Mid-Week Thoughts

It is the middle of the week and I have thoughts.  Amazing, isn't it?  First if all I would like the world to know that the epic saga of the extinction of the Twixes has ended.  After an absence of months from the vending machine at work (a true tragedy, if ever there was one) they are back!  They are not extinct!  And I have one.  How does this fit with my diet I'm supposed to be on?  Erm...uh, well, you see...

Now for the real thoughts, baseball thoughts.  The LCS's are not going happily.  This is a matter of opinion, of course, but in my opinion, they are not going well.  I would have liked to see Detroit and Milwaukee as the World Series match-up, Detroit because of Justin Verlander who has had an otherworldly season and it would have been fitting to wrap it up with a World Series appearance.  However, that looks unlikely with Texas now one win away from wrapping up the ALCS.  Detroit had a golden opportunity to even things up tonight, playing into extra innings, at home, but they weren't able to come through.  On the NL side of things:  Milwaukee.  I said at the beginning of the season that if it weren't for Philly and their four aces, the buzz would have been about the Brewers, with their pop-aplenty lineup and their two aces to front the rotation.  If anyone could challenge Philly in the playoffs, I believed it would be Milwaukee.  And then the Brewers were handed a gift from heaven:  St. Louis most unlikely, most improbably took out the heavyweight Phillies.  Now the Brewers had homefield advantage; they should be able to take care of the Cardinals relatively easily, right?  Well, if so, we have yet to see it.  They took a loss at home (of all places!) to even the series, and tonight a one run loss with Yovani Gallardo (who was nails in the NLDS) at the helm to fall behind by a game.  Maybe it's just me being pessimistic (Rule #1 of being a Kansas Citian:  Never, never, never cheer for anything from St. Louis.), but this series has a bad feel to it now, like all the momentum got sucked out of the Brewers.  Why do I care so much?  Well, there's the never cheer for St. Louis thing.  And then Milwaukee's a pretty likeable team from a pretty likeable place.  And they have Zack Greinke.  I'll never forget 2009 and the magic of watching him pitch that year.  I don't believe it was a fluke.  He's a pitcher with unreal talent and, as Royals GM Dayton Moore said, he'll always be a Royal.  I'd like to see him go, and to watch him pitch in the World Series, and that's not looking so good right now.  Not that he's been so great in the postseason so far, he's been much less than that -- he hasn't even pitched well -- although so far, his is the only start of the LCS Milwaukee has won so far... So we shall see.  Tomorrow's another game in STL.  If they can take it, they'll be in real good shape again, otherwise Zack Greinke is going to find himself pitching in a huge game on Friday.

One last baseball thought on the day:  reports are that Theo Epstein is leaving the Red Sox to sign a 5 year deal to be GM of the cubs.  My reaction?  One word:  Good.  Need that expanded?  Good riddance.  I am a Red Sox fan, very very very secondarily to the Royals, but still I have a soft spot for them.  Epstein wasn't good for the Red Sox.  He didn't put together the World Series winning team, he inherited it.  He brought in glorious flops John Lackey, Carl Crawford, and Erik Bedard (he could have chosen Fister instead, remember).  And he made the Red Sox resemble the Yankees in the free-spending, let's try to buy a championship way.  So, yeah, it's okay that he's going.  The Red Sox will be the better for it.  Well, that is if they can manage not to hire Trey Hillman as their next manager.  Why, oh why, do you get rid of Terry Francona, the guy who led you to two World Series victories?

I'll leave you to chew on that.  That was supposed to be a short thought, but it sort of grew.

Yours truly,

Gwyneth B.
Loyal and devoted servant of the Milwaukee Brewers.  At least for now.

Dear Diary: It's Late and There's Nothing to Do at Work

Exactly, so I am researching diet-friendly cookbooks on Barnes and Noble's website preparatory to buying one.  I have been a very bad person diet-wise lately, especially the last couple of days.  Today alone I ate 2 mini Crunch bars, a bowl of ice cream, orzo, wheat bread, cheese, and a bag of M&M's.  Not good for a non-gluten, non-dairy, sugar-free diet.  Only 3 weeks in, too!  And I need to do this if I ever want to feel good again, like I used to.  So I took steps.

One, I'm going to make myself responsible, by setting penalties for breaking the diet and by appointing the bro as keeper of the rules.  They'll go something like if I break my dietary rules I'm not allowed to shop that week and I'm banned from looking at clothes-shopping websites.  That shouldn't be a big deal, but I'm sort of going through a fashion and shopping craze here, so I think it will be effective.  Plus I will make reports to the brother so that I have someone to hold me accountable. 

Two, I'm going to get a diet-friendly cookbook so I can LEARN how the heck to cook (er, should I say prepare, since some/alot of this stuff has to be raw?) food this way.  Hence the Barnes and Noble, looking for that perfect cookbook which is going to make this program possible for me.  Sigh.  There are ALOT of books, but I will be sure to let you know when I get one.  I have several interesting ideas so far, I'm just scared they're going to multiply into a completely unmanageable amount, but enough with the negative talk!  This is fun and I'm going to find a good one!

