Hasta La Gadget!

I wrote a cookbook! Whoo-hoo! Yes, I went to graduate school in fiction writing and yes, I paid all sort of money to do so. And, yes, twelve years later, I ended up publishing a cookbook. Ok, let’s call it a memoir with recipes. My mother calls it a “tell-all.” Either way, I ate my way through it. When I was done, I had gained five pounds, mostly from the packages of Werther’s butterscotch candies I was sucking on every night to help me crank the essays out. You don’t get to approach 50, eat candy every night and not look like you’ve been eating candy every night. That delightful phenomenon of ignoring your sins and bouncing right back into your bikini is only for 25-year-olds.

Meanwhile, Jessica, the woman who edited my book, is older than I am, and was getting thinner. She wasn’t sick. She looked awesome. Worse, she kept wearing a shirt that I had given her because it had gotten too small for me. She had been raving about this diet she was on, a diet that doesn’t call itself a diet but rather a life challenge. More specifically, The Whole Life Challenge. As in, you pay a little money and challenge yourself to make a whole lot of changes in your life. There’s a website that offers all sorts of nifty tips, like don’t check your email while you eat, and drink way more water than you want to (about 60 ounces of water a day, depending on how much you weigh) and give yourself points for stretching. But the main thing is: Don’t eat processed sugar! Don’t eat gluten! Don’t eat cheese! Give up milk all ye who enter here! Curiously, you somehow begin to look forward to almond milk in your coffee and coconut oil roasted onto your sweet potato slices and giving yourself points for meditating.

I was willing to try it because I had one pair of black pants that I needed to shimmy into in order to look appropriately writerly as read from my book at bookstores, bars and book clubs. Besides, I did not want to be one of those people who throws up her hands, points to her belly, smiles wanly and says, “You found me, middle age.” Coffee, wine, butter, lard and duck fat are allowed on the diet so it’s not like you can’t have any fun. And the bottom line is you will likely lose weight and definitely feel better if you stick with it for the 55 days they recommend.

Which, mostly, I have. That said, I have had a few tiny nibbles of cheese and the first five days of sugar withdrawal were hellish. And then, shockingly, I stopped craving sugar. I did eat pounds of red grapes and I was pounding bags of baby carrots every afternoon but I did not crave sucking candies or the frosting off everybody’s cupcakes. I actually started to feel repulsed by the chocolate covered espresso beans I had been stockpiling in the freezer for years.

What I did crave was highly seasoned protein. Protein that was readily available and delicious cold. (We’re not talking about nuts here, though those are allowed on the diet.) We’re talking about “it-used-to-be-dinner” food, which waits for you after work or after your workout and says, “Hello there honey, I’m here to make you feel so good! And I’m healthy!” We’re (now specifically) talking about the marinated sweet and sour fish I made last week.

One of the things I learned while writing my book is that if you don’t cook for yourself, you will never be completely happy. I realize this is a broad generalization. But cooking for yourself means exactly that: You are cooking for your self. For your childhood self and your adult self, and all the selves that are waiting to be fed, one way or another, especially the self that has cravings, some of which may be excessive and some of which may be deviant, but all of which need to be satisfied one way or another. I crave powerful, we’re-awake-now-baby! flavors. I am convinced that certain spices like cumin, coriander and cardamom are mood-elevators. I’ve never taken anti-depressants and I think it may be because I eat so much spicy food. It’s a theory, anyway.

But back to the sweet-and-spicy fish. I found this recipe in the awesome cookbook, Jerusalem, written by Yotam Ottolenghi and his partner, Sami Tamimi. Ottolenghi is Israeli and Tamimi is Palestinian. They are a remarkable couple and this book is remarkable as well. Every recipe works. Plus, the book makes use of a combination of Middle Eastern and North African spices that you probably haven’t attempted before, which means that almost everything you make will taste exotic and extraordinary but it won’t be expensive. I made the fish dish because, other than the pound of white fish fillet it called for, almost every ingredient was sitting in our kitchen. I bet you have most of the ingredients sitting in your kitchen too: Onions, olive oil, peppers, garlic, cider vinegar, bay leaves, tomatoes, curry powder, eggs, coriander seeds. (Actually, I didn’t have fresh tomatoes so I used a can of Cento San Marzano peeled tomatoes. Maybe it would have been better with the real stuff from the garden, but I was ecstatic with the results of the canned.) You may not have coriander seeds, so run out and get some. They are worth the trip to the store. They transform the dish into something extraordinary.

The recipe suggests you dust the fish with flour but since the Whole Life Challenge is gluten-free, I skipped that step. It didn’t matter.

