a lighthearted interlude

i had somehow forgotten about this video's existence. this is a failing on my part, and i sought to remedy it.

the violence inherent in the system, but not the sex.

so i've done a lot of thinking about the whole "violence is ok for kids, but sex isn't" debacle that plagues our society, and i think i've finally hit upon a logical conclusion.

anyone who has ever spent any time around young kids (and i mean pre-teen/prepubescent young) knows that the lord of the flies had it absolutely right: without societal guidance, children are mean. they will say whatever they want, regardless of the feelings of others, and with a complete lack of tact. they'll hit and kick and scratch and bite. they will defend themselves over the smallest slight, and attack verbally at a moment's notice.

so violence, messy as it is, is ingrained. it's there at the start, and is un-taught for the greater good (i.e., not going around punching everyone because you want to). it's relatable. it's even casual; my guy and i beat each other up all the time. mostly me. because he's a jerkface*.

i'm not a doctor. i have no grants, and i haven't spent years observing children and their brain patterns and diets and hormone levels. but it doesn't take a doctorate to know that kids are jerks. nor does it take a rocket surgeon to know that kids don't really develop an interest in sex until later on, much later than an interest in violence and slapping tommy because he took your blocks away.

sure, kids know they have parts. they know that if you touch some of those parts in a certain way, it feels weird/good/hilarious. they know that acting out on the touching can get a response that is also hilarious, especially when your parents have guests over for dinner. but the intricacies of sex and its larger-scale effects are basically lost on children**. part of the joy of childhood is the inexperience and innocence that coats our interpretation of the world around us. we catch glimpses of things and reconstruct them in our head based on already learned facts and pure imaginative whimsy. we see a bit of sexy-times on television before the channel is quickly changed, and lie in bed replaying that bit over and over again, wondering what and why and how and hey what's going on there. we ache for the unknown, in an unknowing manner; we don't even know what it is that we want.

so where does this leave us? well, it's my opinion that information about sex should come from someone who cares and knows what they're talking about, and i'd really like it if we lived in a world where that person is a parent or guardian. unfortunately, we don't live in such a world. we live in a world where it seems like a lot of grown human beings don't know how their own bodies work. we live in a world where girls are growing up to be women who think a hymen is something that has to be broken through***, and many men think that pornography is a learning tool.

like wonder bread and alvarado st bakery, the sex that is found in movies and books is a creature completely separate from actual sex. in movies and books, two people (usually a man and a woman) meet, know each other for about a week, have sex (in books--at least, in romances--the woman is usually a virgin and there's pain and blood and the man holds her close as her eyes well with tears and he assures her the pain will pass and then omg it's so beautiful lolz~****), and then are in love forever and ever.

this is not what we need to be teaching children. we need to be teaching them that their bodies and minds are complex, and thus, social and sexual interactions are as well. we need to teach them to be safe, with their own bodies and with other bodies. they are not going to learn any of this watching/reading current forms of entertainment. this, unfortunately, says a lot about the quality of our entertainment these days, but frankly, if you're looking to something called entertainment for learning material, you're already in a lot of trouble. children, however, see everything as learning material, because everything is new. what they do with that material is, for the most part, up to you.

sit down with your kids, tell them how their bodies work. they don't need all the fleshy-moist details all up front; a nice outline of the basics will do, and then work your way up from there.

and tell tommy to stop being a dick and give back the damn blocks.










*not always.


**which is why 16 and Pregnant exists.


***i think i truly grasped how second-rate the female gender is considered in this country when i learned, at age twenty-nine, that this is not true.


****i was an avid reader of harlequin romances. it is seriously like this. all the time. forever and ever. just like love! <3 <3 <3 xoxo

what i've learned from making smoothies

recently, i have made some minor changes to my diet; namely, i've stopped eating any forms of sugar other than those in fruits and vegetables (good bye, glucose and sucrose, hello levulose). i have also started writing (read: typing) down everything i intake, and recording the calories.

i love to bake. i love baking cookies, and muffins, and scones, and empanadas, and banana bread... i love to bake. unfortunately, the thermometer in my oven went weird last christmas, and as a result, i've been mostly without an oven for the past nine months. this is partly my fault, seeing as i've had plenty of financial opportunities to buy a new one, but, well, that's a whole different story that i don't even like to think about let alone discuss. its pseudo-absence, however, has had the added benefit of limiting my time in the kitchen, and thus baking carb-and-sugar-loaded delights*.

what does the previous paragraph have to do with making smoothies? well, the side affect of loving to bake is loving to eat what you have baked, and therefore a love of sweet things. so hacking out all sugar has been... odd. not impossible, not even overly difficult, as i thought it might be**. but a girl can eat only so many babybels and whole grain crackers before she cracks and vacuums her way through her local bakery, so i started making smoothies.

