Book of Brilliant Things

I saw this on therachel's journal. It makes me cringe thinking about medical students performing pelvic exams on anesthetized women without their knowledge or consent. UGH.

It is nice to see medical providers using their own bodies as teaching tools instead of unconscious people who would probably flip the heck out if they knew.

Note to self for future reference: Trying to suck out with a straw the last bits of your wannabe green tea frappuccino from inside the holes of the ice that didn't blend is only good if you like tiny shards of ice and frozen tea flying down your esophagus.

Funny, I had no idea Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay on flatulence. He would even print copies for his friends. He thought that research needed to be done to find methods of improving the smell of human gas.

There is even a book for sale titled Fart Proudly which includes essays like "The Letter to a Royal Academy" (the one on farting); "On Choosing a Mistress"; "Rules on Making Oneself Disagreeable"; and other jibes.

I think I'm going to have to get this book just for the lol factor.

I just warmed up some chai flavored Silk in a saucepan and drank it from a mug. So good.

It's probably nowhere near the real deal, but I just blended up some Chai Silk with some ice and a little cinnamon and it was good enough to stop my Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino craving. I will have to invest in more Silk. The chai was an impulse buy. Glad I made it.

I've been making ice drinks like crazy lately. By sheer luck I found out that 1/4 cup of milk with 3/4 cup of OJ mixed with 1 frozen banana and 6 frozen strawberries makes an amazing smoothie.

Tip: Slice up bananas that are going old and won't be eaten in time and freeze the the pieces on wax paper. When they're frozen through put them in a freezer bag and keep them on hand for smoothies or banana bread. I cut them up so that I can guesstimate that 6 slices is about half a small banana.

I had some old bananas on the counter tonight so I thought I'd try making banana bread to use them up. This exact thing has happened numerous times where I'll feel guilty seeing those mottled bananas just sitting there calling out to me about their 39 cents a pound waste and I'll dust off a cookbook and go to town. Well, unlike every other time before, tonight I didn't try to make it as healthful as possible and used all-purpose instead of whole wheat flour, whole eggs instead of flax seeds or baking soda with vinegar. I followed the recipe to the letter except for the oil and it still turned out dense and chewy instead of moist and crumbly. And then I figured it out: It's impossible to make a good banana bread without oil. It just can't be done. The taste was good but using applesauce as an oil replacement just doesn't cut it with banana bread. It works with brownies but definitely not banana bread. So, another failed banana bread sits on the counter yet again.

Sorry for those who had to witness my previous posts. I'm going to go get some coffee and chill out for the night.

And yeah, I've turned into one of those people who crave Starbucks. :( And oh how I feel the guilt coursing through my veins every time that FOUR dollar exchange goes down. I swear they put some kind of addictive element in there because I'm seriously addicted to the pumpkin spice latte. And this has all happened within the last week or so.

LOL, I just saw this in the trashy_eats community. I wish it were available where I live. I HAVE TO HAVE it.

http://www.batterblaster.com/index.php

Oh man! I just ate the best sandwich. I basically made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but instead of using regular peanut butter I used white chocolate peanut butter and I just took some fresh raspberries and smashed them and used those instead of jelly. It was DIVINE.

Today sucked it.

I probably shouldn't find this funny as I do, but this is absolutely hilarious: http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/13356475.html

I haven't logged on here in months. And I discovered that my cherries borders are no longer in existence on my page. Bummer.

To the chick in the pink shirt this morning:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE cover your mouth when you sneeze (especially multiple times like you did!). It would definitely make the people standing next to you feel much better, especially if they can't move away from the disgusting cloud of mucous you let fly all around you like a nuclear explosion. All I could do was think about those videos in health class where a person sneezes on a special camera that allows us to see the nastiness fly out from every direction around them. And I had to BREATHE that in and could not move away. All I could think was that I was breathing in your snot particles and I wanted to vomit all over you.

Sincerely,

The Chick in Black

I just found some of my mail in the lot next door when I went to throw out some branches from the trees out front.

This makes my blood boil. And more so now that I talked to Brian and he said he ordered a watch that never arrived and he wonders if the jerkwad teenagers jacked it when they uprooted our mailbox.

And I had sent away for some catalogs because I am a weirdo and I read pore over every word in a catalog even when it's for old lady thermal socks or tacky curtains or beauty creams with drawings of people with leprosy on one side of their face and then perfection on the other. ANYWAY, I had been wondering when I would be getting some of them. Well, the lot had some in there for me. All mottled and covered with bird crap and other unsightly nastiness.

