Sleep is for the dead.

The problem with having a really terrible sleeping disorder is when I DO fall asleep - a deep sleep - it tends to be at some sporadic, completely unnecessary hour that gets in the way of living like a decent human being.

For the past month or so I've been sans caffeine. I've made a conscious effort to really rid myself of caffeine in another attempt to cure my sleeping disorders. As it turns out, I stay up even LATER without the caffeine, which in turn means I sleep less. Somehow I've been making it through my work days without caffeine in my system and I'm not fucking up things as badly as I thought I would have. However, because I don't have that immediate caffeine high in the morning that pretty much sets the pace for my day, I just get stuck in this repetitive cycle of not making my brain tired enough to sleep. See, although I work out regularly, it only makes my body tired. I can lay in my bed sore and tired but working out doesn't stimulate my brain enough. Caffeine, on the other hand, stimulates my brain to the point where I often times overexert myself, thus leading to some sort of mini-anxiety attack. At least by the time I wind down, my brain wants to nap. For now and without caffeine, I'll try to read something boring then my nerdiness kicks in I get entirely too involved in what I'm reading and I find myself up until who knows what ungodly hour and then I have to force myself to try to rest so I can wake up just a few hours later.

For example, last night I was unable to fall asleep until almost 5 am. No particular reason why. I was just up being a creep like usual. When I finally fell asleep, I woke up around 7:30 thinking I was late for work. I had an additional hour to sleep in, so I closed my eyes and took myself to sleepy land. An hour and 10 minutes later, I almost had to take a spatula and peel myself off my frying pan of a bed. I walked into work 5 minutes later than I should have this morning. I proceeded to walk about like a vagabond all day, lost in the mundane world of law and lack of reasoning. The good thing about having a cloud for a brain when I'm in this state is that I can transport myself to this quixotic state of mind. I now have the ability to listen to music all day at my desk, and with the aid of Saralee, I banished my brain to Finland while I worked on some powerpoint project that made me want to stab my eyes out. After I came home, I made myself a very delicious dinner of sushi-grade tuna with
cucumber, avocado, red onions and pickled ginger. I made one for my mom as well and not my dad because he hates fish. He then proceeded to complain about how I didn't make him dinner so I made him a roll of sushi - he ate a few pieces and grossed out of the thought of eating raw fish. He makes absolutely zero sense to me. We often call my dad a bear but a bear would happily eat raw fish. My dad's like Yogi Bear and only eats crap from picnic baskets. My mom and I made fun of him purely based on that he thought tuna was too strong of a flavor and that he'd prefer to go to McDonalds. My poor dad, he has absolutely no palate. Getting back to my point, after dinner I went to my room to change and later take care of a few things I needed to take care of. I later woke up around 11 pm, with two dogs in my bed and I still had my shoes on. I don't remember falling asleep and I vaguely remember laying down. I guess when brain shuts down, it shuts down for the night and I have zero control over it.

Once again, I'm up at some ungodly hour when a majority of the people on Pacific time are asleep and are only a couple hours short of waking up. Bad sleeping habits are going to be the death of me, but hopefully not until I'm a million years old and completely out of my mind. For now, I'm just partially out of my mind. I will leave you with my ugly mug at 4:00 am. Adios.

2 weeks and 6 days...

I'm going back to Spain.

I bought my tickets 4 weeks ago but apparently I've been too insane about going back to Spain that I haven't written about me going back to Spain. And no, that is not intended to make any sense at all.

Anyway, my sister and I are leaving on November 5th and we're spending 11 days running around like a couple of crazy drunks. I guess the only problem (not that this is a TRUE problem) is that I will be at the same hotel I was before, which is less than half a block in distance, while on the same block, as my cousin's apartment building... Which means I need to be on semi-decent behavior. Katie, however, can do whatever the Hell she wants and say whatever she wants because no one understands a drunk person's English - not even an English speaker can decipher what the Hell will come out of her mouth 30 beers under. So, I suppose that's the good news.

My cousins are picking me up from the airport and we're driving to their vacation home in Caceres, which from the pictures I cannot WAIT to be there. It was built by Romans in 25 BC, and still has a ton of the old Roman ruins and has a ton of Spanish palaces and forts. In other words, I will be enriching my brain and eyes in history and I'll be a happy camper from it. We will be there for a long weekend (Fri - Monday morning) and for the rest of the trip I'll be back in Madrid... which means the following: tapas bars. the prado. museo de la reina sofia. jamon bars. spanish beer on tap. more jamon. more jamon. more jamon.

