Baby, you can drive my car

There are many things I've learned as a commuter:

1. Always have a roll of quarters handy
2. Always carry a wad of ones, even at the risk of looking like you earned said cash in a solicitous manner
3. The lyrics to every Chaka Khan song...ever
4. The proper technique for creepily spying on the car stuck in traffic next to you (I recommend wrap around sunglasses)
5. As you approach any cop with a radar gun...start singing (this theory is still in the testing stages, so don't try it quite yet)
6. That blinkers are optional

Today though, all my hard earned knowledge was rendered useless in the way many things are rendered useless...my mother's voice in my head. Granted, the rains were torrential and my poor Saab gets knocked off course when I sneeze, but still...it shouldn't have taken me and hour and a half to get to school. And I probably didn't need to go 55 the whole way, but I did because my well intentioned mother always leaves me with these parting words:

"Be careful, it's slippery" (that's what she said...can't help it)

Back on track though. Yes, she always says this, or some version at least. The roads are terrible, it's icy even though it doesn't look it, etc... On cloudy days I'm warned about the ice on the road, or a possible storm so be careful of falling branches. On warm days I should look out for the fog. One day last May she was convinced there was black ice.

I believe driving anxiety to be a learned behavior, so it's no surprise that this paranoia has been ingrained in me, although my fears have manifested themselves in other ways. I consider myself pretty easy going, but behind the wheel I am generally a wreck. Weather is a factor I can handle. I will be the idiot you scream "it's only rain!" at as I scoot along highways. Feel free to pass, I will go no faster. Rain, sleet, snow, I can deal with. I'll be white knuckled and shakey, but I can deal with it.

What I can't ignore is the possibility that I will have a brain aneurysm while driving, careen across three lanes of traffic and meet my fiery doom at the guardrail. I know this is not a joke. No one takes this more seriously than I do because I've read the horrible stories of perfectly healthy twenty-somethings having aneurysms behind the wheel. And I'll never see it coming.

Or there's the chance that I'll get pulled over by what I think to be an unmarked cop car, only to find myself mugged and carjacked. This possibility leads to another problem. The cop pulling me over really IS a cop, but because of the paranoia that I've let fester for the past seven years, I ignore the sirens and wait to pull into a public area, only to be an unwitting participant in a high speed chase.

Fear breeds fear.

So while I've learned a lot driving around this fair state and holding my own against so many lovely Massholes, there are obviously problems I have yet to solve. Besides the practical/obsessive/insane/absurd ones I've listed above, I should probably spend my commuting time figuring out/quelling above paranoia, or quieting my mom's voice in my head.

Until then, I will patiently wait for the day when I will hire a driver,whose background I will have thoroughly investigated. We will have a relationship like in Driving Miss Daisy, I will teach him to read and he will teach me how to trust and reunite with the real world.

Until then...

I never read Kite Runner...and other confessions

Last week I finally got my hair cut...the woman found a bobby pin in the mass. I'm fairly certain there was more booty in there too, maybe a cork or a lost earring, luckily she had the tact to withold that from me.

The next day I discovered a parking ticket...in my sock drawer.

Then there was the ink stain on my boots because I dropped an old cartidge in my boot bucket (a post for another day, when I will finally admit and analyze how/why said boot bucket contains seven pairs of boots in various shades of brown)

Oh, and the popcicles that I forgot were in my trunk...when I went grocery shopping before Christmas.

Clearly, I've let myself go. Lucky for me my culinary companion had the good sense to draw my lacksidaisicality (real word?) to my attention, in his painfully blunt and annoyingly right way. So here's the sob story: I've found myself on this bleak Sunday in the middle of a graduate semester that I am totally unprepared, and unequipped for. I happen to (occasionally) write a blog about food, but the most exciting thing in my pantry is a box of sesame Wasa crackers and a vial of terribly expensive espresso powder...that I dropped all over the floor yesterday then carefully scooped back up after picking out the dog hairs.

