Blessed by the Potato

Well, it’s another extreme heat alert day here in Ontario, so air conditioned buildings are opened up to the public/homeless to prevent heat stroke and the like. People are encouraged not to undertake strenuous activity outside in the sun, and all the rest that the heat entails. Far away, some debate rages over whether global warming exists at all — let alone what we should do about it.

But I’m going to talk about the heat on a more personal note. I don’t care for the heat, not at all. I used to; but then, I used to be skinny.

I’ve got a lot of trouble sleeping in the heat and humidity lately, even with my air conditioner running. Of course, with the heat this bad, I can feel the oppresive heat draft coming in through the partially opened door (only my bedroom is air conditioned, and I have to leave the door open a bit for the cat).

Beyond that, though, I’ve got to worry about what it was that got me so fat in the first place: food. The stinking heat and humidity is just destroying the food in my apartment, turning everything mouldy really quickly. I usually have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, throwing leftovers out before they ever get the chance to go really bad. But lately I’ve been seeing spots of mould forming on, and in some cases even completely taking over, my food before I get around to tossing it. Icky. Also, and perhaps even worse than the mould, is that the heat is melting all the chocolate in my kitchen. My Twix bar came apart when I opened the package, leaving me with a mediocre cookie and some gooey chocolate & caramel to lick up. I picked up a Toblerone (that I thought was on sale, but didn’t ring up as such) today, and when I took it out of the cardboard, all the little triangles went smoosh in the foil. It’s a real shame, because most chocolate isn’t as good after being melted like that and then resolidified in the freezer. I need to remember that for the future, and either keep my chocolate in the fridge in the first place, or at least in my room that is air conditioned for part of the day. (Last year, it was August before I finally started remembering to do that).

Lots of people are talking about books lately, so I was going to put up a list of the books on mine, but then it occured to me that “the medium is the message” — while it’s true that the large number of sci-fi and fantasy books would give you a pretty clear idea of my personality, the clutter and disarray of the shelf would provide an even better idea. Not only do I have some books that just don’t fit on the bit of shelf that isn’t dedicated to school books, so they’re sort of thrown on top, in front of, or even behind the other books, I also have a shelf that is soley devoted to junk and clutter. Matches, spare keys, change for the laundry machine, my hat, duct tape — you name it, and it’s probably been misplaced there at some point, and taking up valuable book-displaying room.

As I mentioned in my previous reports of Cancun, the food down in Mexico was not very good on the whole. I don’t deal with spicy stuff very well, and almost everything was hot. Some other standbys had strange interpretations (in particular, the bruscetta, which is essentially defined as consisting of tomatoes on bread; it had no tomatoes, just a slice of french bread with a thin tomato paste and some cheese).

One thing that I did like when I was down there was a cucumber dip for nachos. I never caught the name of it: the cucumber dip was always served with a red, spicy paste dip, and the waiters told us a name that seemed to refer to both of them. When we asked for some later, we got only the red paste dip, and had to painstakingly explain the properties of the cucumber dip to get some of that, too. Now, I forgot even the name of the red paste dip.

Anyhow, it was a very surprising how well cucumbers went with nacho chips, and it’s a kind of dip I’d like to make here. However, I’m having no luck trying to Google the recipe, so I’m hoping someone has heard of this stuff before and can help me out. Essentially, it consisted of cucumbers chopped very finely (into roughly 3 mm cubes) in an oil base, along with small amounts of diced tomato and (we think) grapefruit. It had some sort of sweet green herb for flavour (Cilantro, perhaps?), as well as just a hint of spice, presumably from ground cayenne pepper (or from being in the same room as the spicy red paste dip).

Update: I got some supplies and made an attempt at reproducing this. I’m not quite there, but what I made was eminently edible. The recipe is now available in the recipes section as Cucumber Salsa.

At the recommendation of some people at work I picked up some just peanuts peanut butter today. It’s interesting. For starters, it tastes exactly like it sounds: like liquid peanuts (the oil and sugar in regular peanut butter make it taste different… like peanut butter). The consistency is also really different: it’s really really sloppy, even more runny than jam. It’s more like the melted peanut butter you’re used to seeing on your english muffin or poptart. The oil also seperates out so you’ve got to stir it before spreading. I’m told that will all thicken up after it cools in the fridge though (which is where it’s to be kept due to the lack of preservatives). I’m going to try it a few more times (particularly in a batch of cookies) before rendering final judgement, but I think I’m going to stick to my old fashioned peanut butter.

However, no matter which way you mix it, you can’t beat peanut butter on english muffins with chocolate milk as a before bed snack! (Though I suppose that counts as cheating on my diet. D’oh!)

