In The Land of Hypochondria

I have a lump on my back. Its not a big lump, somewhere between a quarter and a half-dollar in size. Its under the skin and doesn't really hurt, or itch...or really do much of anything besides be...there.

Of course, I am convinced that this lump is just the very tip of the proverbial iceberg of all manner of horrible and incurable maladies.

Why?

Because that's just how my brain works about these things, especially when I am pushed to acknowledge that they exist. You see, I have someone who cares about me and noticed this lump in the first place as I am neither inclined to, nor flexible enough, to regularly examine the terrain of my own back. So, this person who cares about me also recommended that I see a doctor about my mystery lump...which I have agreed to do.

And that is all that it takes to ignite the fuse of my rampant hypochondria. Somehow, there is something wired into the male brain that allows us to actively deny physical ailment so long as that ailment does not interfere with our far more important pursuits of say...watching a rerun of our favorite show or passionately discussing the latest technological gadget that we covet. But, once that ailment pierces our shield of inconsequence then the ailment becomes all consuming.

Its presence gnaws at our psyche like a bulimic termite in a woodpile. And, in some sort of x-chromosome-fueled calculus, the more insubstantial the ailment, the greater the degree of imagined peril the ailment possesses.

And, I am helpless to stop this calculus until I am assured by a doctor that the lump is just a lump and I am still in astoundingly good health.

Sigh...until then, please bear with me...for I fear the candle is growing dim...cough cough...save yourself....

Making TBTAM's Butternut Squash Soup

So, there is is this neat blog called "The Blog That Ate Manhattan" http://theblogthatatemanhattan.blogspot.com/ that is written by a doctor in, of all places, Manhattan. Along with lots of good medical advice and articles, the author, Margaret Polaneczky,MD (aka TBTAM), also writes about a wide range of other topics including cooking and food.

Recently, I came into possession of TBTAM's infamous Butternut Squash Soup recipe, so tonight I am making the stuff. I have never personally dealt with a Butternut Squash, I have had pleasurable dealings with pumpkins, which are a cousin of the Butternut Squash who just happen to have had a much better publicists when the English tradition of carving turnips for Halloween made its way across the pond to America, where we, jumbo sizers that we are, decided that a turnip was just too puny for our needs and transferred the tradition to the more suitable pumpkin.

And, of course, none of that has anything to do with making butternut squash soup, other than that pumpkins smell and taste similar to butternut squashes, and also do quite well as soup.

I am excited about this recipe as it pushes me out of my comfy cooking comfort zone, not only by making me work with an unfamiliar squash, but also by forcing me to use 5-spice and Ginger, two spice choices I don't normally utilize.

So, here's the basics.
Get a butternut squash (you'll find them lurking in the shadowy back corners of the produce section, loitering near the potatoes and yams)


Peel the squash and then slice it in two, which will reveal a neat little cavity filled with much the same schmutz that you find inside of a pumpkin...scoop that stuff out so that all the seeds and stringy bits are gone.


Then, slice the squash into neat 2-inch chunks and place them in a bowl where you then toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper. (My apologies to TBTAM, but I replaced the pepper with Chipotle for a somewhat zestier twist).


Next place the oiled up chunks of squash onto a baking pan and shove them into a pre-heated to 350 degree oven. Leave them there for 30 minutes or so (turning occasionally) until they are nicely browned all the way around.


While the squash is cooking, mince two tablespoons of ginger and mix it with 1/2 teaspoon of 5-spice.

When the squash is baked properly, place the chunks into a food processor along with the ginger-5 spice blend and processorize it. Add a cup of vegetable broth and continue to processorize until it is smooth.

Pour the smooth squash into a medium sized stock pot and mix in one to two more cups of vegetable broth along with one cup of white wine (yeah!). And...simmer.

Before serving, mix one cup of creme fresh (I used fat-free half and half) and a tablespoon of orange juice and before serving, swizzle this mixture on top of the soup.

That's it. A great soup for a chilly winter's night.

Moving Too Fast

I gave up caffeine awhile back, which is kind of a big deal for me as I was drinking a lot of coffee each morning. The headaches I would get from either drinking too much coffee or not drinking enough were really getting tiresome, so I weaned myself onto decaf, which is all that I drink now.

I get fewer headaches, which is nice, and aside from a few mornings where the old starter just won't turn over, I have not been missing the early morning buzz. I still enjoy the warm cuppa every morning, its just a warm cuppa unleaded.

Anyway, I figured that once I got off the java-juice, I would become more relaxed and thus, more tolerant of the slower pace that the world surrounding me seems to have adopted of late.

No such luck. You see, I have the fortunate/unfortunate circumstance of living in the lovely county just north of the Golden Gate Bridge...once the center of the new age movement and 70's haven for all things spiritually and cosmic.

Its also freaking expensive to live here as well. Lovely climate, proximity to San Francisco, beautiful landscape...it all adds up to the ideal place to come and enjoy the fruits of a successful life. Except, it seems that all the people who moved here in the 70s and 80s to gobble up those fruits have stayed on here, and now the median age of the residents of this lovely little county is approaching triple digits...AND THESE PEOPLE MOVE WAY TOO FREAKING SLOW!!!!!

I mean seriously, it is incredibly annoying to me to be stuck behind someone driving a Jaguar who can't manage to push the peddle down far enough to overcome basic inertia. Fine, you made it, and you can buy that snazzy, expensive sports car...now drive the thing like it is supposed to be driven. Or, when you manage to claw your way out of it, pay attention to your physical presence in the world so that you don't meander up and down store aisles, essentially impeding any type of normal progress as you scour the shelves for just the right brand of Metamucil.

