Columbus Foodie

Well, that deadline definitely went out the window – updating the theme isn’t as easy as I originally intended (since I’m installing a completely new framework, and behind the scenes getting everything to work with everything else is a bit harder than I thought. Luckily, I’m married to an IT professional, but at the moment, he’s married to his job, so I only get visitation (and help w/ the upgrade) on weekends now. I’m excited about the new look, though – I’m getting there slowly but surely and it will definitely be easier to update when I don’t have to go line by line through the code and by extension, getting a crash course in CSS.

We’ve made lots of new dishes in the past few months – becoming a hermit has done wonders for getting us to cook at home since going out to eat isn’t an option at the moment (hopefully that will change soon – I’m getting a bit stir crazy after confining myself to the house since July).

One unfortunate side effect of getting on the right medication is that I’ve managed to pick up a few (uh, like 35-40) unwanted pounds along the way. It’s difficult to tread the fine line between disordered and healthy eating, and I’ve started taking small, gradual steps to dropping the weight, adding in some exercise and cutting out the obvious culprits (way too much fast food, and highly refined sweets). I really need to find something I can stick with, but finding moderation is a challenge.

I’m a day late with our menu plan for the week – but feel good about the fact that we had most of the ingredients for these dishes on hand. We just got a Ninja Cooking System (we got one for my sister and she raved about it, so I got one for myself). I’m going to adapt a few crock pot recipes (including the Transylvanian Goulash we’re making later this week) and see how they turn out.

So, here’s what’s on board for this week:

Monday: Lemon Chicken with Orzo, Green Beans

Tuesday: One Pot Spaghetti, Garden Salad

Wednesday: Bacon Fried Rice

Thursday: Tofu Tortilla Casserole, Authentic Street Style Elotes

Friday: Transylvanian Goulash (in the Ninja)

Saturday: Oven Fried Chicken, Roasted Garlic and Tomato Risotto

Sunday: Manestra with Lamb, Spinach Feta and Mushroom Crustless Quiche

Breakfasts: Meyer Lemon Ricotta Pancakes w/ Blueberries, Slow Cooker Peaches and Cream Steel Cut Oatmeal, Fried Egg & Sliced Avocado Open Face Sandwich

Desserts: Apple Strudel, Mississippi Mud Pie

What do the rest of you have on deck this week? Are you all hating winter as much as I do? Take a second to check out what other Meal Plan Monday participants have on their minds…

Postings have been sporadic around these parts – part of it for reasons that are personal (getting on proper meds to treat my PTSD/depression/anxiety – the difference before and after is like night and day). A big part of it is technical reasons – wanting to switch over to a new theme that will actually work the way it is supposed to, won’t have to be designed to work around the limitations of the ad network I had belonged to. There’s tons of things to write about – so definitely no writer’s block – but don’t want to make it any more frustrating than it already is now. Part of it is because I need these last couple of weeks to get things organized, to get pictures processed, to divvy up the writing between Paul and I. Due to some ongoing dental issues I’ve been dealing with, Paul has picked up my slack and will be the outward face of Columbus Foodie – he’ll be doing restaurant reviews, attending and covering events, judging, the farmers market reports, while I’ll be here at home gardening, organizing, cooking and writing. I think it’s a step in the right direction, and a direction I’ve been pulled in for quite a while now. It’s just a little difficult, when you’ve built your identity around a hobby you can no longer be relaxed enough to enjoy, to make the decision either to keep going with it or letting it fall by the wayside.  There’s enough left to write that neither he nor I are ready to hang it up for good quite yet. But it has become very clear that it can’t quite continue the way it was going: sporadic, inconsistent, and untimely. It does no justice to either the words or the reader, and it just isn’t fair to anyone.

So, the next 3 or so weeks, I’m going to find and then configure a new theme – not sure which one yet, but I do know that I want it to be on a white background so it’s easier to read, navigate the links, etc. It will also integrate social media right into the site to make it more usable. Once I relaunch (on January 1st), I’ll strive to update everyday, but at the very least 3-5 times a week, depending. Maybe more. I’m so far in the weeds with old drafts that I could write nothing but and have a new entry for every day of 2013. I’ll try to consolidate where possible (for example, rather than going week by week for 2012 farmers market reports, I’ll just post a link to a Flickr slideshow that shows our pics from the whole summer, with weekly reports starting again in the spring.

So, thanks for reading, and thanks for continuing to read. I’ll be back before you know it!

