Food and Drink | the thin line between optimism and delusion...

Archive for the ‘Food and Drink’ Category

The Yellow Lung

Posted in Augusta, Beauty, Books, Favorite People, Food and Drink, Masters on April 16, 2014| 1 Comment »

Spring is very confused today. The wind chill was 35 degrees this morning. I had my air conditioning on yesterday. Technically, my AC might have still been turned on this morning, but since it was 64 degrees in my apartment when I woke up, and the AC was set on like 75, it wasn’t blowing. Now I have the heat on. I’m sorry I’m not sorry.

One thing spring is not confused about is raspberries. I am normally more of a blueberry/banana/apple fruit consumer, but they were out of blueberries, and my mom always says the important thing is to eat colorful food, so I bought raspberries. I’m not sure if these were particularly amazing raspberries, or if the fact that I ate nothing but white bread and mayo last week had something to do with it, but I can’t remember tasting anything so delicious. I felt like the kids from Lord of the Flies who are starving and find the tropical fruit (mangos maybe?) and can’t stop themselves from gorging. But then I remembered that those children felt very sick afterwards and that each raspberry cost about a dime, and I tried to limit myself to no more than a $1.50 in raspberries in that first sitting.

In other news, I ran out of flonase this morning, and I called the pharm for a refill. The nice lady at the pharm said,”Goodness! You sound terrible! Rough time of year, huh? I figured while I was out of allergy medicine, that I should sweep all the pollen off of my front porch. Not like, the yellow gritty dust, but the hairy oak pieces. I’m grasping for a better way to describe the oak debris, it sort of looks like mini caterpillars? Or maybe a yellow dust bunny? Debris is one of my favorite words. Spring time brings a lot of extra debris. My car looks like it hasn’t been washed in two years. It’s been more like ten days. Even Briscoe is sneezing.

Despite the fact that there is a windchill today, yesterday was hot and muggy and rainy and the mosquitoes were having a grand time. Briscoe and I went for a walk around 8 yesterday morning, and we sat down on a bench by the water, and I looked down, and there were at least five mosquitoes trying to bite Briscoe through her fluffy hair. We came home immediately. How do you keep mosquitoes off your dog?

I was home in Augusta last week for the Masters, and it was a whirlwind of friends, family, flowers, sandwiches, beer, and pollen. I attempted to see as many people as possible, and I still missed some important people. The amount of white bread and mayo consumed was upsetting, but necessary. My friends from home (The “A” Team) and I discussed how the Augusta National is like Narnia, how the grass is greener, everything tastes better, life seems crisper. But you can’t take it home with you. Egg salad does not travel well. The pairing sheet is just a dirty piece of paper when you get home. And this week, apparently, the end of the Masters means the return of the endless winter.

My childhood buddy, Lilibet, has written an excellent book – Box Girl: My Part Time Job as an Art Installation. Check it out, it’s totally hilarious. And if you need any other book recommendations, The Goldfinch was insanely awesome. And The Circle was an engaging and terrifying look at social media.

Briscoe and I happy to be back in sunny Charleston, but it was hard to leave home after such an amazing week. The first couple of days after the tournament are pretty rough, but I think I’ve made it through the worst part. I hope that you are all surviving this STUPID cold snap. This has to be the end of it, right? It’s not fair to have pollen and a wind chill. Winter can’t last forever. Until them, I recommend hot coffee and zyrtec, and a fuzzy dog if you can find one.

*I also posted a post below that I wrote about a month ago, but forgot to actually post. Finishing the drill is hard sometimes.

Read Full Post »

The Charleston Harbor Fish House

Posted in Charleston, Food and Drink, summertime on June 17, 2013| 2 Comments »

A couple of weeks ago, I got an invitation to the soft opening of the Charleston Harbor Fish House. My sweet friends Anita and Shannon work for the Charleston Harbor Resort, and we have been anticipating the opening of this restaurant with delight. As luck would have it, my mom was in town, and was available to be my date for the soft opening.

We took the water taxi from the Aquarium, which is a treat in and of itself. If you visit Charleston, or even if you live here, you should take the water taxi. It is an excellent way to see the harbor and the city from a different angle.