to start, i've developed more of a love for the banana. ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that liz does not like plain bananas. at all. i have tried desperately to develop a taste for them on their own--they come with their own wrapper, for pete's sake--but to no avail. i will take them in pancake form, with cinnamon and butter; and in bread form, with more cinnamon and chocolate chips; and cake form, with more cinnamon and more butter and more chocolate chips; but if you hand me a ripe, unadorned banana, i will beat you with it***. this led to a fissure between me and traditional smoothies, which tend to rely on a big, fat banana to flesh them out, and thus taint the entire glass with a tropical armageddon of pain and sorrow.

however, my freezer lacks an ice maker. and, because i loved to make chocolate chip banana bread on a whim and bananas have to be rendered to a fine liquid state for truly awesome banana bread, what it lacks in an ice maker, it makes up for in frozen, incredibly ripe bananas. so, with a heavy heart and the hope that all the other crap i was throwing in would mask the flavor, i risked frostbite**** and sliced and tossed half a frozen banana into my blender.

the result was... pleasing. the sub-arctic temperature of the frozen banana gave the smoothie its signature milkshake-slushy consistency, and the taste was a slight, surprisingly pleasant echo behind the blueberries and spinach and hemp milk*****.

it also became my habit to frivolously toss a teaspoon or tablespoon of chia seeds into the blender, for added nutrients and omegas and whatnot. this habit was quickly broken when i discovered that chia seeds + liquid + blender = all the chia seeds coagulate around the blade of the blender and stay there. so, pro-tip: stir the chia seeds in after you've poured it into your glass (or mug, as i am currently drinking mine).

but i think the best thing i've learned from smoothie making has basically nothing at all to do with smoothies and everything to do with why i used to rarely use blenders: they're a bitch to clean, and i have no dishwasher. solution: right after pouring out your beverage (stick it in the fridge if you're worried about melting), give the bowl of the blender a quick rinse, to get rid of the big stuff. fill it up about a third of the way with hot water, and give it a squirt of dish soap. put it back on the base, put the lid on, and let 'er rip at high speed for about ten seconds. give it another, more thorough rinse, and bam: clean blender bits******. and no bleeding!

the following is what i'm sipping as i type. by all means, substitute what you want. in fact, i dare you to.

yeah, i went there.

ron burgundy's quickly-escalating smoothie (just made that name up now; stole it from the gif; shut up)

30 frozen blueberries
10 frozen raspberries
1/2 a frozen banana, sliced
a handful of spinach leaves, shredded
1 small (preferably homegrown {go country living!}) apple, chopped
2/3 cup unsweetened vanilla hemp milk
1 tbsp chia seeds

throw in your frozen bits first, then your spinach, then your apple. top with hemp milk. work in quick pulses at first, to integrate everything, then let it go on high until smooth. pour into a delightful drinking vessel, and stir in chia seeds. calories: 274















*OH MY GOD HOW I MISS YOU SO MUCH I DON'T EVEN WANT TO EAT YOU I JUST WANT TO MAKE YOU DEAR GOD HOW HAVE I SURVIVED


**tmi: i'm at the beginning of my newest pre-menstrual cycle as i type this. we'll see how long my serenity lasts.


***i will admit, my tendency towards violence has calmed since i cut out the sugar. though i think it might be from lack of energy. i need to sleep more.


****you think i'm kidding? frozen bananas have the magical power of being actually colder than anything else inside a freezer, including the freezer itself. they burn when you hold them.


*****read: hippy.


******this does not work if you have not yet broken yourself of the habit of throwing around chia seeds like a slightly-retarded rain forest bird. the hot water and soap does nothing to break up the little gloopy chia seed party that forms around your blender blade. you must attack that manually. godspeed.

morning quinoa (aka: in which our heroine photographs her food)

i made quinoa for breakfast this morning. i sauteed half an apple in some butter, then tossed in my rinsed quinoa and stirred it around some to toast it up a bit before adding my water and letting the whole thing simmer for a while. i crushed up a quarter serving of almonds, and tossed that on top of my finished product, along with a healthy dose of cinnamon and a splash of unsweetened vanilla hemp milk. i stuck a spoon in it, and looked down at my bowl. in the mid-morning light, on my actually-kinda-clean kitchen counter, it looked... pretty. pretty enough that i took a picture of it*.

and then i ate it. and it was pretty gosh-darned good.

the end.








