Eating raw is hell!

Nice title, eh? It's not really true. Here's a picture of what I had for "second lunch":



It's a salad I made at work with the produce that they bring in every morning, a really nice perk. It has an avocado, two tomatoes, a zuchini, some red onion, and a couple mini sweet-peppers. It's dressed with salt, pepper, a little olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, and some hot sauce (kind of like Luisianna Hot Sauce). See??? It's HELL!

Actually, one thing that's not so great is that the venues for dining out are limited. In fact, the only reason I made this second lunch is that first lunch was so pathetic. We decided to try eating out at Wellington's only salad bar, a place called Kapai. It wasn't bad, but it was $9 for a pretty small salad. Verdict, don't go to Kapai again! ("Kapai" seems to be Maori for "sweet-as", which is Kiwi for "good".) In most respects, Wellington lacks for nothing in the restaurant scene (Mexican cuisine being the most glaring exception). So much, then, for its one shot at a decent salad place.

Anyway, on most days, around 4:00, I'll try to eat a little snack, like an apple or an avocado, to give me the food-strength to make it through the yoga class at 8:00. Don't want to eat too close to the class, otherwise I'll want to puke while doing standing-seperate-head-to-knee pose. So my original intent when I went into the kitchen was pretty modest, but then because Kapai's offering wasn't nearly enough to satisfy my hunger, one thing lead to another, and pretty soon, I had that salad. It was tasty.

The moral is: avoid Kapai if you care about a good value for your money! Also, salads don't need to have lettuce in them, even though lettuce is tasty!

Holy crap! (politics)

One of the nice things about living in New Zealand is that the pervasive anxiety about the US turning into Germany-circa-1935 is at a slight remove. Not completely gone, and more than once a week, the fury would rise up in my gut as I read about some other hitherto unknown atrocity committed by the current administration. But still, I was glad for the distance.

But today, I was surprised. I mean, I was expecting the Dems to take the House. Although that would not be enough to do anything to fix all that has been broken these past six years, it would be enough to prevent further grievous damage. But, they're currently one tied election away from real majority of the Senate, too. And good-bye, Rummy. Real control of the Legislative branch means:

- investigations into cooked intelligence (impeachable offenses)
- investigations into illegal wiretapping (impeachable offense)
- investigations into crony spending in Iraq (people would go to jail)
- no more lies about "cutting taxes" (to spend is to tax, and Bush has spent more than anyone, driving up the deficit, fucking the economy and everyone whose net worth is less than several million dollars)
- Maybe, just maybe, this will give some balls to the Washington (and especially White House) press corps, so that when Cheney/Bush/Rice/etc. blatantly lies, their bullshit is called to their face. I'm not exactly holding my breath there, though.

My favorite uncle once said that he wanted to be immortalized in statue form, portrayed in the act of jumping up to grab and hang onto the kicking legs of George W. Bush when he's hung for treason. We're one tiny step closer to that shining, beautiful dream. (cue music) Don't stop believin'. Hold onto that feeeeeeleeeee-innnnnn'...

EXTREME

I think breatharianism is next for me. It's the only thing more RADICAL than not eating cooked food. Every day I seem to need less food. Either I'm developing an awesome eating disorder, or the food I'm eating is so energy and nutrient rich, that I just don't need as much. We're making a lot of delicious things to eat around Marine Manor, and Brenda feeds just about every time I see her. I'm afraid for Thanksgiving, when we take a break to eat dead food again. Wish me luck!

Finally, A Difinitive Answer on the Asparagus Pee Issue

So everyone's pee smells funny after eating asparagus, but only some people have the ability to smell it. Epicurious entry here.

The more you know...

4.5 Hours at the Bikram Studio

Yesterday, Vanessa and I went to the 6:00 AND the 8:00 classes. It wasn't so bad, until this morning. Ouchy. I am old.

Christopher is OLD.