The new restaurant is open and spacious with lots of windows and clean lines. There were so many things on the menu that we wanted, but we settled on the hog snapper and the beef tenderloin. We also had hush puppies for a starter and a side of collard greens for fun. Everything was fantastic, the service, the presentation, the food, the view, and the company. After dinner, we went upstairs to the rooftop bar to watch the sunset.

If you get the chance, head on over to the Charleston Harbor Fish Camp. Go like them on Facebook. Call me when you go, and I’ll meet you there. Happy Summertime!

Read Full Post »

A vending machine fail

Posted in Food and Drink, Lance the vending machine, ridiculousness on February 15, 2013| 4 Comments »

Let’s get real. No one wants the oatmeal raisin famous Amos cookies in any circumstance, much less when they are seeking satisfaction from a vending machine. This is like when instead of peanut m&ms, they have those gross crunchy m&ms.

Read Full Post »

The perfect lunch

Posted in Charleston, Food and Drink, outside, Weather, Work on February 6, 2013| 1 Comment »

I’m sitting on a patch of grass, on the edge of the parking lot of my office building. My building is one of many neighboring office buildings, and my friends work nearby. Paul works directly across the street, Dan works around the bend in the road, and Friend organizes food trucks to come visit.

It might not be a glamorous area of town, and my building might be the plainest vanilla box you’ll ever see, but it takes me 15 at most to get here every morning, and there is plenty of free parking.

I took off my long sleeve shirt and am sitting in the sun in a tank top. Of note, this would have probably (or definitely) gotten me fired from last job. It is 70 degrees, bright blue sky, and I’m eating roasted red pepper hummus and carrots. A few of my coworkers are walking laps around the complex for exercise. The interstate is buzzing along behind me, and although that could be an annoyance, I’ve gotten rather fond of the noise.

At my last job, I was only allowed 30 minutes for lunch, on a good day. It is hard to drive to Wendy’s and back in 30 minutes. The job before that, my bosses liked to discuss cases at lunch, and lunchtime was not my own time, and the places we ate would have put me to sleep for the rest of the day if I’d actually eaten it. Work lunches were simply part of the job, and I think that is reasonable in certain professions like small law firms. I did lose ten pounds in the 18 months I worked there, as a side note.

Having control over my own lunch is an amazing privilege that I try to never take for granted. I go to lunch whenever I want between 11-2, and I live in a place where the weather often lends itself to sitting in the sunshine. My coworkers like to pick on me because I eat a turkey melt on an English muffin every day. But it is a privilege, and I am going to enjoy it, because it makes me happy.

Read Full Post »

The day to be jealous of people who don’t live in North America

Posted in Books, Charleston, dogs, Favorite People, Food and Drink, summertime on June 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

For the most part, I believe America to be the greatest place in the world. We definitely have our own problems, and there definitely parts of America that hold no interest for me as place of permanent dwelling, but as a whole, America is pretty great. More specifically, the South East is pretty awesome. I love the weather, the food, the people, the flowers, and the way we talk around here. But today, I wish I lived somewhere else. I wish I lived in India today. Or, tonight, although I guess it is already night in India by now. I would really like to see the lunar eclipse tonight. I should have planned my vacations better. Apparently there is a chance I’ll get to see full lunar eclipse in America in April 2014, fingers crossed.

Have I told you how Briscoe hates skateboarders? It might be one of the funnier things I’ve seen in a while. I think it is the noise that scares her. The dog needs a haircut like whoa. She’s going to get her hair did tomorrow, and I expect to have a little lamb by tomorrow night instead of the bear that is currently sleeping in my kitchen. For some reason she has developed this ridiculous habit of spilling her food all over the floor. It is like she picks up her bowl with her teeth and dumps it out, although I’m not sure that is actually possible. But once the food it on the ground, she won’t eat it. For a while, when I would come home to her spilled food, I would pick all the pieces up and put them back in the bowl. Then I realized, wait, she’s a dog, if she wants to spill her food on the floor, she should eat the food off the flood. So, I stopped cleaning it up, other than to turn the bowl back upright. Sure enough, after leaving the food on the ground until late into the night, the dog finally decided she would eat it off the floor. So, she’s started cleaning up the mess herself, but she’s still spilling the food.