Now, here is the ineluctable beauty of this dish. It lasts forever. I made it on Tuesday night. The recipe said it would be lovely that night but that really you should wait a day or two and let it marinate in the fridge. Of course, I couldn’t wait, and neither could my husband or older son (my younger son doesn’t eat fish) but the dish generated a huge pot of sauce so we had a lot left over. For days afterwards, I kept eating it. Driving home from spin class, I would think, “Oh, I get to eat that yummy sweet and sour fish!” And five minutes upon entering the house, I dug in. Until finally, five days later, that marinated fish was gone. Yes, I ate cold fish for five days. And every day, like a fine wine, it got better! How sad was I when I licked up the last of it? So sad that I’m making another vat of it tomorrow to serve on Rosh Hashanah.

I’m praying for leftovers.

Cold-Fish-That-Lasts-Forever (Marinated Sweet & Sour Fish, adapted from Jerusalem)

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, cut into 3/8 slices
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
2 red peppers, cut into 3/8 inch strips (or smaller, if you prefer)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 bay leaves
1 ½ tablespoon curry powder
3 tomatoes, chopped (or 2 cups Sam Marzano canned tomatoes)
2 ½ tablespoons sugar*
5 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 pound white fish (cod, pollock, halibut, haddock or any other white fish—I used flounder)
2 extra large eggs, beaten
1/3 cup cilantro
salt and ground pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

*If you are on level 2 or 3 of the Whole Life Challenge, skip the sugar.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large ovenproof frying pan (I used a Dutch oven) over medium heat. Add onions and coriander seeds and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add peppers and cook for another 10 minutes. Add garlic, bay leaves ,curry powder and tomatoes, and cook for another 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add sugar, vinegar, 1 ½ teaspoons salt, and black pepper and cook for another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a separate frying pan over medium high heat. Sprinkle fish with some salt, dip in eggs and flour (I skipped the flour) and fry for about 5 minutes, turning once. Transfer fish to paper towels to absorb excess oil, then add to the pan with the peppers, onions and tomatoes, pushing the vegetables to the side so the fish sits in the middle and bottom of pan. Add enough water (about 1 cup) to immerse fish in the liquid.

Place pan in oven for 10-12 minutes, until fish is cooked. Remove from oven and leave to cool to room temperature. The fish can now be served but it is even better after a day or two in the fridge. Garnish with cilantro.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

Pride is the kind of movie that is best seen without knowing its storyline going in. Because it delivers something quite different than you expect, based on the kind of movie it seems to be.

Even if you do know the plot (which deals with the coal-miners strike that tore Great Britain apart in the mid-1980s and much more), you still have to see it to believe it. Director Matthew Warchus (primarily known for theater work such as God of Carnage and Art) tells a multi-character story based on actual events that manages to be funny, touching, enraging and otherwise demanding a viewer’s emotional response.

It starts with those strikes in Great Britain in 1984, in protest of Margaret Thatcher’s attempts to close coal mines and lay off miners. Even as the miners are striking, members of the London gay community decide, after that year’s gay pride parade, that they will support the miners and start raising money for their strike fund. When their efforts to donate the money to the union itself are ignored (because of who the donation is coming from), the group’s leader, Mark (Ben Schnetzer), rallies his troops and picks one mining village in Wales to whom they’ll take their support in person.

The miners at first are nonplussed at the idea of being in the same room as actual gay people: “I’ve never met anyone who was gay,” one local says, to which Mark replies, “That you know of.”

This review continues on my website.

Felix Starck had what he calls a “perfect life.” As a recent college grad, he had a degree, a job lined up and a girlfriend and family, all comfortably situated in his German hometown.

He also had a serious case of wanderlust.

The 24-year-old began a mission to bike around the world for 365 days. In one year, he pedaled to 22 countries, on four continents, over 1,118 miles. The ride wasn’t without downfalls: His travel partner quit on him. He was overcome with pneumonia and robbed. His grandfather died while he was gone.

Yet Felix says he wouldn’t change a thing. Here’s what he learned, as told to Huffington Post Travel. (Starck’s correspondence has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

It’s better to have a few intense experiences than many superficial ones.

It wasn’t easy to accept, but this is one of the most important things I learned on my journey around the world. Clearly, there is a tremendous amount to see on our beautiful planet, but you just cannot visit all of it -– especially not on a bicycle. If there was a lovely waterfall 200 kilometers north of my route, it meant almost a week’s detour. Therefore, I focused on the places I came across and just enjoyed them more intensely.

Traveling solo doesn’t mean you’re lonely.

This trip was planned as a team and turned out as a solo project, which was actually for the best. Although I was traveling “solo,” I spent only a handful of days alone because it is so easy to meet new people. Whether they were other travelers or locals, it didn’t really matter. It is definitely easier to get in touch with people while traveling solo, because you have to. If you don’t, your trip won’t be fun at all.