Am I excited? Oh no, not at all.

I miss bird flu.

I'm sick of people talking about swine flu. People are now scared of pork products and they're not sure why but they know something called swine flu is going around and somehow they related it to the deliciousness that is bacon. For some reason the condemnation of bacon deeply hurts me where it counts (my stomach). If the whole world goes crazy I will gladly eat all pork products that will be thrown out until I'm given a heart attack and die of morbid obesity with more fat in my veins than blood. Now THAT is an awesome death.

Juicing.

After stepping on my scale and realizing that I am officially a human-sized double whopper with extra cheese, I have decided that it's time to diet. The holidays are over, I'm no longer in Europe (very, very sadly), my birthday has come and gone and now I'm just a fat old frump and the beach days are quickly approaching. It's time for me to shed my deep fried morzilla sandwich weight and get back to looking at least semi-decent.

In what will end up being another poor attempt at dieting, I busted out the juicer and stocked up on produce. Now, I know that juicing takes away some of the most nutrient rich parts of the fruit and it also removes most of the fiber but I don't give a damn. The point is that I am way too lazy to chew all that damn fruit so I'd rather juice a couple extra than sit there and chew on a boring fruit. The reality is that I don't know how to make fruit exciting that does not involve mass amounts of sugar, fat or alcohol, so my culinary skills stop there. I guess I am no longer the "master-chef" as so many call me. I am revoking my own title for being a fraud because a real master chef would healthily make fruits exciting and I simply can't. Without the aid of sugar or butter or some combination of the two I become completely uninterested and am mentally flaccid.

I guess I just don't enjoy the whole "healthy lifestyle" bullshit. Sometimes I think I should develop a meth addiction so then I can have a life like the Crackie of Camden and be a wild ass bitch and just never sleep and never eat but somehow still manage to exist... Then I will say "no, no, no," to rehab and see where that gets me. If I were as lucky as that skinny bitch with the big dirty hair I'd end up in St. Lucia for a few months and then get kicked out by the government for being a drunk ass bitch and causing a whole country to be in an uproar.

The bottom line is that working out isn't fun. Dieting isn't fun. Going to the market and avoiding the pleasures of looking at the perfect cut of red meat, the best French cheese, beautiful loaves of fresh sour dough bread and completely stabbing the idea of sour cream out of my head just isn't what I want in life but I don't want to be a tub of lard either. I keep saying that one day I will invent an at home liposuction kit and I guess I will need to work really hard now on developing said billion-dollar idea because you know every woman on earth would have one at home. I'm sure I could pitch the idea to Sarah-Lee and they'll invest in it because it'll just give women an excuse to have just onnneee moooreee slice (or whole) pie, meaning billions of dollars in revenue for them. See, I am a genius.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I am on a diet and I am no longer going to be a chubbo. So, any takers on how long before I'm happily swimming in a pool of jamon de pata negra or foie gras?

Sometimes you just gotta pat yourself on the back...

So apparently I have a shitty camera and it doesn't have enough pixels or whatever to pick up all the colors that I want to show. I'm also not very good at camera angles because when I look the picture of the soup I made I'm not like WOW THAT LOOKS AMAZING even though it did IRL. Well, whatever. I made carrot habanero soup which was fucking delicious in every single way, shape and form and it's probably going to be my new go-to soup for parties and such. So, I kicked the ass of River Lounge in London and I will now formally challenge them to a carrot soup throwdown. Don't worry River Lounge, I will come to you. I'll even pay for my own tix.

Boo-ya shaka.

I'm happy I didn't let my mind go into overload again with this soup. I had been thinking about it for way too long and if I would have waited another day to make it my mind probably would have exploded. That could have been messy and who really wants to clean that? Yuck.