Throw into the mix a looming (sort of) audition with an aerial dance company whose current members have bodies...well they fly around and balance on their heads all day, so you can only imagine. Panic + hunger + writers block = a very nasty me.

BUT...I've decided to make a conscious effort to post...ideally daily, realistically every-other-daily. Not writing for a professor, a boss, or more recently, a member of the Boston Transportation Authority. Just for me, or for you.

Eat Through the Pain

It's a sad, sad day when I come home to a stack of bills and an already skimpy checking account. It's been a sad day for a while. But enough complaining because, where there's a proverbial will there's a tangible way.

And the way to go is Shakers Cafe. In the heart of what used to be Worcester's French hill, is the best home cooked meal you never had at home. Lebanese, lightly fried and mind-blowing. I already asked once, but Ms. Pavlina (Owner), please please take me home.

The trick here is that they only serve dinner on Fridays. It's BYOB, so there goes the self-consciousness that comes with trying to pick a wine that goes with fish while a snooty waiter scoffs at your choice of the cheapest sheet on the menu.

No one looked twice as I unscrewed my own bottle, or even blinked when I practically licked out the remains two hours later. At Shakers, your business is your business, your booze your booze. A nice place with a "leave me alone as I enjoy this epiphanic calamari" attitude...and no, I don't think that's a real work, but it is certainly a real attitude.

While I have yet to experience the famous Shakers breakfasts,I am told that on any given weekday, local workers patiently line up and wait for the place to open. Like dinner, the breakfast prices miraculously hover around $6.00. I can't wait to try the Lebanese Omelet and Mexican Homefries.

I've put off the blogging for a while, but look at that...it wasn't so hard. (That's what she said. I know, I know). But now I'm back in the throws of school and while my studies consist of writing until carpal tunnel sets in, there's nothing like a little blogging to clear the mind.

It reminds me to not take myself too seriously. The simpler way to accomplish this would just be to laugh every once and a while, but I wouldn't want to take away from the killer frown lines I'm working on.

While we're on the subject of lightening up,there are a few drinks I'd like to bring back that help with my efforts. Lately it's the Old Fashioned, or a lemonade shandy for the faint of heart.

Cheers!

I think I've lost my Edge

Last night's masterpiece: Baked sourdough with basil, mozzarella and grilled zucchini; chili shrimp with blue cheese, lemon shrimp salad (from my garden!); perfectly grilled tuna steak; lemon, shrimp and cherry tomato kebabs with oregano.

Maybe a little overboard for two but a delicious way to really get the summer going. The presentation needs a little work so a HomeGoods trip might be in order.

Living off the Land

French breakfast in the woods...don't overlook the snooty New Yorker


Marshmallow roasting skills!

The Starving Scholar

It's over, I've done it and life can begin again. The only excuse I can make for my noticeable absence in the blog world is an all-consuming, soul-crushing senior semester that is finally and successfully completed. My mind has been fed by everyone from Hamlet and Heaney to Braddon and Bronte but alas...the rest of me has been starved. So in the months before my loan payments begin I hope to make up for my neglect with as much food as my deserted taste buds and abandoned Visa can handle. But first, here are the past few months...

Over the course of the semester, the staples of my diet have totaled:

1. Two pounds of Everlasting Gobstoppers, mostly chewed and not savored, resulting in one small cavity.
2. No less than 400 cups coffee (this math took a very long time), an addiction fueled by Dunkin Doughnut's 'free turbo shot' offer.
3. Two BJ's twelve packs of Annie's Mac & Cheese...which, in my defense, offers unusually small serving sizes.
4. A now-confidential amount of wine, gin, etc...

Okay, so I'm not starving starving, but the quality of food in my life has definitely taken a turn. On the plus side, I plan to promote this as a weight loss diet which will work in just a few simple steps.