I’m also going to implement a better system for getting my additional pages organized (food blog directory, events in Columbus and elsewhere in Ohio, menus for local restaurants) – it’s hopelessly outdated, and I’m hoping to use Outlook Tasks to get the updates done regularly.

So, one last time – I’m so sorry for being a sucky blogger in 2011 and 2012. I so don’t have my crap together right now. Now that I can finally think clearly again (because the panic attacks have stopped), the Herculean task of redesigning/relaunching seems like something I can handle.

Admittedly, it’s been ages since I’ve posted – between a flurry of medical and dental stuff I had to deal with, somewhere along the line I got hacked. And bad. I closed the security holes they were exploiting, but cleanup after it all is long and slow, and requires going into each individual entry (and I have 1,100ish) and stripping out bad code. I’ve been working on this a couple of weeks now, and I’m still only up to September 2009. At this rate, I’ll be done…probably mid-August.

But I really need to talk about the elephant in the room. Even though my body has completely healed from the trauma of the last year, my mind hasn’t. I have been dealing with tons of depression and anxiety in the aftermath of what I went through. Even though life is slowly getting back to normal, I still can’t go a single day without reliving at least part of it in my mind. A lot of things have happened due to my illness – almost all my hair fell out, so I ended up shaving it all off. So much calcium was leached from my bones when I had malnutrition that I now have osteopenia (weakening of the bones, precursor to osteoperosis) and my teeth became so weakened that I broke two down to the gumline in the span of 4 months. Since these were front teeth, I decided to cut my losses, save the ones I could, and get the rest pulled before they had an opportunity to break. I did this with the intention of getting immediate dentures, but the dentist I went to was so bad that they took more teeth than they were supposed to and the dentures they provided me were unusable (didn’t fit in my mouth at all, had missing teeth).

All this to say that even though I’ve been extremely self-conscious about my appearance before this, now I’m so self-conscious that I refuse to leave the house except for doctors and dentist appointments. I get panic attacks even thinking about going out. I don’t even go to the farmers markets anymore, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do (Paul goes in my place, and is great about taking pictures). I have tons of things to write about – hundreds of drafts, literally. But I’ve just been so overwhelmed by negative emotions lately that I’ve been avoiding blogging because I don’t want them to bleed through to my writing. Many would say this is the time where I should stop blogging, when all of the joy I took in cooking/gardening/travel/going to restaurants is gone.

But that’s not it, really. Somewhere deep within, I’m still passionate about those things. I *want* to cook, to travel, all of those things. But before I can find joy in anything again, I first need to deal with the demons that are left over from almost dying. I need to seek professional help, because I realize that there’s something there that I need to deal with so I don’t become a prisoner in my own home, in a jail of my own making. I’ve seen what PTSD has done to my loved ones who suffer from it, and I don’t want to be an emotional cripple full of regret 20 years from now. There’s a price to keeping people at arms length – you save yourself the trouble of being hurt, but you also become very, very lonely with no real friends to lean on when push comes to shove. I’ve found strength where I least expected (by repairing the relationship I have with my father – the first time we’ve talked, really talked in 40 years), and found the courage to end relationships with family members who not only didn’t have my back. But I could have not made it through the past year without my sister & best friend, Maurya, who quite literally uprooted her entire family to move in here to help me out when I first got home. Her kids added joy to my life like you wouldn’t believe (and my biological clock is pretty much shot, with me turning 40 in like 3 weeks). They’ve since moved on to their own place, and the fact that they’re not here anymore makes this huge ass empty house seem even emptier.

The point being – forgive me for not posting often. Bear with me, please. As long as you see me on Twitter, or Facebook, or Pinterest, things are OK. I’m going to try to deal with my issues professionally, so I can figure out what’s wrong and fix it. I want to be better, I want to have confidence, I want to be around people and not feel uptight and self-conscious and uncomfortable because I feel like I don’t fit in, or that what I’m saying or my opinions are stupid. People tell me that I’m a much harsher critic of myself than other people are, but I no longer feel comfortable (did I ever, really?) in my own skin. So uncomfortable that it’s a barrier to living a normal life.

Food brings people together, I’m convinced of that. But I don’t know the art of conviviality. I invite people to do things, 9 times out of 10 I can’t get even a single person to go with me. The few times that I’ve invited people here, they either stand me up or criticize something about where I live, how I keep my house, etc. I see colleagues in the food blogging world have relationships with each other outside of public events, and I feel left out because I’m not invited or included. I don’t get invites to weddings, or showers, or anything like that. Not a fault on the part of the other people – I understand that it’s something about me that I need to work on.

