skilletfest

okay, so not so much cooking lately. mostly working. I have, however, started running with some regularity. I’ve inched my way up to 2.5 miles (plus warmup-cooldown) which, while not all that impressive in a general sense, is a big deal for someone who, up until a couple of months ago, had never run more than a mile in his life. at this rate, I just might be ready for that 8k in September, given flat ground and a strong tailwind.

it’s been a transitional period on the e-reader front. my trusty Kindle 2, victim of an unexplained mishap, is missing a tooth (or at least one corner of its screen). the person responsible kindly agreed to pay me fair market value for the still-functional-but-cosmetically-compromised gadget, and so I decided to put the money toward a newer model. serendipitously, Barnes and Noble released the new Nook this very same week.

I spent twenty minutes or so figuring out how to crack the DRM on my Kindle library and convert the files to a format appropriate for the new reader, and now here I am.

it’s really quite a cool little thing. lighter than my old Kindle, with a higher-contrast screen (same as Lynnette’s Kindle 3), and touch controls to get around, which took some getting used to but really work quite well. the last thing I read on my old Kindle was Mary Roach’s delightful ‘Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void,’ which I highly recommend if you have any interest whatsoever in space travel and/or the topic of pooping in zero G. the first thing on the Nook was Barbara Demick’s extraordinarily depressing ‘Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea,’ which put me in such a funk that I haven’t had an appetite to eat anything but rice since. I recommend it.

next up: Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Canterville Ghost’ and James Joyce’s ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’ Also Neal Stephenson’s ‘Anathem.’

fun times.

oh, hello. this one still exists. he’s just been distracted/enraptured by any number of people, places, games, movies and other entertainments over the past few weeks. the brain is feeling a little soft, though, and so back to the blog I go.

got to see Catie and Natalie this weekend, but, as luck would have it, they caught me in a raw, uncaffeinated state, which was unfortunate for company. we spent a while wandering around Unique Thrift (hey, a Powerbook 100!), figured out how to cram a baby cradle *and* four people into subcompact, and then had dinner at Sweetwater Tavern, where we were treated to some of the slowest, most inattentive service I’ve ever had at a GAR establishment.

Catie said she’d come back again with her husband in tow to sample the full social/gastronomic cornucopia of the area. I just hope next time it doesn’t take 30 minutes nibbling on Ozzie rolls to get an entree on the table.

do I sound grumpy? sorry. school’s starting up this week.

- 5/25

last night we did schnitzel + Amadeus. not a whole lot to elaborate on, other than how messy the kitchen was and to what degree the Director’s Cut of Amadeus improved upon the original. to the first: very. the second: little. as it turns out, breasts, even Elizabeth Berridge’s, do little to improve a product that’s more or less perfect to begin with. though that’s not to say they don’t have their place elsewhere.

re: supper - since it turns out that relatively puny-looking pork loin cutlets make schnitzel the size of dinner plates, we had some leftovers, which I magicked this afternoon into a makeshift pork parmigiana sandwich. it would probably have turned out better if I’d grilled the shredded-cheese side down first, so flipping the sandwich didn’t spray lukewarm mozzarella all over the skillet, but it was still pretty tasty. overate, though. way too much sangwitch for one person.

guess I’ll be paying for it later when I go running.

why, yes, we often follow up our morning exercises with a cashew-infused chicken curry for dinner, because that’s just how we roll. (in reality, we roll like this.)

Indian is rarely the cuisine of choice for those trying to slim down, because it’s so frustratingly rich that even completely vegetarian options become guilt-inducing experiences. what, is your regular chicken curry not rich enough? well, let’s throw in a cup and a half of pulverized nuts and whole-milk yogurt (or sour cream, if your local grocery, like mine, is too white to carry actual yogurt)! how shall we eat it? with sheets of delicious, fluffy, chewy naan, of course. also rice. here, you can throw some chopped cilantro on top if it makes you feel better about yourself.

fit people carb load, right?

calorie shock aside, it turned out magically. you guys should really check it out.

-d