*and no, the picture was not touched in any way by instagram. that's what photoshop is for.

pumpkin pie rice pudding.

so i had a random urge for crazy food-related delight this afternoon, on my hour-and-a-half drive home from pacifica*. i recently found, via tastespotting, recipes for fried oatmeal chicken and pumpkin mash. the page in question was an exercise in de-health-ifying an existing set of recipes, and believe you me, it sounds pretty freaking awesome. however, i've been trying to pay attention to what i stuff in my facehole, and the thought of frying chicken in pure butter was slightly repellent to me. so, i stopped at the store, and then i improvised, via baked oatmeal chicken and pumpkin polenta.

it was pretty amazingly delicious considering i was basically winging it; the milk needed egg to really make the oatmeal stick, and i probably should've run about half of the oatmeal through the food processor to make a really nice coating. but the oven maintained 350 degrees fahrenheit**, and the polenta soaked up the pumpkin like a champ. well, half of the pumpkin.

see, the smallest size can of pumpkin puree one can get with regularity at their local supermarket is 15 ounces, the size of a slightly-large soup can. i only needed half the can for dinner, and whilst i took a couple bites of puree straight from the can, i craved more.

enter cook's illustrated recipe for simple stovetop rice pudding, tweaked and adapted to complete shit because i'm impatient and didn't want to use two cups of any dairy product. because we were running low. however, my bastardization was the real winner this evening:

i give you, pumpkin pie rice pudding.

1/2 cup medium grain rice
2 cups water
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
half a 15oz can of pumpkin puree (aka, 7.5oz pumpkin puree {math is power!})
1 tsp cinnamon (or, one container cinnamon. it depends on your tastes. i don't judge.)
dash nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla extract

bring 1 cup of water to a boil. stir in rice and salt; reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until water is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

stir in milk and 1 cup water; the sugar; the spices; the extract; and the half can of pumpkin puree. bring to medium heat, stirring frequently until thick. reduce to low heat to continue the magical thickening process, stirring occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.

you could, of course, let it chill in the fridge, and then top it with freshly-made whipped cream and some more cinnamon. or, you could be real damn impatient like me, and let it fall to just below taste-bud-slaughtering heat before consuming it like the animal you are. i am. we are. IT TASTES LIKE PUMPKIN PIE, ALL RIGHT?

BONUS:

DUNE!






*i almost stopped a few times--the weather was perfect, the sea was exquisite... ugh.

**which was twenty-five degrees lower than i wanted, but the fact that it maintained any temperature below 425 is a victory to me.

+100 things that make me happy+ #24: falling asleep sitting up with the light on and a book in my hand, then waking in the night to find the light off and the book put aside for me

the title to this post pretty much explains it all.*

a few years back, i had a massive ear infection. and i mean massive; i could not hear out of my right ear for a good five months total. the infection culminated the morning of christmas eve, forcing me to spend the wee hours of the morning crying in pain in the urgent care of the local doctor's office.**

two hours and a couple hundred dollars in time and prescriptions later, i was back home, medicated and packing up little chinese-food boxes with cookies for the coworkers i was, unfortunately, bailing on that day.*** i rested for a bit, then headed out with the guy and kids to drop off the boxes, apologize profusely for being ill, and spend the evening nodding off in a corner at the guy's parents' house.

that night, we sat in bed reading, the red-shaded vintage lamp behind the bed making everything look warm and cozy, and the down comforter actually making it warm and cozy. the nodding continued in earnest, evolving into drowsing, and ending with me falling asleep sitting up with my book splayed in my lap.

later, i woke up to a dark room and soft snoring. my book was set aside. i'd been tended to in my sleep. at a time when i was already feeling vulnerable and crappy, it was immensely comforting--a small, lovely gesture of affection.











*unlike clarissa. i liked the show and all, but really, she explained absolutely nothing.

**pro-tip: screaming and clutching your head gets you to the head of the line every. time.

***retail work = usually working shitty days of the year and having to pay for doctor's visits and prescriptions out of pocket. SCORE!

+100 things that make me happy+ #23: quail

summer in california means many things to many people. in the past it has meant to me that i had one more stupid season to get through before autumn finally arrived, and i could wear sweaters and eat squash again. living in the mountains has toned down my dislike for summer, and i have come to more fully embrace the long days and barbequed foods and cold beverages that i used to really not care that much about.

summer in california also means that the local wildlife is out in full force. frogs, cicadas, owls, mockingbirds, coyotes--they're a constant nightly reminder that 27 hours of daylight is not nearly enough, and will screech in protest all night long. luckily for me, i wear earplugs to sleep.

my all-time favorite summer "visitor" is also a bit noisy, but it's an adorable noise. the california quail makes a poppy sort of whooping sound as it scratches through the brush bordering our property. they like to gather there in the mornings and late afternoons, and i like to try and get as close as possible without scaring them away. i unfortunately suck at it, so i have to make do with glimpses of blurred feet scrambling into the christmas tree farm next door and sightings down the driveway.

a baby quail is called a walnut. take a moment to fully absorb that fact, i'll wait.

ok, you good now? no? me neither. i still can't get over the fact that the offspring of one of the cutest birds ever is called a freaking walnut. a group of quail is called a covey*. so you can have a covey of walnuts. i don't even know what to do with myself in situations like this.

JUST LOOK AT THIS:

LOOK AT THAT FACE.


I'M DONE.












*thanks, covey run vineyards!