But I’m tired of superficial relationships. They do take so much energy to maintain, energy that I don’t have to give right now. And I don’t understand the value of going through the motions when I feel like I’m losing ground when I try. The world went on without me when I was ill and afterwards, and it continues to go on without me. I’m still trying to catch up with the things I did in 2010, let alone stuff I’ve done in 2011 or 2012. It really is a lot to process, and I’ve barely even scratched the surface.

All to say, bear with me as I try to venture forward. Sometime in August, I’m going to be introducing a new look to go with the venture back into the food blogging world. As easy as it would to be to quit right now, I need to keep going. I need to keep writing to stay sane. You’ll see a lot more posts from Paul, since he’s going to take over some of the posting while I work through all this. He’s judging at the Rib-Off tomorrow at the Ohio State Fair on behalf of the Columbus Foodie team. He’s quite psyched about it, it should be fun for him and I look forward to his report of it (as he photographs/blogs about it, and all the other sights at the Fair, since I probably won’t be going this year since I’m less than a week post-surgery and still waiting on those darn teeth. I’m glad that issue will be resolved by the time Taste the Future comes along (more about that, soon – in the next couple of days I’ll be writing about last year’s event and offering up three pairs of tickets to be given away here on the blog).

And please, if you’ve tried reaching out to me before, but I haven’t been receptive, or if it’s some kind of signal I’m putting out that seems standoffish, please let me know. It’s not you, I promise.

Thanks, as always, to all of you still reading. It’s a lot to process, I know, and much more personal than I usually get on here. But I felt as if I owed you all an explanation. It’s not fair of me to disappear and not explain why I’ve been gone. I’m going to be blogging a lot of pretty old stuff, but I need to get through all of that before I can get to doing new stuff.

For Christmas 2010, right before I got really sick, I bought myself something I had been wanting for years, but had always just stopped short of buying – a really nice DSLR camera so I could step up my game as far as food photography. People always asked me what kind of camera I use for my photos, and seemed somewhat surprised when I told them it was a fairly inexpensive point and shoot. So, Nikon D5000 in hand, I took an introductory class at Cord Camera, and part of the class was a trip to the Franklin Park Conservatory here in town so we could take pictures there. Here’s the best of what I walked away with that day:

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use the camera right away (or much at all last summer) because I still lacked the strength to lift the camera and hold it steady enough to get good pictures. But I’m making a commitment to trying to get a good mastery of the camera by the end of the year – between planning to take lessons with a very talented photographer friend of mine, reading camera-specific books outlining all of the features, and lots and lots of practice shots, I’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure. In the meantime, you’ll see a mix of both types (DSLR and point and shoot) of pictures on the blog, with the eventual goal of going to all DSLR in the near future.

What resources did you find invaluable when trying to learn photography? Luckily it’s one of those fields that allows you to *always* learn something new, and I’m curious to find out what worked for others in improving their own work…

To start off my series of posts about my last two trips to New Jersey, I thought I’d start by talking about my reason for making the first trip – my twenty year high school reunion. Technically, I didn’t graduate from any high school (I got a GED many years later), but since I had to pick one, I went with the one where I would see the most familiar faces – Millville (NJ) Senior High School Class of ’90 Reunion. I went to private school until 6th grade, but I’ve known many of these people since my junior high days (7th grade onward). Many others I met when I started high school (9th grade at Memorial). But good God, did those 20 years since 1990 go fast or what? I’ve lived a whole other lifetime since then, and strangely enough, even though this reunion was a little over a year ago, it feels like I’ve lived a whole other lifetime since then. Who knew so much would happen during 2011?

Here I am with my friend Amy.

The memorial they put together for classmates who have passed was touching, especially for me since two of my very close friends were among them. Strange that only me and one other person from my core group of friends have survived. But the world is a less bright place without these people in it.

The food? Let’s just say that it was a bit underwhelming. There was an open bar, though – with a bartender with a heavy hand, so I don’t think people really noticed the bad food, LOL.

The toasted ravioli? Seemed straight out of a food service box, but probably one of the better things I ate that night.

The same goes for the chicken, which was served on skewers.

The rest? Well, take a look for yourself. None is really worth mentioning separately, except the roast beef, which was so overdone it wasn’t funny. It was one of those “what did that poor cow ever do to you to deserve this?” kind of moments.