As I said in the comments of my last post, I passed my master’s defense with relative ease. Now I just have a few corrections to make to my thesis and I’ll be done completely, and can move on to my PhD.

That also means that it’s time to start my diet/exercise program in earnest. I’m not off to a very good start — I only went for a 10 minute walk today, and had a large pizza for dinner. I don’t feel too bad though, since it’s still celebratory, and since they were very late with it (they hadn’t even started by the time I got there to pick it up) they knocked the price down to $8 and gave me cheddar cheese without me even asking (I actually didn’t mind the wait — I wasn’t in a hurry and used the time to extend my walk with a lap around the block). Bonus!

The celebration weekend for the MSc was all right — we had some last-minute drop-outs for health reasons (Shubh’s mom and Dimple’s reluctance), and a good chunk of the party left first thing Sunday and missed some good eats and cards. The whole thing made me feel kind of old though — the latest I stayed up was 2:01 am, and that was a pretty sad sight at that point. Must be the coke withdrawl (I think I only had 6 the whole weekend).

More good news than my own was shared though — Reggie announced his engagement and showed off what 4 month’s salary will get you these days (yes, for a diamond it was pretty big and sparkly, but I still have trouble believing that that much money goes into finger ornamentation that doesn’t even tell time or shoot laser beams). Plus, Joce brought her latest boy toy/legitimately serious boyfriend to show off (though I don’t think he was entirely comfortable stranded in the wilderness with a bunch of old men who might die and stink up the joint before the ambulance could arrive should any sort of fatty-food related coronaries occur).

When I got home, I found a letter from my landlord saying they were going to come in today to change the toilets and showerheads to new water saving ones. I won’t be sad to see the toilets go (which are the original ’62 fixtures) since they don’t work any better than devilish no-flow ones do… but that showerhead is a classic. It doesn’t have a ton of settings, and it doesn’t need them. It has one setting that just simply gets the job done. My shower here has the best water pressure of any shower I’ve ever used. My parents used to have a similar no-nonsense showerhead, but replaced it some years ago for a detachable one with a hose, and showering at home hasn’t been the same since. It has a ton of settings, which can basically be summed up as “useless spray, wide useless spray, narrow useless spray, wide gentle dribble, single stream dribble, single stream high powered massage, and three stream pressurized shower” — of which, only really the last one is of much use for getting shampoo out of your hair, though the effective rinse area is pretty small.

Anyhow, I didn’t sleep at all last night because I hate the thought of someone coming into my apartment while I slumber, so I got up at 9 and waited for them on the couch… and fell asleep and snoozed right through until almost 2. Around 4, they dropped off another letter saying they won’t be here until tomorrow (Tuesday, so today as I post this). I’ve got a bunch of stuff that requires going in to the hospital tomorrow, so I’ll have to let them do it without me here (which is a shame — I was going to try to save my showerhead).

My allergies have been pretty bad this year. That’s the problem with Wayfare: not only does she have crazy, ridiculously over-sensitive allergies, but she also spreads them to everyone around her. It sounds nuts, and I didn’t believe her when she said she gave her strawberry allergy to her best friend in high school… except I used to only have fall allergies (ragweed), which are mostly itchy eyes… but I’ve been pretty damned sneezy the last two springs, too. Plus I gained a mouse allergy (but that can also happen just from working with them as much as I have).

I think that’s about it for tonight.

I just got back from the L-dot and there’s a nice package of homemade peanut brittle on the counter. I didn’t know peanut brittle was the sort of thing a mom could make. It’s like hard candies or fudge: you know that it is possible to make them “homemade”, but that it is in fact usually only done for small “homemade” stores. It’s not the sort of thing you find your mom actually making in your kitchen. To be perfectly literal, I still haven’t found my mom making it in the kitchen, just strong evidence of it. But it’s so good, she very well could have just bought a batch from Maple Leaf Fudge and put it in tupperware for me.

I really like peanut brittle. As I write this I’ve eaten almost half of what she left me, and I think I broke a tooth in the process. It was worth it. Anyhow, despite my obvious love for all that is sweet and nutty (hi Wayfare!) I hardly ever buy peanut brittle, because the best peanut brittle is only found in small confectionary shoppes or at tiny booths in town fairs. And those places without exception always have fudge available as well (usually peanut butter chocolate fudge at that), and for some reason peanut brittle costs as much or more than fudge, pound-for-pound, so I usually end up going with the fudge.