THANKS, YOU PATHETIC little birdbrains. I hope you enjoy the fact that I now have to flip through catalogs that are 239739753 times the thickness they should have been originally.

And because I can't post without making mention of food, my mom gave me some Kalahari red tea with honey and vanilla and I moaned when I drank it. Seriously. I normally drink Madagascar Vanilla Red by Celestial Seasonings, but oh man...Kalahari is at the top of its game. Also, I had a totally impulsive lunch that consisted of a spicy tuna roll and seaweed salad. Halfway through the salad I read the ingredients and it said one of the ingredients was JELLYFISH. Uhm. Okay?!?!

Okay, I have officially made over what a lot of people have so nicely dubbed "White Trash" food: SpaghettiO's and Franks.

Except, I used BernieO's. They are an organic version made by Annie's.



I just warmed them up on the stove with one sliced up Applegate Farms organic stadium-style beef hot dog. It was good!



And I've been meaning to share this with you guys but I couldn't find a picture of them online and still haven't and I'm far too lazy to take my own, but Kashi has these oatmeal cookies with dark chocolate chips (AMAZING!) and they are an answer to my prayers! If I didn't eat one every day I think the sun would stop shining and the earth would stop spinning and the stars would crash down and people who around me the most would be the most unhappy of campers.

KASHI, I think I love you. Let's get married.

Yes, it's yet another food related post. Surprise! Surprise!

Anyway, I went to Publix earlier to spend way more money than I was hoping to spend and before I left felt this unstoppable force compelling me to walk over to the frozen food aisles and drool at all the peppermint ice cream and RED VELVET CAKE ice cream (this really exists! AAAAAH temptation!) and in doing so my eye caught sight of the old familiar Fudgsicle bar boxes. I told myself to leave before my hands started working against me and then thought screw it, I'ma try those there 40 calorie ones, so I did. I bought a box of twelve no sugar added Fudgsicle bars. This is another huge step for me (the other one was buying diet soda) because I am a hardcore chemical additive snob at times, but I just HAD TO HAVE THEM.

Amazing enough, I can't tell the difference between the no sugar added ones and the regular ones I would have eaten as a kid. And then I washed it down with a diet Pepsi Jazz and felt super-guitly about the chemical inferno that is my digestive system right now, but I don't regret it. As my Granduncle Jim used to say, "It hit the spot."

40 calories, man. That's it! And it was really frickin good.

AND I was so ridiculously moody last night and all this afternoon as well. Even after I got to eat some wickedly good sashimi for lunch, I couldn't stop moaning about finances and the state of all things fat on me and how disgusting the house is and how lazy I am and blah blah blah and so on and so forth. And then I ate that fudgsicle, and seriously, as it melted in my mouth all that other stuff just kinda melted away, too. Pret-ty cool (literally!) if I do say so myself.

Has anyone tried CocoaVia chocolate? It's dark chocolate that is supposed to have even more flavanols than some other dark chocolates out there because of some fancy-schmancy process called Cocoapro that retains the flavanol goodness that would otherwise be lost. According to the packaging, "CocoaCia containts heart healthy vitamins B6, B12, folic acid, antioxidants C and E, and is an excellent source of calcium." I have to admit, I had never previously had a chocolate bar that had folic acid as an ingredient. That's pretty nifty that they enrich the bars with all of the stuff that claims to be good for me.

I purchased some a couple months ago at Walgreens. I had never heard of them in my life and just walked by the shelf and saw the box sitting there and the little heart picture on the front jumped out at me. I thought I would give it a try since it was only $4.99 for a box of five. Each bar has four break-off points so I figured I could make one bar last throughout a day. I was a little uncomfortable when I bought it and the clerk looked at me like I was from Mars buying a box of chocolate that claimed to be good for the heart. But anyway, I went out to the car and took my first bite and I instantly recognized the "bite." It had the exact same consistency of a dark chocolate Dove bar (my favorite chocolate bar in the world). And as it turns out, it's actually from the makers of Dove brand chocolates. Happy little accident, huh?

So anyway, I just now ate the last piece out of that box and thought I'd look up CocoaVia for the heck of it since the web address jumped out at me right before I went to chuck the box. It turns out they make dark chocolate almonds as well. I am so there!

I admit it, I can't get enough of hot teas. Green teas, white teas, herbal teas, black teas, red teas and so on and so forth.