I've learned something already:  Stay away from things describing themselves as 'paleo' or 'primal'.  Apparently there is a school of thought that we should eat like our hunter/fisher cavemen ancestors.  WTF?  I completely rebel against anything that rejects the entire civilisation humans have built throughout history.  If we're going to eat like cavemen, maybe we should just go back to living like cavemen, too.  I mean, seriously.  Anyhoo, so I think that steers me more towards the vegan line of cooking.  This is okay.  I can always add meat if I want to.  Meat isn't an issue.  Dealing with vast amounts of vegetables while avoiding eggs, dairy, and gluten is.  I'm basically a meat-eating vegan, during this diet.  That doesn't really make sense, does it?  Love the paradox!  Ha ha, enough of that.

The Search for Sock continues (yes, intentionally made that resemble a certain Star Trek title).  I did find them at Target, but they were mostly out, but they had existed at one point because there were labels on bins!  I also found other store possibilities, particularly modcloth.com.  Not particularly cheap, but amazing colours!  So, want crazy tights and socks and don't want to search all over the place, go there.  In other news, checked out Old Navy's website, and they have lots and lots of wide-stripe t-shirts in cool colours, which is another thing on my list, and now another addition to my wishlist!

I think this is enough of a post for the night (after all, must get back to my cookbook research).  Tomorrow is a big day.  It is my birthday, yes, but that's not all.  I'm singing in a concert tomorrow, but that's also not all, and certainly not most important.  What is most important?  Zack Greinke pitching Game 1 of the NLCS.  More on him later.

Good night, y'all!

Gwyneth B.
Lives in KC, still a Greinke fan.  You should be, too. 

New Recipes and Fantastic Socks

I am learning about food:  how to make diet-friendly food while I'm doing this holistic program and make it taste good enough that I'll still eat it sometimes when I get done with my diet at the end of November.  It involves eating a lot of raw food, no gluten, no sugar, no eggs, no dairy, and for now, no fruit, although fruit will stop being verboten when I'm done with the anti-candida phase of the program.

This morning I tried making a nut granola.  Now apparently there is such a thing as de-glutenised oats, but I didn't know that this morning and I didn't have any anyway, so I just made it of nuts and seeds.  I pretty much combined most of the kinds of nuts and seeds I had on hand, although next time around I will be sure to put in pumpkin seeds and almonds, but I may leave some of the others out.  Anyway, I put in a little cinnamon (because it's really good for you) and a little nutmeg (because I love nutmeg and try to put it in as many recipes as possible) and a drizzle of molasses and then I ground it up till it was granola-ey! And then I had it with almond milk.  It was pretty alright, although the addition of oats and some dried fruits when I can have fruit again will make it much better.  Anyway, bottom line, I was happy because it was raw cereal and you wouldn't believe how much trouble I've had trying to find raw breakfast ideas!  (According to the program I'm following I'm supposed to have one cooked meal per day and the rest raw or as raw as possible, but I've sort of been cheating on that because I don't want breakfast to be my one cooked meal of the day!)

For dinner I found an exciting idea for a pasta salad using grated zucchini as pasta.  Doesn't sound amazing, but when you read the ingredient list it does.  It has a really nice dressing with apple cider vinegar, olive oil, lemon, mustard, and herbs.  It also involves chicken, and I happen to have a lot of leftover chicken on hand, so perfect, I say!  We shall see how it goes.

Otherwise the pursuit of the day was socks.  I'm doing this makeover for the fall:  Ramona Flowers from 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World'.  Here you go.  Maybe not with the big animated hammer, though.
 

 

Basically I'm looking at boots, colourful tights, shorter skirts (but not mini), and a layered top look, with interesting, not necessarily matching colour schemes. The hair.  I know.  I thought about it, seriously.  But I'm not sure if I could quite pull it off, and maybe I'd get really sick of it after a day or two.  We'll see, but it's not at the top of the list right now. Socks are the order of the day. I love wild socks anyway, but when I went to Target last week, my usual stop for crazy socks, I didn't see any!  Perhaps it was that location or that day, but it did make me go looking for alternatives.  The whole point of this look is so I can rock insane colourful socks!

One place on the list when it comes to socks is American Apparel.  I don't like anything else about the brand, but they do make good socks.  I checked online today and found opaque tights in every imaginable shade of bright, as well as these amazing knee highs with sporty stripes around the top.  I especially like the gold ones.  They're not cheap, which kind of defeats the purpose, but I may have to stop by and pick up a few.  I believe the store is somewhat less disturbing than the website.

Annnnyway, that's about that for today.  Time to whip up the salad with my brand new peeler and my exciting jar of Napa Valley olives (and I don't even like olives!).

Also, looking forward to Episode 4 of 'Ringer' tonight.  Buffy and Hornblower together in one show, squeee!  'Tis too much!