So, all in all, it wasn’t about the food. Not in the least. It was about making the effort to say hi to everyone (even those who were less than nice to me in high school), it was about some people changing so much they were unrecognizable, about other people being exactly the same (nice people and douches alike), and it was about realizing that people that I thought had it all together and leading perfect lives living anything but. I misjudged a lot of people back then, in the same way that many people misjudged me. Most of all it was about new beginnings – making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and everything in between. So how many of you attended your high school reunions? And how many of you had your expectations turned around on you as well?

First things first – I’m one of Columbus’ biggest fans. Even though I am her resident by choice, not birthright, this not-so-sleepy burg in the center of Ohio has always meant a host of things to my life: new beginnings, coming into my own, learning to trust myself and others again. In many ways, I’ve watched the growth of the city parallel my own over the last almost two decades. No matter where I go in the world, I’m always one of Columbus’ biggest ambassadors. I truly believe we have something special here, and I endeavor to bust the stereotypes of our flyover state image on a daily basis.

Still, no matter how long I’ve been here, no matter how long I stay here, it will never be “home” for me. South Jersey, will always, and I mean ALWAYS, have that dubious distinction for me. Warts and all, it’s the place where I was born and the place I spent the first 23 years of my life. It’s the place where I know ten ways to get anywhere on back country roads within a half hour, the place that even though is eerily familiar, it never ceases to surprise me each time I visit. It’s a place where local has been a way of life longer than I’ve been alive.

If your image of New Jersey begins and ends with Snooki and Co. and involves a punchline about an exit off the turnpike, prepare to have your preconceived notions busted. That’s not the New Jersey I know. Even though I’ve talked about New Jersey before in my blog entries, I don’t think I’ve ever gone into great detail about why I love it so. I’ve just returned from a very cathartic two week trip (thus the radio silence on my end, as I’ve been out living life to its fullest rather than experiencing it from the periphery). This time around, though – I took pictures, and lots of them. So, in the upcoming couple of weeks, expect a bunch of entries about my trips – both this one, and my visit to New Jersey in late 2010 for my reunion (right before I got really sick). And in the upcoming months, I’ll probably be making another substantially long visit as well during the summer months, one where I’ll talk about the real Jersey shore, what Jersey Fresh really means, and about one of my favorite Jersey pastimes – fishing and crabbing.

I really feel as if I’m at a crossroads. Almost dying changed almost everything about my life, and the pull of home gets stronger each time I visit. It’s like a tug of war with the best of each world pulling me in that direction. This year will be about the ties that bind me to each locale, and about figuring out what’s most important in my life. Thanks for taking the journey with me. 

Crazy, crazy week that has kept me from posting because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in the crisis-of-the-day. From my netbook revolting on me (and subsequent transfer, as we speak, of irreplacable files to a new computer) to my stove almost killing someone (and the subsequent replacement, delivery and installation of all new appliances), to a full of medical appointments past week, I’ve barely been able to sleep let alone blog. Stay tuned in the next few days for new posts along with extra ones to make up for the ones I missed. Thanks for understanding.

Excuse me if I’m bit distracted today. I’m profoundly sad because we had to put our 13-year old Beagle Sadie down last night – we woke up in the middle of night to let her and our Shih Tzu out for a potty break, and Sadie was fairly unresponsive to being woke up – she did eventually awaken, but was crashing into everything, yelping, and seemed totally unaware of her surroundings. Needless to say, a middle-of-the-night emergency vet visit was in order, and the veterinarian she saw agreed that Sadie was incredible distress, that it was likely a stroke, brain tumor, or aneurysm, and that given her age and a similar, less serious but still not normal episode a few months back, that the most humane thing we could do was to end her suffering. In a way it was a difficult decision (as it is for any pet owner), but in a way it was not. We just wanted her to not be in pain anymore. After being given a sedative to calm her down, the vet gave her the euthanasia shot, and she passed away peacefully around 3am.

Sadie came into our lives in a most unusual way – we came home from running errands in October of 2005 to find her chained up to our light post out front. We brought her inside (fully intending to take her to the SPCA), but her sweet disposition won me over in seconds. She had a collar on that had a phone number listed, but the number had been disconnected. After asking around the neighborhood and trying to find out who she belonged to, we found out she had been wandering around at large for over a year, and that her original owners had moved away without taking her with – that she essentially was homeless. She was part of our family within a week. After taking her to the vet, we found out she was 6 or 7 years old. Even though we knew we’d only have a few years tops with her (life expectancy for a Beagle is usually 11-13 years), we welcomed her with open arms. We were rewarded with the pleasure of her company for the last 6 ½ years.