Something about summertime makes me want to lose myself in a story, preferably a long drawn out saga. Happily, HBO has provided that for me with The Game of Thrones, and even more happily, I am able to read the novels instead of waiting to see what happens in HBO time (which is painfully slow in my opinion). I enjoy the story, the show (and the novels for that matter) are quite gruesome and violent. I find reading about violent and gruesome things is easier than watching them play out on my unnecessarily large television. But I’m totally engrossed in the novels, each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view, and the author has mastered the ability to speak in each character’s voice in a way that is seemless but also adds a depth to the writing and storyline that is not immediately apparent. I would not recommend the books or the television series to everyone, there is a base element to it that not all will find endearing, crass talk of sexual encounters and horrible things happen to almost all of the characters. But even the villainous characters have redeeming qualities (well, some of them do) and the heros have flaws, and there is nothing I love more than a good story with round characters.

I spent the last two weeks of May in Washington, D.C., training for work. Let me tell you, two weeks is a LONG TIME to be in a hotel. I learned a lot, got to spend time with some old friends (sadly, the Bizzy was out of town the entire time I was there), and enjoyed some fabulous food and beautiful sights, but I was very happy to come home to my apartment and my dog. I did meet some super cool new friends though. My mom and my aunt Jan came to visit me in Charleston this past weekend, and boy did we have a good time. I wish I could tell you we did lots of productive things, but really more than anything, we simply enjoyed Charleston and each other. We wandered, we enjoyed drinks on the rooftop under the shade with a breeze, we ate phenomenal food, (as a side note, a merinague will always add to a dessert), we peered through hedges, gates and walls into the fabulous gardens and side yards of people we didn’t know but wish we did, we sweated, we watched little children play in fountains, and Kate and Jan rearranged the furniture in my apartment. We did not shop at all, other than a short trip to the grocery, and we spent most of our time outside. It was great.

Oh! So I want y’all to check out my cousin Heather’s blog – she has MS, and has an amazingly honest and refreshing perspective, including my favorite – Wheelchair Etiquette.

Read Full Post »

Best. Birthday. Fax. Ever.

Posted in Athens, Favorite People, Food and Drink, Law School on October 16, 2009| 1 Comment »

Even if it was six days late. And it might be the only Birthday Fax I’ve ever received. David found it in the machine and was like – what the F is this? Sarah told him it didn’t have his name on it so it obviously wasn’t for him. It had a cover sheet and everything, but I left that off to protect the innocent.

Oh, Mean Bean. I miss you.

20091016150401

Read Full Post »

Frosty Update

Posted in Augusta, Food and Drink on August 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

So I’ve told y’all about Donald, my handy-man. He has single handedly remodeled my house for me.

Donald was installing some light fixtures for me the other day, and he was telling me about how he had to go home and baby sit his aunt. Apparently she’s real old and doesn’t know what is going on very well anymore (Donald’s words were a little less PC).

Donald: “She’s a moron. Seriously, she doesn’t know what’s going on. And you have to get her a frosty every day.”

Me: “Really? Does she have a frosty card? How big does the frosty need to be?”

Donald: ” What’s a frosty card? She doesn’t care what size it is, you just have to get her one every single damn day.”

Me: “She totally needs a frosty card! You get a free frosty! Whenever! You don’t even have to buy anything!” (I picked my keys up to show him my frosty card)

Donald (with a suspicious look) “How much does that card cost?”

Me: “A dollar.”

Donald: “Can you buy one for someone else?”

Me: “Far as I know, it’s a fundraiser!”

Donald: “I’ll have to look into that.”

Read Full Post »

Frostys make you cool

Posted in Food and Drink on June 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Y’all will not believe the awesome thing that happened to me today. I love Wendys, I always get a baked potato and a jr cheese burger and a big drink and a mini frosty (I like the little ones, the big ones melt before I can eat them, and if I try to eat them before they melt I get a brain freeze). This ends up being a great deal of food for $5. But you have to be careful with potato, sometimes they forget to give you really important parts of the potato like the butter and the salt.

Regardless, as the lady was handing me my precious little mini frosty today, she asked me if I’d like to a frosty key tag, which would entitle me to get a mini frosty whenever I wanted for free for the next six months. I asked her how much it would cost to do such an amazing thing, and she said a dollar. A DOLLAR.