Don’t ask — eat!

I cannot believe how picky I was in the beginning when it came to food: no cheese and no tomatoes (except on pizza), and no olives… the list was endless! In some countries, English is not spoken at all, and if you just point to a dish in the menu, it can sometimes turn out wrong. But there is also a chance the opposite will happen, and it will become your new favorite meal!

A sense of direction can be learned.

It’s incredible how fast you get around in cities without a map. There’s a book which says to explore the city like this: walk alternating left and right until you can’t go further. I’ve tried it, and I explored half a city. The sun also serves as a navigation device when you’re on a lonely dirt road.

Life begins outside your comfort zone.

The days after I left home were probably the toughest of my life. I never thought this would be so difficult for me. I left behind my perfect life, and the feeling was incredibly debilitating during those first days. Thoughts of quitting were ubiquitous. My brother, who accompanied me at the beginning of the trip, encouraged me to persevere. Together we came up with motivational games: How long can I ride on the side strip of the road? Can I make it over the bridge before the song ends? It helped immensely. I’m so happy that I kept going, because this trip made me stronger.

When you’re tired, you can sleep anywhere.

At first it was a huge adventure to camp in a meadow. I could be caught, and then what? But you lose this aversion after a few days, and it almost doesn’t matter anymore where you spend the night. When I reached a certain point of fatigue, I just took my mat and sleeping bag and camped in a park. Reasonable? Probably not, but I haven’t had any bad experiences at all. Of course I still prefer a hostel or even a campground, but any port works in a storm!

Let the virtual world go!

What probably held me back in the beginning was the fact that I was in constant contact with Germany on social media. Friends at home are online, and you can be online as well thanks to your phone — almost 24/7! Your old familiar life feels so close, and yet you know you’ll be missing it for a long time. After a while I realized I had to stop checking my friends statuses — I was living the dream, so I had better start enjoying it. That helped me to let go.

Meet new people.

After my travel partner left, I gathered all my courage and went on alone. The result? I met countless people whom I will definitely stay in touch with. When you travel alone, it’s easier to meet people.

It’s possible to decrease your standard of living.

At home in Germany, I never worried when I got a cappuccino at my favorite café or bought some new Nikes — it was totally natural. So in the beginning of my trip, it was difficult for me to give up my usual standard of living. At first, I’d go to a café early in the morning and have lunch and dinner in a restaurant. This completely changed after a while, and I survived with minimal costs, but whenever I allowed myself a cappuccino in a fancy café I appreciated it much more!

Appreciate the little things.

Very small moments: an amazing trail, making friends with a street dog, a good coffee! I had times where I was waiting for such a moment for days, and when one came, it was the best day of my life. One day I cycled in the north of Cambodia — it was 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. I was running out of water, and the next city was miles away. Suddenly a truck passed me and stopped. A man got out of the car, gave me a fresh watermelon and some water, smiled and left. These were the moments that kept me going.

Travel is the best university.

I learned more during my trip than in my 14 years of school. Traveling the world and getting to know new cultures and people taught me things that are impossible to learn in school. During my trip I had to use things like economy, sociology, geography and more. Travel isn’t a recognized institution like a university, but it will teach you much more.

Use less planning and more flexibility.

At first I wanted to be on the road for two years, but after a few days I realized planning a trip like that is absolute nonsense. Strangely, you feel much more relaxed if you don’t know where you will be in the coming days! Of course you need a direction in which to go, but I just went where I felt like it, and if I liked it, I stayed for a while. The journey is the reward.

Felix is turning footage from his journey into a documentary titled “Pedal the World.”

Check out the film’s trailer below.

Yes, it’s true, summer has come to an end. But don’t freak out because it’s actually kind of a good thing. Sure, it’s sad to say goodbye to the grill outs, summer berries and all that ice cream. But fall means apple pie a la mode, big bowls of soup and so much pasta. Guys, fall totally wins when it comes to food — and its victory can be measured in butter and cheese.

So pull out your big comfy sweaters and put on your forgiving pants — you know, the ones with the elastic band — because we’ve entered the season of feasting. Here are 25 recipes you should cook and eat to celebrate the beginning of the fall season. Think of them as training for Halloween candy and Thanksgiving dinner.

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This is Gary Dryfoos demonstrating one of the 2014 Ig Noble prizes: Use bacon “to stop uncontrollable, life-threatening nosebleeds.” Seriously, it’s a real research paper and it has already saved lives. Watch the ceremony to see the most ridiculous—but sometimes crucial and enlightening—scientific research of 2014.

Read more…