to my new house! Calla peed and pooped in the backyard on Wednesday — that makes it official. Here’s me in my new kitchen the night I got the keys:

Martin priming the icky living room color.

Calla gallivanted in the wet and muddy backyard, and when she came back inside, she decided to “dry” herself off by wiping her face on the wall. Problem was, the fresh coat of primer hadn’t exactly dried yet.

Calla and River survey the primed walls.

First coat is on!

More photos to come. We’ve finished the living room (except for the trim) and the spare bedroom. Here’s a preview of the rest of the walls:

• Master bedroom: red
• Spare bedroom: sea foam green
• Kitchen: Gray and turquoise

I must begin with a disclaimer: If you eat bagged lettuce, I don’t mean to offend you. It’s just that this is what I’ve been thinking about in the shower lately, and I need to get it out so I can move on with writing other (hopefully more important) things in my head. I hope you will understand. Thank you.

This is why I hate bagged lettuce:

1. Bagged lettuce has a texture problem. It’s either waxy or wilted or limp or browned, and rarely crunchy or perky. It doesn’t taste fresh and it makes a squeaking noise when you chew, like cheese curds.

2. Bagged lettuce comes in a plastic bag. Does kale come in a bag? No. Does broccoli come in a bag? No. Do carrots come in a bag? Sometimes, but they shouldn’t either. Hearty produce that ships easily does not require a bag. Bagged lettuce only needs one because it’s wimpy.

3. It’s triple-washed, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean. Like most industrial food, bagged lettuce is exposed to all sorts of contaminates, some of which are too disgusting to think about in the shower. (See also: Marion Nestle’s take on why you should wash your bagged lettuce.)

4. The whole point of bagged lettuce is that it is convenient, but I’ve never really understood that. You still need to wash it (see point number 3, above), and washing a head of lettuce has never been all that complicated or inconvenient to begin with.

5. It’s ridiculously expensive, and I’m not quite sure why it’s worth paying a premium on an inferior product. It’s the equivalent to buying a Macintosh in the mid-90s.

Anyway, that is all. Now I can carry on with showering and thinking about something else. Like broccoli, and how it’s not fair that you get charged by the pound even though no one ever eats the stems.

[NOTE: Part I is about why I believe that milk is good for you. Also, today I came across this great piece about why UHT pasteurization not only makes milk taste icky—which is why organic milk often have flavor additives—it may actually be bad for you. See also this post on how to buy healthy milk.]

This is why I love milk and eggs:

My pantry looks a lot like this list. I have jars and jars of food in there to practically last me months: at least three kinds of flour, two kinds of cornmeal, polenta, popcorn, rolled oats, quinoa, barley, two kinds of lentils, walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, peanuts, enough dried beans to feed all of Portland, cocoa powder, semisweet chocolate, honey, three types of sugar, wheat berries, jasmine rice, brown rice, arborio rice (no kitchen is complete without arborio rice!), bulgar, pasta of all shapes. Et cetera.

But no matter, if I’m out of milk and eggs, I feel like I have no food.

With eggs, in particular, the food in my pantry can be transformed. I can make almost anything (as long as I also have a source of fat, of course): cakes, quick breads, pancakes, cookies, sauces. Not to mention fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, soft-boiled eggs, omelets, quiches and frittatas.

As far as I’m concerned, the egg is magical. It is a perfect chameleon: it’s an emulsifier, a thickener, a leavening agent, a whole protein. You can separate it into two parts, each with their own specific purpose in baking and cooking. With an egg, you can bread your fish, blend your salad dressing, bind your homemade veggie burger, rise your flourless chocolate cake.

(And look—there’s a reason most vegan baked goods pale in comparison to their lacto-ovo counterparts. It’s not the lack of dairy that makes the difference—it’s the missing eggs. I promise you that. You can substitute melted butter with canola oil in many recipes, but egg? Cornstarch-based egg replacer is just not the same. Though I do have a vegan blueberry muffin recipe that uses apple sauce and it is delicious.)

So eggs are practical and delicious and…
…they are also good for you, despite the cholesterol scare of a few years ago (remember egg white omelets? Yeah.). And it’s worth eating the whole thing—though the egg yolks contain all of the cholesterol in the egg, they also contain the vast majority of the nutrients, including fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids. A single egg also contains 6 grams of protein and only 5 grams of fat and 75 calories. That’s pretty freaking amazing.

Even the American Heart Association has dialed back its stance on egg yolk, saying now that one egg a day is OK if you don’t follow it up with a bug hunk of steak. (They recommend people with normal levels of bad cholesterol stay below 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day; an egg has 213.).

Though I can hardly say that I limit myself to an egg a day.

And, frankly, I prefer my eggs with a side of bacon.

Now THAT is the perfect meal.