Holly Jahangiri's blog

Adventures in Tripe (Part 2, The Dare)

OMG, that's foul.

 

 

Adventures in Tripe (Part 2; Captioned): The Dare

Adventures in Tripe (Part I)

Adventures in Tripe (Day One; Captioned)

My first YouTube Video! Adventures in Tripe... to be continued later this afternoon, after the tripe takes its wine bath.

This started out as a dare (kids, here's why you don't want to take dares - but if you do, cooking tripe is better than doing drugs or Ghost Ridin' the Whip or whatever other harebrained thing your friends can come up with - I think). I asked, on QnA Live, what I should put on my redesigned Web site. "Recipes for Tripe" was one suggestion. I thought "Me, trying to cook tripe" might be even better. I had trouble deciding which page - "Nutrition & Fitness" or "Humor"?

Holly's Cooking School - where the clueless meet the inept. Could be... either.

I just can't wait to see what this smells like while it's cooking.

Carnivorous

A Night Out at Fogo de Chão
(The following poem is meant to be humorous, awful, the sort of thing sane writers shove under the crumpled wads of worthier efforts stashed in the circular file - it is not intended to be great "litrahchure," so please do not feel obligated to point out to me that "it sucks.")

Raging, ravenous need to tear
Great hunks of meat from proffered skewers
While sipping a mojito: rum, crushed mint, fresh lime.

Take a picture of this:
Chewing, swallowing - need to breathe?
Flip the coaster, green to red, hold up a hand - STOP!

Not a flattering photo.
A Brazilian steak house? No place
for pinch-faced vegetarians, Hindus, or members of PETA.

Non, je regrette rien...
Except, maybe, the salad bar. Superfluous
It seems, now. Greens, rice, pickled things, quail eggs, soup...

Pre-filler filler-upper.
Never say "diet" at Fogo de Chão;
it has the word "die" in it. "Die" starts with "d" and marks an end,

As does "dessert."
Oh, Holy Mother of Pearl  -
They serve dessert here, too?

5 word challenge: obsequious, striation, tyro, eleemosynary, prophylaxis

catness has passed me the baton so today it's my turn to pick the 5 words!

Words: obsequious, striation, tyro, eleemosynary, prophylaxis

The rules (for the potential new players):

This is how it works: you get 5 words and with these 5 words you have to write an entry. The words might or might not be related. You decide how to combine them, and how long your entry will be. You tag your entry with 5wordchallenge
and whatever other tags you like. Finally, you put the words in bold. In one week the challenge will be passed on to someone that participated in this one, by the person who hosts this week's challenge.

Dare to Dream

A response to What rejection tastes like... (once again, inspired by Redzilla):

Dare to Dream

Lara’s hands shook as she handed the carefully boxed and wrapped manuscript across the counter to be weighed and metered. She dug around in the bottom of her purse for the crumpled dollar bills she’d scrounged from under the couch cushions to pay the postage, and dropped a handful of loose change on the floor. “Omigod, I’m so sorry,” she murmured, her face flushing crimson. Could the man tapping his foot impatiently behind her see how desperately she dared to hope that this time, this book, would be the one?

As her box disappeared on the conveyor belt behind the counter, Lara had a fleeting urge to leap across and snatch it back. “It’s not ready yet!” wailed a small insecure voice, one Lara barely recognized as her own.

“It’ll never be ready,” scoffed a deeper, more cynical voice. Her father's. “Might as well find that out sooner than later.”

“There, there, Lara. There are so many other things you’re good at. Why don’t you find a nice young man and settle down? You could still write for fun, you know.” Ah, mom. Always ready with a backup plan.

“It’s terrific, hon,” whispered a faint voice, struggling to be heard over the din of traffic outside the post office. “I always knew you could do it.” The voice faded like an echo on the wind.

Lara tucked her head down and turned her collar up against the chilly autumn breeze, and hurried home to fix a nice pot of tea. “Try not to think about it,” she told herself. “If it’s meant to be, it’ll be.”

Three months later, having succeeded in pushing her hopes and dreams and fears into the back of her mental closet, Lara opened her mailbox and let out a little gasp of surprise. It was a big, thick 11”x17” envelope, creamy white, with a return address of Doherty & Linnert Publishing. A rejection? Lara felt sure they wouldn’t have wasted so much postage on a form letter. A returned manuscript? The envelope wasn’t heavy enough. Lara clutched it to her breast and ran back into the house.

She carefully placed the unopened envelope on the dining room table. She hardly dared to hope – yet hope she did. And as long as she resisted the temptation to tear open the package, she could hold onto that hope, savor it, and cherish it as surely as if it were real. Lara wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself. Doherty & Linnert Publishing. What a delicious feeling!

Lara made a pot of tea. She grabbed an old mug, then quickly put it back. She reached up for the good china – the special-occasion set her mother had given her when she moved out on her own. She had some imported shortbread in the pantry. Although she was on a diet and had sworn off empty carbohydrates, Lara decided to splurge and made herself a little plate of cookies to go with the tea. She sat down at the dining room table with her tea and cookies, and pondered the envelope. No, surely this wasn’t a rejection. Lara had had plenty of those, and they inevitably arrived in slightly sullied and very ordinary No.10 envelopes. She ran her fingertips across the package – the expensive stationery had a delicious, expensive feel to it. Daydreaming again, she imagined that it contained a three-book contract and a six-figure advance.