Yes, it is hard on the teeth. It’s hard, so you have to chew (it might dissolve upon prolonged sucking, but I don’t have that kind of patience, and from what patience I do have, it’s obvious that it takes more than 3 licks to get to the tootsie pop centre… er… I mean, it disolves slower than comparable “sucking” sweets, such as life savers), and once you bite into it, there’s a good chance that it will form some kind of peanut brittle concrete in the cusp of your molars.

My teeth are in terrible shape to begin with. I’ve liked my dentist a fair bit since she took over the practice from my old dentist, but there’s one thing that’s got me a little concerned. You see, due to a number of factors including diet (lots of sugar, acidity, and a terrible tendancy to graze rather than eat a small number of larger meals), behaviour (apparently there’s a period after eating where the most damage is done to the teeth, and that the damage over time goes down drastically about a half hour to an hour after eating, so eating non-stop never gives your teeth that minor break, and on top of that, my dentist says that I have a very strong bite, which is just doing mechanical injury to my teeth), the side-effects of my depression medication (chocolate) and genetics (my dad maybe has 6 natural teeth left in his mouth, having had dentures since his 20’s [gulp] and my mom’s had at least 4 root canals, 2 crowns, and a filling in every other tooth except her 4 front ones; I often joke about whether I’m not sure if I’ll end up with my dad’s teeth or my mom’s, but that it can’t be good either way), my teeth aquire cavities at prodigious rates. A new spot has formed since my last visit that is now large enough to poke with my tongue and see in the mirror. My dentist will wait until they get a bit bigger (the first sign of pain) and fill them then. The issue is that I’d like to see if there were some way to prevent these cavities from forming in the first place (aside from you know, brushing my teeth more than 2x a day, since I’m really only a morning & evenings kind of brusher, and, er… flossing, since I’m just really bad at it). Wayfare claims her dentist gives her teeth some sort of plastic film every year or so to seal out the worst of the damage. I remember getting this as a kid, and figured that they must have found out it caused cancer or something, since they stopped giving it to me. I asked my dentist about it recently, and she said she wouldn’t bother scheduling me to get it since with my “ferocious” bite, I’d wear through it in about a month, so there was no point. Now, it’s good that she’s always dealt honestly with me (AFAIK), but Wayfare thinks I should get a new dentist who will let me pay to get a much-needed protective coating on my teeth, and I think she has a point.

As for the coke that I drink, Wayfare’s been looking into buying 2L bottles instead of cans. I like the idea, since I know it takes less material to package a single bottle than a handful of cans, though I don’t know about the downstream recycling efficiency (apparently they make money recycling aluminum?). The big benefit she sees is that you can adjust the amount you want from a bottle, taking less than a full 355 mL if that’s all you want (though I’m not sure she’s counting the extra load of dishes in her figuring). The cost is comparable: cans are on sale for $3.33 for a 12-pack every other week (though the regular price is a painful $8 for 24, or $4.50 for 12, but unless I’m desperate I never pay that much), which is about 0.078 cents/mL, while bottles go for between $1-$2 (depending on sales, again), which works out to 0.05-0.1 cents/mL. However, I find cans to be much more convenient since there’s a nice spot on the door for them (whereas bottles would take up room on the already crowded shelf used for juice and milk), they’re more portable for taking in the car and to work, and since they’re small, it’s easy to keep a number of different flavours in the fridge (typically I have 2 7-up, 4 Coke, 2 diet mountain dew, 1 ginger ale, and 1 orange pop or root beer), and most importantly, you can finish a can of coke before it goes flat.

To help with that problem Wayfare recently got a pop bottle pump, a little device that replaces the bottle cap with a small bulb pump. The idea is that you use the pump to keep the pressure inside the bottle high so that the carbonation doesn’t come out of solution. It seemed to work well enough at first, as I was able to use the pump to make the pressure inside the bottle high enough that I was barely able to dent it with my fingers. However, the seal on it was very poor, and after about an hour, it was actually worse than simply screwing the cap back on in the first place (which might seem impossible, until you realize that with the old fashioned cap-only method you get atmospheric plus the pressure of some of the lost carbonation over an hour, whereas with a leaky pump seal you’ll always bleed back to atmospheric as the pop degasses). So it looks like the best method is still my uncle Al’s (yes, I have an uncle Al and an uncle Bob, it’s very stereotypical :) method of simply crushing the bottle until the liquid is near the top, then screw on the top. I haven’t had as much luck with that, since I’m as the Gungans say “… er… clumsy”, so in the process of trying to squeeze the bottle, I usually get a bit flying out the top if it’s more than half full, and if it’s less than half full then it gets really hard to squeeze enough of the air out of the bottle. It remains a handy method for crushing bottles and having them keep their small size for recycling, however.