I am now the proud owner of a Frosty Key Tag that is the greatest fundraiser I have ever heard in my entire life. The proceeds go to the MCG Children’s Medical Center, so I apologize to all of you who do not live in the CSRA. I didn’t get to write my name on a shoe or a ballon or anything, but I do have a plastic frosty hanging from my keys.

I might stop by the other wendys on my way home and redeem my first free frosty.

Read Full Post »

Partly Cloudy Skies With a Slight Chance of Injury

Posted in Augusta, dogs, Food and Drink, ridiculousness on May 20, 2009| 1 Comment »

Y’all would not believe the weather around here (unless of course you live here and have been experiencing it with me). It has been COLD this week. COLD! In MAY! The May I was in Grand Lake it snowed half a foot on May 23, and I literally thought I was going to die. I love snow, it’s really neat. But I was living in a shack/cabin in the middle of the woods at 9,000 feet, and my hot water didn’t work. The fact that it was snowing outside made this experience a little more “complete”, but not a lot more enjoyable. My alarm clock had a thermometer on it, and I would wake up in the morning to a frozen nose, look at the little digital face and read – 39 degrees, realize I had to get out from underneath the covers and take a cold shower, and sort of want to cry. But the view was sort of worth it. Eventually they fixed my hot water and the snow melted and the temperature rose above 50 degrees in the daylight hours. But not before I got lost on a ten mile hike in the snow in the dark with people I barely knew. Ahh, memories. I was so trusting back then. Wanna go on a hike in the woods in the gathering dark with us? Sure it’s starting to snow, but, it will be fine! Don’t be a wuss Georgia.

But anyway, May is suppose to mean HOT. And I can’t talk about being in Colorado all summer because having a real job makes that sort of thing a lot more difficult.

I was so productive on Sunday, got my life together for the week, laundry, grocery, cooked some food, cleaned my house, went to the movies. Natalie and Bucket moved in! Hooray!

Then Monday night I discovered that the large bottle of Palmolive under my sink had been turned over and spilled. I pulled everything from under the sink and cleaned it all up. Soap is surprisingly difficult to clean up. Well, I didn’t get all the soap out from under my finger nails, and I put my finger in my eye, and I got soap ALL IN MY EYE. AGGGHHHH. It freaking hurt like the devil. I flushed my eye with water for what seemed like forever. Still didn’t get it all. I HATE flushing my eye out with water. It hurt almost as much as the soap. I’m a MORON. A moron. Just when I was starting to feel like I had my life together.

Last night Travers stole some wood from Kate and Trav and we had a little fire in my little fire pit in the back yard. It was nice, although the wind was gusting (I love the word GUST) and every once in a while you would feel like the fire just might get you. When Briscoe and I were about to go to sleep last night I kissed her on the nose and realized that all her fur smelled like smoke. So hilarious. Bucket’s fur also smelled like smoke. I’m going to start calling them Smokey and the Bandit. Their current alter egos are Biscuit and Bobby, to which they are starting to respond.

I had a magistrate court trial yesterday, and although I think I got my point across well, I laid in bed last night and thought of all the small procedural mistakes I made. The defendant was pro se, and I almost felt like how when you play a sport against someone who sucks – like tennis – you play like crap, but if you play against someone better than you – you play up to their level. I feel like I played down to this guy’s level. Hopefully I’m learning.

I was driving my car at lunch and I was for some reason dumb struck by how cool driving a car is. You’ve got this wheel, and you can spin it around, and when you spin it around, the ENTIRE SUPER HEAVY car moves. At the flick of your wrist. How cool is that? It’s amazing how I drive a car every day and never think about how awesome driving can be.

I made Kate (the runner) cupcakes last night because it is her birthday. And I BURNED them. I’m so embarrassed and horrified. I really never burn things. Ever. Not baked goods at least. I guess I haven’t ever baked in my new gas oven before. It was really hard. I’m concerned. Not only did they burn, it was just the bottom of them. Ugh. I’m going to have to practice practice practice and get better before Christmas rolls around. Britt’s mom has promised to teach me how to make cinnamon buns this Christmas, btw.

It has been such a pretty day. I hope it doesn’t cloud up before I can go home! I want to go play outside.

Read Full Post »