We knew she was on the decline when she started developing cataracts, and then eventually, was stone deaf. In the past year, it was getting increasingly more difficult for her to get around. We were preparing ourselves for the inevitable – even though I feel an empty place in our hearts and our home right now, I know she’s better off. Hopefully you all will know the love and loyalty of a special pet in your life. I know my life was better because Sadie was part of it.

I’ll get back to posting regularly tomorrow, but for today, I just want to reflect on her and my time with her.

I moved to Ohio from New Jersey in 1995, but part of me will always consider Jersey home – the whole South Jersey area holds so many memories, and it’s sad to see the landscape change (for the worse, with lots of big box stores replacing Mom & Pop indies) – I used to go back because the area drew me there, but now when I go back, it’s to reunite with friends and family.

Tony and I have been friends since 1991 or so – in the time since I’ve moved, we’ve communicated occasionally. I remember going back to visit him when his dad was still alive, shortly after I got married. Still, it seemed if time and distance had taken us in two separate directions.

That is, until we met up again in person on my last visit back to New Jersey over Thanksgiving 2010. It was as if no time had passed at all, and our friendship picked up where it had left off. We talked for hours, caught up and filled in the blanks. We reminisced about old times. We confided in each other, knowing that each one of us had the other’s back. It was also the weekend of my 20 year high school reunion (more about that and the rest of my trip to NJ later – meant to write about it much, much sooner but ended up getting sick before I could)

It seemed as though I was going to spend Thanksgiving alone – I had made plans to meet up with family, but (no surprise to me) I wasn’t invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. I shrugged it off as if I didn’t care, but I felt hurt and alone. Tony and his partner John included both me and my sister Amanda in their holiday celebration. They fed us and welcomed us with open arms and made us feel like family. My family is really dysfunctional – more often than not I’ve been estranged from my parents. But I think that biology shouldn’t dictate family, relationships built on mutual love and trust and inclusion and communication and actions that speak louder than words should. He and his family were there for me in a way that my own family often is not, and for that reason alone, Tony will be always dear to my heart.

This is one of the recipes that he made that day. It’s a little bit different than any other version of deviled eggs I’ve had, but in a good way. These would be great for a spread at any family function, including the upcoming Super Bowl Sunday. I wish I could get him out here to Ohio to celebrate with us – reliving this day to write this entry has me missing him like crazy.

Tony’s Deviled Eggs

12 eggs, hard boiled
4 tbsp. mayonnaise
1 tsp. brown mustard
3 tbsp. relish
1 tbsp. Parmesan cheese
4 tbsp. bacon bits
1 tsp. basil

Separate yolks into a separate bowel, and mash. Add remaining ingredients and spoon or pipe yolk mixture into egg whites. Refrigerate and serve.

Here, in the final hours of 2011, I’m taking a few minutes to reflect on how the past year diverted from my expectations. In many ways, it was the year from hell. A few stupid nutritional decisions on my part started an avalanche of medical nightmares that almost ended up with me losing my life. While I recognized that I was getting weaker, I never suspected it was because I wasn’t getting enough protein. Still, despite my medical battles and the steep climb back up from the brink of the worst case scenario, I learned so much that I wouldn’t trade for the world – learning to let go and trust, learning who really mattered to me and learning who was there for me when the chips were down and things were the most bleak, learning how to advocate for myself and what I needed, learning that I could push myself physically far beyond what I thought I was capable of, and learning not to take life for granted were a few of the many lessons I learned in the six months or so I was in the hospital in the past year.

Recognizing that I needed to make my recovery a priority meant that the blog took a backseat to just about everything else this year. Many of you moved on, many others have stuck around and sent me emails of encouragement when I’ve needed them most, despite the infrequent updates. I can happily say that physically, mentally and emotionally, I’m in an even better place than where I started last year. I can do everything (and more) that I was doing before. It’s a miracle that the only real permanent damage from the whole ordeal is just a few scars. Losing all my hair taught me humility and how really not important vanity is to me. Being stuck in the hospital taught me to appreciate the little things in life – a meal out here, a farmers market there, going grocery shopping, driving a car, a nice hot shower, for example. I met so many awesome people – nurses, doctors, therapists, aides that made an unbearable situation bearable.

Today, in the beginning of 2012, I’m making a renewed commitment to this blog, which I’ve missed more than you know. Sometimes it was a matter of having to choose between attending an event or writing about it, because I didn’t have the energy for both. I’m slowly working my way up to doing a lot of the cooking again (I did a lot of the work putting holiday meals together). I’m far, far behind (even more so than usual) but will get caught up eventually. For those of you still reading, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea how much you all mean to me.