Unfortunately for the people in my life that will never truly diet with me around, I have about 12814912849127 more dishes to try out. This time I'm actually WRITING DOWN MY DAMN RECIPES and I'm keeping them under lock and key and I'm determined to get my fucking book done. It seems to be taking a major turn towards the tapas direction but who knows. I think after my month in Spain I will do this summer and hopefully next winter I will be able to go to Cuba for a couple of weeks. I think the maximum stay for Cuban-Americans or Americans with family in Cuba is 2 weeks. So, that would be nice to be able to spend some time with family and really get to know Cuban culture for what it really is, not the washed out culture that I know. I want fresh mamey shakes, something I've never had. I've never seen mamey here in CA other than in frozen baggies but I've had it in FL before. Supposedly the mamey fruit grown in FL is horse caca compared to that in Cuba. I guess I will have to see for myself.

Munching.

My mind's been running wild with foodies I want to make tomorrow for dinner. Unfortunately, my mom bought China's entire March harvest of mussels earlier this evening which means I should make paella de mariscos but then I'm making something I've made a million times which is not inspired by my recent food adventure. I've been thinking about the carrot soup I had at River Lounge in St. Katherine's Docks in London - and how I can make my own variation of it. What it lacked was an over-all punch. It had bits and pieces of zing from a tiny bit of chopped up cilantro but not nearly enough over-all WOW factor. I'm thinking about jazzing it up with some roasted shallots for additional sweetness and some other ideas that are running through my head. I shouldn't give it all away before it's said, done and written down in my book, right? Right.

These. These right here. These puppies. They are a given. Papas Bravas and Salsa Brava. Done deal, set it stone. They are like a classic
Jackson song. Either it's done right or it's karaoke. I'm not fucking with these. Why ruin what's already perfect? Sometimes a chef/cook or whatever needs to know there are some things you fuck with - and some that you don't. I have been thinking about these mean and awesome little fuckers since my plate was empty and I was asking for more but I was told I had cosido waiting at my cousin's house for me to eat and other classic Spanish dishes so I unfortunately had to say no to plate number two.

Oh my mind, she is crazy. I should probably take a xanax and sleep for 14 hours then wake up and caca and go back to sleep. Since I need to get up in the morning and find a whole fresh cod fish to make baccalao I guess I can't live the druggie life... And I'm well aware that it's spelled bacalhau and it's referring to salted codfish but that was when Spaniards and Cubans were poor and used salted codfish. Now that there's such a thing as fedex overnight shipping so stupid Americans can make cod dishes from fresh cod.

blahblahblah whatever. be jealous.

Lagging from a jet.

It took me almost 2 weeks to get on European time and now Im going to suffer to try to get to American time. It seems like American time just sucks so much more. I feel like I'm turning into that pompous guy I briefly dated when Dom and I were on what I thought was permanent hiatus. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and all that jazz, but I reallllllllly do not deal with with someone who thinks they're always right. The only person who can be right all the time is me, but solely because I have a vagina. Not because I'm smart or anything, just because I possess a vagina. I can continue on with the reasons of why said guy was not good for me, but then it would take away the beauty of my post. So I'm turning into him in the sense of that I've been bitten by the travel bug. Europe. Europe. Europe. blah. blah. blah. blah. I guess the only difference between me and him is that I am posting it on the interwebz on my own private blog rather than being a bitch and shoving it up everyone's nose. Okay, maybe a little bit about the JAMON DE PATA NEGRA but with good reason.
That reason is that Jamon de pata negra (Iberico ham) was illegal in the US until 2005. It is now available in very limited quantities and very difficult to find. It is still illegal to import ANY kind of meat from ANYWHERE into this country without proper packaging and Dept. of Agriculture approval. Well, my cousins in Spain kept shoving chorizo and jamon de pata negra down my throat at every given opportunity which means I had to eat like, the whole time I was in Spain. I am surprised I could fit on the airplane.
Anyway, so my cousin sent me home with said jamon de pata negra, carefully packaged of course. I will admit that the whole time while going through customs I was a nervous wreck about getting caught and getting a $2500 fine, but it turns out people in Miami are lazy fags (literally, butt fucking fags that are possibly too lazy to butt fuck) and the beagles in the airport are just as fucking lazy because I not only got away with meat by the beagle that sniffed my luggage, but also by the people who are supposed to go through my luggage and make sure I'm not doing anything illegal. Next time I know I don't need to shove cocaine up my ass. So, I made it home with JAMON DE PATA NEGRA that my wonderful family gave me. Well, as it turns out, this shit sells for $96 dollars a pound. Yes, you read that correctly. $96.00 a pound. Which means that a whole jamon goes upwards $2000 and higher. What it also means that I have meat that you will not be eating because I am a spoiled bitch and I am going to eat it all and not share. What's also awesome is that because I have family in Spain that loves me, they're going to spend 200 Euro's and buy me a whole jamon de pata negra and switch the labels on it put a Serrano jamon label on it which is legal for export to the US by butcher shops. In exchange, I will be sending them Levi's 501's because apparently Levi's makes their money in Europe, because they charge 150 Euro per pair of jeans which I find completely insane.