Lose the freshmen fifteen! Reclaim your high school jeans! And find the inner strength to get that diploma! We at Getyourbachelor'sorwe'lldisownyou Industries have found the secret ingredients that will unlock the skinny scholar in you. With a diet built on trimethylphenol, caffeine, dextrose, corn syrup, Yellow 6, Blue 2, and ethanol, you are mere weeks away from the 'you' you were before UMass. As a special offer, we will include an exercise regime guaranteed to burn fat!(As well as the candle at both ends) For no charge to you we will assign essays, novels, more novels, short stories, poetry, literary theory, response essays, exams, group projects and more! Don't miss out on this offer and your chance for the pale, worn, and malnourished look that is all the rage with incoming Grad students.

Side effects may include migraines, heartburn, low to non-existent social activity, spontaneous outbursts in rage/tears/happiness, and a significant increase in alcohol consumption.

It's good to be back.

Just the (twenty) Two of Us

Dining at Dali for my birthday dinner recently, I couldn't help but think that this experience was much like what I imagined sleeping with Grover Washington Jr. (everyone has their thing) to be--edgy but delicious, unpredictable but exciting. I was not disappointed. Much like Grover, I was immediately struck by Dali's charm and welcoming atmosphere. Floor to ceiling memorabilia of the Spanish old country that makes you feel like you've jumped into the vacation home of Baz Luhrmann and Paula Dean: just the right amount of "home cooked" feeling, and a huge helping of intoxicating visuals. But enough obscure 80's references and stretched similes--clearly winter break has left me a puddle of pop-culture.

Just like Mr Washington Jr. however (last one I promise), the (forty-five minute) wait was worth it, and may have even been the tantalizing flirtation necessary to build my excitement for the meals to come. I feel the need to preface this by explaining that my culinary companion and I are freaks...freaks who will eat everything and anything that is put in front of us. It's become a challenge to see who can eat the weirdest thing on the menu, so far I'm ahead. It's a lot like Andrew Zimmern, but only slightly sexier than watching a large bald man eating some poor animal's testicles.

With that said, I can only express my great enthusiasm for Dali's delicious Queso de Cabra Montañes, Chipirones Rellenos, Conejo Escabechado, and wild boar which was on the specials menu, and I can't remember the Spanish name. The baked goat cheese was an easy choice, and a last splurge since "the one I now shun" has forgone dairy. The first tapas came just in time too, since I had finished off all the homemade hummus and was left with fistfuls of bread that needed to be eaten, or they were going in my purse. Next came the Chipirones Rellenos...squid stuffed in its own ink. Zimmern would be impressed, but alas, the inky stains and jaw-locking chewiness was just something I couldn't get over. Who was I squidding? (terrible...just terrible)

For me the boar was truly the highlight of the evening (right after the third Kir Royale), with a savory smokiness that made me consider taking up hunting (do boars roam Western Mass?) We topped off the evening with Conejo Escabechado, don't visualize it, but I could not get over the tenderness of that rabbit--I mean fall off the bone tender. Maybe hunting is my calling, and could get me an employee discount...the braising and juniper/garlic glaze is so worth fair-weather ethics. Add onto that mouthwatering Churros and one or two backwater Absinthe's, and you'd think my paycheck actually resembled Zimmern's (I just can't get over him today)...but even my party and I could afford Dali's reasonable rates. With the Tapas Caliente averaging between $5 and $9, it's the perfect place to stay for the long haul, and try a variety of selections off the perfectly priced menu.

And if you're snickering at my celebration of 22 because you've past that number long ago, do not despair. The inoffensive Sangria pitcher is for you, and there is plenty going on inside these dimly lit rooms that you won't even notice the 22, 45, or 70 year olds all having Feliz Cumpleanos sung to them. Dali has a chair for everyone, as long as you can handle the wait.

So muchas gracias to Jose for this exquisite recommendation! Dali was a deliciously quirky experience and allowed 22 to start off the same way.