I know, I know, there but for the grace of God, and all that. Sure, I'll be old one day (sooner than I'd care to admit), and I too will be getting in the way of some irritable younger jerk who is just moving too darned fast...but I'm not there yet and I think that I need to face up to the fact that the pretty county that I grew up in has morphed into a big ex-hippie Sun City.

Sigh...hurry up with that double decaf! I got places to go!

I'm Missing New York...Time To Cook!

So I've been in a lousy mood today, everything is moving too slow, everything is too boring and dull and well...I just don't feel plugged in like I did in New York, so, if you know me at all you know that when I am feeling lousy I create complicated recipes to cook up for dinner. The more lousy I feel, the more complicated a recipe I think up.

Now combine this propensity with the fact that its once more pomegranate season and that's all she wrote...(BTW, who is she and what has she actually written anyway?)

So, here's what I made tonight. You decide how lousy I felt.

Main course, a spinach, caper and blue cheese stuffed chicken breast that is coated in a wash of pomegranate infused fat free sour cream covered by panko and baked at 350 for about 30 minutes until it is so tender that Elvis would cry when he slipped a fork through it. This is all covered by my patented pomegranate reduction sauce that, quite frankly, has been known to send Catholic School girls into dramatic fits of peremptory confessions of lust for the chef.

Side dishes, my ever famous spinach-mushroom-green-olive-Parmesan bake with panko flavored by salt-free chicken bouillon and , of course, just a touch of chipoltle to keep everyone honest.

Complimenting the spinach bake is a nice little salad of sliced Washington Pears with a pomegranate-sour-cream drizzle whose tang balances the pear's sweetness just right.

This whole meal took about an hour and a half to prepare with many complicated steps involving just about every available dish and cooking device in the house.

Do I feel better? Well the Barefoot Chardonnay www.barefootwine.com that accompanied the meal didn't hurt, and everything actually turned out quite tasty, so I still miss New York, but at least I feel well fed and a little buzzed so the longing is now more of a soft moan of the soul rather than the wrenching ache of longing that had defined most of my day.

Its a start...

The City That Never Sleeps?

10AM, Borders on Columbus Circle.
Don't worry, he's not dead...just very relaxed.

Infected By New York

It’s happened, I’ve been totally infected by New York. I am not complaining. I have been reawakened by the mainline jolt of electricity that is now buzzing along my veins. Up until now, I thought that San Francisco was about the biggest city that I could handle, being the shy little Marin country boy that I thought myself to be.
But that boy is gone now, seared away by the epic truth that I have now walked the streets of a real city. I have walked the streets of Paris, and she is beautiful and large as well, but I am far too American in my soul to ever feel at home there. And though San Francisco is where I have always called home, I wonder now if I have just accepted San Francisco because of proximity and because of growing up in a place that everyone tells me is so beautiful and desirable. Yes, this is my home, my roots and family are here, but aside from those strong ties, I have never felt the instant affinity for a place like I felt on the streets of Manhattan.

San Francisco has many charms and does look lovely as it sits like a princess on an azure silk pillow…but once you get closer you find the people cold and unfriendly, rushing about furiously trying to justify the expense of sharing the azure pillow with the princess.

I wonder if the coldness that pervades most of the people you pass on the streets of San Francisco comes from a deep-seated discontent. So many people come here to California, and San Francisco thinking that this place is the answer to the restlessness in their soul, but then they discover that San Francisco is just another place and the answer that they seek is really supposed to come from inside of them…and it just isn’t there, the answer continued to look even further on.

Maybe I am just smitten with New York, like the vivid thrill inspired by a new lover, but something feels so right and connected within me now that I have walked those streets.

Does this herald a new beginning? I rebirth? Not sure, but I think that I need to explore this new lover some more to find out.

Halloween in Penn Station

After the American Cancer Society pasta dinner on Saturday night, we were planning on just heading back to the hotel and having an early night so as to rest up for the race on Sunday. As we were leaving though, Sarah Colloum, the project manager for the ACS Team pointed out that we were very near to Penn Station and that we might want to check it out, being that it was Halloween and all.

So we walked the block to Penn Station and ducked in to get out of the rain.
So there we are, in a walkway leading up to 6th Ave, watching thousands of people coming off the trains dressed up for Halloween…WHAT A TREAT!!!

Many of the girl’s costumes seemed to have a common theme:

• Sexy cop with badge and hot pants


• Sexy nurse with a cap and very short skirt


• Sexy zombie with bloody mouth and very short skirt


• Sexy ganster girl, with fedora and very short skirt


• Sexy…well you get the picture

Now, I wasn’t complaining, but I was more interested in the wild and unusual costumes that passed by, the ones NOT purchased at SexyCostumes.com.

And there were plenty to choose from, several pig outfits with the word Flu written on them, many centurions and gangsters and pirates and zombies and an extremely buff guy dressed as Snow White(boy wouldn’t the 7 Dwarfs been surprised!)
Then there were the just plain out there costumes that defied description, my favorite being a man (I assume) dressed head to toe in a bright green body stocking that covered his face and body completely…or the guy who was a walking Facebook Page with a cutout for his face where the profile page would be.
I was used to the parade and variety at the Castro in San Francisco, but this was truly a special moment for us and we just stood and gawked (and took pictures to be posted later).

Funny, I don’t mind being such an obvious bumpkin here. Besides, Halloween is made for watching and staring right?