Happy Birthday Christopher! Tonight, we celebrate by bowling at the fancy new bowling club/swank bar that just opened up in Wellington. It's called The Lanes. Oooh. (Aaaah.) I too will wear my stiletto boots to bowl in. That is smart.

Vanessa and I tried to go to the 6:00 yoga class today, so we could make it to the birthday party, but it was too full when we got there! O great tragedy. While it's nice to have a break, it also means we'll have to double up on a day soon to make up for missing today. I'm curious to see what back-to-back yoga will be like, particularly considering the condition of my back. Not as bad as a couple weeks ago, but definitly still getting stiff after yoga. The bed problem is fixed, so now it's just a matter of healing the strained muscles and tendons in my lower back before trying to build them up again. But otherwise, I'm totally healthy! No whining here! Raw food and everything!

An ultimately unsatisfying post!

I warn you in advance: this is going to be very fast and light. I'll post more in a few days, maybe.

Many things have happened since last I updated. We went to Burningman, and along that way, were in San Francisco for a few days. It was so great to see everybody, and to be in San Francisco. The smell of the place was awesome, and I'm not being sarcastic. Being there made us miss it very much.

Then, we came home, and Kris' parents stayed with us for ten days. We went to Christchurch, and other stuff. Then they sent me and Kris some books from our Amazon wishlist, which were greatly appreciated. Thank you, Caldwells!

We've also formed a film club, and have started making a movie. There are about ten of us involved. We identified roles, such as "writer", "director", "director of photography", etc., wrote them on paper scraps, then drew out of a hat to determine who would do what. I drew "producer". We did essentially the same thing to determine what movie we would make. The one that go chosen was called "Produce Passion", and the original description was something like, "Follows the life of a vegetable from farm to toilet." Our writer wanted to make a horror movie, though, so this is what he made: Produce Passion, a movie treatment. What we've shot has mostly stayed true to that. And though the original idea was to take no more than one month to make a movie, and have it be 30-180 seconds long, we're well into month two now, and it's looking like it will be at least 5-7 minutes long. Ah, well. I think we're learning quite a bit, and the next one will probably go faster. And on the upside, "making a good movie" was not one of the original goals, but I think we might actually wind up doing that here. The next movie we make, everyone will rotate jobs, so everyone gets a turn (eventually) at each role needed to make a movie.

In other news, as Kris has mentioned, November saw us starting two challenges: 1) to go to 24 yoga classes in 28 days, and 2) to only eat raw veggie food. Both are going pretty well so far, after five days. Our house, I think, has it pretty easy. There are three of us (out of four; Francisco is not participating in either challenge) eating raw. Hence, there are three people preparing different yummy raw things to eat, so there's never the "what can I eat here" dilemma. So far, so great. I'll post later about the nutritional benefits, but for now, the short version is: you get more than enough protein, calcium, vitamins, calories, and whatever else you need from food if you eat raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts only. You don't need to eat animal-based food, and in fact, you will be healthier if you don't. Plus, just about everything we've eaten in the last five days has been fucking delicious.

That's it for now. I hope everyone reading this has a great day.

The South Island: A Retrospective - DAY FOUR

For those of you who may just be joining us, this is the tale of a trip taken last June. That's right. And I'm still posting the play-by-play. Clodagh and I went to the south island, and here's more about what we did:

We started out day four with a dip in the pools-of-a-variety-of-temperatures at Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa. While Clodogh was having her first of two spa treatments, I amused myself by hopping from pool to pool with my book, trying out each degree of hotness. Turns out, I like them hot. This place was lovely, with plenty of vegetation and little footpaths between a variety of pools of different size and shape. I wouldn't mind doing that again.

The spa treatments were pretty sub-par, but how can I complain? This is how: massages should be done in rooms, not in curtained off areas where you can hear people gabbing on at the reception desk. In all fairness, they were starting to remodel to make individual treatment rooms, but it's still pretty screwed up to not at least have a quiet space for a massage. Rant over.