The latest tea to pique my curiosity was Jasmine tea. I didn't really like it when I first tried it but I kept drinking it and now I love the stuff. Even though some people will twist their faces like they just ate a lemon while sniffing dog poop simultaneously at the fact that I add a touch of milk to my tea, I have to admit that I enjoy my tea better this way. It takes away any of the bitterness that it might have. I even like it in my green tea. And I'll even brew the actual leaves in a little pot that my mom gave me and I'll feel extremely Japanese when I do. Seeing as how the tea I use in the pot is actually from Japan. Her relatives send little food goody boxes from time to time and I am just now starting to take an interest in the foods that she receives. She was taken aback the last time I saw her when I asked her for some nori so I could make homemade sushi with it. I buy smoked salmon from Wild Oats and roll it up with a little bit of neufchatel cheese and make my own Philly rolls. So good.

Anyway, I digressed there. The point of this post is to tell you about my fondness for all things tea and my latest favorite is Tropic of Strawberry by Celestial Seasonings.



I know I've said a lot of things are amazing in my time, but this is the Queen of herbal teas in my opinion. It's so naturally sweet that you could make it cold and drink it and never miss the sugar. There is another tea I want to try by Celestial Seasonings that is a pomegranate green tea.



I'm looking forward to trying it after I drink up some of the many teas I already have. Haha. If you could see my tea shelf you would think I was a tea psycho. I have so many teas they are taking over the kitchen. The ones I drink the most are oolong (the only bagged kind I can find in the store is by Twinings), Jasmine, Imperial White Peach, Perfectly Pear (so good!), green tea, Nutcracker Sweet (a holiday one by Celestial Seasonings. It's black tea with cinnamon and vanilla!), Candy Cane Lane, Roobios, and a whole bunch of herbal teas. I mainly drink green and white, but I've been on a Tropic of Strawberry kick as of late. I also have the pyramid Lipton teas like the caramel vanilla and mandarin green. And when I run out of Nutcracker Sweet, I have a Lipton version which is a vanilla black tea. Next year I am definitely going to have to try the Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride tea.

Regarding oolong, I didn't really like it when I first had it either but it has since grown on me. Besides, I am finally(!) getting around to listening to my mom after all these years about the stuff. Whenever we would go to a Chinese restaurant she would tell me to drink the tea because it helps your body not absorb as much of the fat. "Did you eveh see a fat Chinee?! No, you don! Dat's because dey drink a da Chinee tea!" (Think Heavy Japanese accent.) Anyway, I used to blow her off and not even believe her about what she was saying, but I have in recent times researched it a bit and there is actually some truth to this. If you drink some about fifteen minutes before you eat a meal that contains a lot of fat, you can actually prevent some of it from being absorbed. Supposedly drinking milk is supposed to work a little like this as well since calcium has recently been reported as blocking some fat absorption. So try some oolong. It's usually what's served in Chinese restaurants. It's brownish in color. Green tea is tea that has not been fermented while black tea is fermented and oolong is somewhere in the middle.

So get some green, red, brown and white tea (and even some black) and kick the crap out of some free radicals! Besides, if you buy some Celestial Seasonings tea, the boxes are like little pieces of art. They make me happy every time I open one up.

Here are some more foods that get me through the day:



These things are SO so good. They are pieces of dried plums that are enrobed in dark chocolate. You get antioxidants galore as well as flavor.

( more food stuff in here )

Okay, I admit it. I am always the first one to turn up my nose to a diet soda. I have never in my life ingested it on purpose unless it was a last resort situation, like the person had no clean running water to drink and I was about to crack open and shrivel like an overcooked Thanksgiving turkey.

Well, today I made my first on-purpose diet soda purchase and I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. If it weren't for the fact that I'm convinced aspartame eats brain cells like a hungry-me might attack a dark chocolate Dove bar, I would give it two thumbs up. I thought I would give it a chance since someone was raving about how great it is and how if you're ever going to drink a diet soda this one is the one to try. So I caved, bought some, and am not displeased. I wouldn't drink it every day since I tend to be slightly (haha!) paranoid and don't like artificial chemicals, but it will definitely be something I'll keep on hand in the fridge for moments when I feel like indulging without smacking myself in the forehead because I'm filled with regret for twenty minutes afterward. Plus, the can is just so darned festive that it makes you happy just looking at it.



Try some. It's pretty rockin' if I do say so myself.