This weekend I plan on opening up my notebook that I wrote in while eating everything I could, going through my notes and creating recipes on what I've eaten and how I can make these dishes in my own signature way. I've been inspired beyond belief and while I still have the tastes and feeling of yum in my head it's time to be creative and make other people fat while in the process of being creative. I've already given up on the fact that I will never, ever surpass Pizzaria Rustica in Lecco, Italy because they won second place in the world pizza finals. They must put crack in their pizza dough because their shit was addicting. It was the only place I ate at twice in my week in Italy. My second time was in the morning when the owner had all the fresh focaccia bread out... And of course it was pizza and focaccia heaven. I made friends with the owner and I told him I would write a review for him on FOODSPANK (please see my links for the blog) which I will do this weekend. Seriously, I want to work for him for a month for free to steal his techniques. I already told him that though so if he reads this, he won't be surprised that I am crazy that I want to work for him. He already thinks I'm crazy for wanting to move to Italy. But now I retract that statement and I want to move to Spain and if I have my way I will become a dual citizen of the US and Spain and buy a piece of land there and build on it as the years go by, then I will retire in Spain and live out the rest of my life eating jamon de pata negra. I might even be asked to be cremated with one.
Surprisingly, the thing that drove me the up the fucking wall in the best way ever were the fucking olives. Yes, you heard me, the fucking olives. I don't know what we're doing wrong here but US as a whole needs help when it comes to curing olives or finding good ones to import. The most insane olives I ate were from this Bristol Farms-like market just outside of Lecco, before driving into town, but a close second were the olives at Da Scapin in Verona, Italy. Unfortunately they didn't speak any English and I know enough Italian to just barely get by, so unfortunately I couldn't ask them questions about the curing process or where they get it or whatever, but those were also mind blowing. If I were to spend my time typing about the food and food alone, I will probably not sleep for 2 weeks straight because I could easily write a novel for each and every single thing that I ate.

Unfortunately I will need to sit tight until summer to experience the food orgasm that is Spain again. The food in London was both fabulous and terrible, the food in Italy was mind-blowing and the day I spent in St. Moritz, Switzerland I got to try a local meat only made in the area and this AMAZING barley soup with bits of speck but you know, Spain trumped all that is food heaven. So, I will bitch and whine until I get to spend a month in Spain (and Portugal and possibly Morocco) this summer. I should probably not attempt Morocco in summer because it'll be 1298731928731928471924719248712987 degrees but whatever. I am easily swayed by the thought of delicious Moroccan food.

Clearly, I am a fat person and I'll embrace that fact. Thank you.

Lost in translation.

You know, I have about 1294712471298457192857912875189275981275987 things to type about. I didn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time on the internet while in Italy or Spain, so I guess I have to make up for all of it. For now, I will leave you with a few photos from Madrid, Spain. Just know that I am planning on packing my shit and moving to Spain. I love Spain.

Food Spank.

To cure my anxiety about going to Europe, I started a new blog called FOOD SPANK. There's nothing on it yet, but oh oh ohhhh trust me, there will be. I will be bringing Dom's macbook and my dad will have his company laptop in Europe, so since I plan on doing nothing other than walking , eating, not sleeping and drugging myself throughout my European adventure, I will have a LOT to blog about. Hopefully I do not eat myself to death. But I guess dying of eating too much on vacation wouldn't be such a horrible death after all. It's better than being eaten alive by squirrels, like the way I think my dad will depart Earth. I just hope that if I die with a bucket of fish & chips stuck in my throat in a London pub, that Dom gets a picture of it and posts it at my funeral. He did get a new camera, might as well make good use of it, right?