We went to lunch at this fantastic place with great pasta and the first and only 10 out of 10 hot chocolate, as rated by Clodagh. Apparently, they put a lot of LOWV in this here hot chocolate. Maybe she can help me out with the name of this place. Oddly enough, I no longer remember where I had lunch somewhere around the 8th of June. We sat in the sun for a long time, pondering whether to go quad biking or hit the road, drinking warm beverages, and then headed over to a gift shop to buy wrapping paper for the birthday present I bought in Christchurch for one of my nieces. We decided to skip the quad biking in favor of getting a head start on Kaikoura.

So we drove to Kaikoura! I think this was my favorite drive of the trip. We raced a train, and stopped to make movies of sheep, and hit the east coast for a drive along the water (which feels a lot like driving down the 1 in California) before arriving at our palacial temporary home at The Dusky Lodge. We checked in and I started looking for a place to get some of this crayfish that the east coast is so famous before. We ended up a lovely place called Sonic on the Rocks, right across from the beach. The crayfish was tough and chewy, and for the first time in my life, I had to send a dish back. The kumara pizza which replaced it was absolutely amazing. I am enjoying the memory right now, back when cooked food was a thing people ate. Oh, and the only photo I took on day four was of a painting in the restaurant which contains a recipe for preparing duck. Someone please prepare this and tell me how it turns out:
On our walk back to the hostel, Clodagh and I stopped at a gas station to pick up some provisions. Against all logic, we attempted to make our own hot chocolate in one of the TWO hostel kitchens. Bad idea. It seems you can't really make hot chocolate with Cadbury bars and skim milk. WHO KNEW?!

Next time: Day Five, the day of the DOLPHINS. Aw, you thought THIS was going to be dolphin day, didn't you? SUCKER.

Guy Fawkes Day

Tomorrow is Guy Fawkes Day, but there will be fireworks tonight! We're making up some raw snacks and heading over to Clodapher's place to watch and say OOOOOH, AAAAAH, etc.

Say it with me: "Oooooooh....Aaaaaaah...."

More about Sydney and film making and TV tomorrow or something.

Oh, It's ON!

"ok then, i challege you to blog everyday! mwahahahahaha."
--
Posted by Taisuke to Ardents (and Friends) En Zed at 11/03/2006 08:54:35 PM


This counts as a post, right?

Challenge Me!

To anything, really. I'm totally ready for it. Gimme what you got. So far, here are my current challenges. See if you can come up with anything else I should be doing in November:

1. 30-day raw food challenge: started yesterday. We've got nuts and seeds and avocados and fresh produce and a recipe book (Living On Live Food by Alyssa Cohen). My biggest fear is that I'll do just fine for a few days, and then SNAP. There's a drive-thru McDonald's in Newtown, and I'm pretty sure that's were my breakdown will occur. Joe and I have a blood oath not to eat any fast food while we're in New Zealand, and so far I think we're doing pretty well. This might just be my downfall. But for now, it's mock salmon pate and avocado salad, banana coconut cream pie, flax crackers and dried pineapple. It's actually been pretty tasty, and I feel like what I imagine crack to be like, in the best way.

2. Start a small business: Brenda and I are signing a lease on Monday for a commercial kitchen space. We're going to ramp up production on her current raw food product line (crackers, truffles, other dried raw things), invent new things people MUST have in their bellies, and we've already got our first raw food catering gig lined up for December 8th. Can you say CHALLENGE?! How about abject TERROR?

3. 30-day yoga challenge: Now, this is the one that's doomed to fail. My chiropractor gave me a "look" today and tried to talk me out of it. But if she saw how pathetically I earned credit for my first day of the challenge yesterday, she would not fear. Any ounce of pain in my back, or general discomfort of any sort, and I stop, and just stand there. They say you get credit just for showing up, so I'm holding them to that. (They being The Yoga People, who are in charge of defining these sorts of things.)

So what else is there? Bring it on.