Suddenly, Lara broke out in a cold sweat. A three-book contract? Oh, dear God! How could she ever write two more books so quickly, and hope to do as well as she had with this one? Panic engulfed her, swallowed her whole. She felt sick to her stomach and wished she hadn’t eaten the shortbread. She stared at the envelope in horror and dismay. “I can’t! I can’t do it!” she cried. She pushed herself back from the table so quickly that her chair tipped precariously on its back legs.

Lara could swear she heard the voices laughing. “Be careful what you wish for,” whispered one.

“You’re just a one-trick pony,” said the other with a derisive snort.

“I can’t... I can’t...” sniffed a tiny voice, barely audible over the beating of Lara’s heart.

“You’ll never know until you try,” sighed the last, so softly that Lara wondered if she’d heard it at all. 

Save the Internet!

Save the Internet!

Hey, look, Dad - I've gone from "Save the Whales" and "Save the Seals" to "Save the Internet!"

I've become such a geek.

Tim Berners-Lee (M.I.T.), father of the World Wide Web...

See? It wasn't Al Gore. It was Tim Berners-Lee. So there.

Ohhhhh...you knew that, did you?

Cold Showers Beyond the Grave

I could keep this up indefinitely. Clad only in a terry-cloth towel, armed with nothing but a spritzer of ice cold water, I outsmart the phantom. I lure it into the cellar. I feel its malevolent passions rise; I shiver with a chill from beyond the grave. Alienated from its corporeal self, it reaches out, tickles the base of my spine like a lover, raises zombie goosebumps along my arms. Quickly, I turn and - spritz! The phantom howls. "Take a cold shower, creep!" I run back up the stairs and bolt the door. Sunlight floods my kitchen, warms my naked flesh like a kiss. I laugh.

From Here....to Eternity

Wedding-kiss

Awwww, don't we make a cute couple? Twenty three years ago...but it seems like only yesterday.

Initially, we'd planned a long engagement. Twelve months, or so. We didn't even set a date. But like any eager young bride, I enthusiastically shopped for the gown, perused all the bridal magazines, tried to arrange everything according to some schedule laid out by the so-called experts - in short, I was well on my way to driving my mother nuts. "I don't want to hear about this for the next twelve months," she said. "Daydream, plan, shop all you like - but don't drag me into it this early. Give me six weeks. I can pull off any wedding you want in six weeks."

We called her bluff. Decided not to wait a year, after all. Gave her twelve days.

Okay, so that was partly her fault. I wanted a special date. J.J.'s birthday was just a few days earlier. Mine was nine months away. (Don't ask me why I wanted it to have some sort of dual significance; perhaps I realized, even then, that I was not the best at remembering important dates...but I like to think it was some sort of superstitious nonsense, like wanting a date that had already proven itself to be "good.") My mother narrowed her eyes at me. "You two really mean this? You're in it for life, right? You're not going to screw it up?"

"Um...right. Why?"

"If you promise not to screw it up, I have a date in mind that you might like."

"What?"

"How about our anniversary? We'll share, but only if you keep it a happy date. No divorce. Nothing to make it a sad date."

"Deal."

Our Wedding, Their Anniversary

To put things in perspective, we were married on my parents' twenty-second anniversary. I am now two years older than my mother was, then, and two years younger than my dad. I shudder to think how old and grown up I thought they were, at the time.

My parents were four years apart in age; so are J.J. and I.

What do you think? Are we holding up...okay? Do we look...old, and grown up? To be fair, do they?

Get Over It!

Blame Redzilla...again.

I have never been a breastfeeding fanatic. I firmly believe that what's best for mom is best for baby; if breastfeeding doesn't work for you, so be it. I turned out just fine on Enfamil from day one. I had a great bond with my mom and managed to grow up tall, healthy, and smart.

But breastmilk is especially designed by Nature to meet each baby's unique needs. It doesn't get any better than that, if you're a healthy mother who can nurse an infant and wants to. It should be a right - and there shouldn't be any unreasonable restrictions as to when and where you can feed your child when he or she is hungry. If you wouldn't ban a bottle-fed child from eating at a particular place and time, then you shouldn't ban a breastfed one, either. Period.

You think God wouldn't want a woman baring her breasts in public? Then why didn't He, in His infinite wisdom, put the nipples on her fingertips? Hmm? Would the conservatives dare argue that God should have designed women better? Or was it some nefarious cosmic plot designed to prove that women shouldn't be allowed to leave the house, to work, to travel? I don't think so.

If the sight of a nursing breast offends you, don't look. How hard is that? I've long suspected that the only reason for requiring Muslim women to cover themselves head to toe is because men think men cannot control their animal lusts, and would somehow like to place the blame for that on us. Well, I know plenty of men who can exercise control over their lust - so I find this notion grossly insulting to real men. I know there are some men who can't, and they should probably be locked away somewhere. Women shouldn't be made to suffer because a man is weak-willed and undisciplined.

Back in November 2006, a woman was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight for discreetly breastfeeding her child. Here's an article on it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15720339/?from=ET

That's just nuts. Sorry, but I recall a flight when my son was a year old - if I hadn't been "allowed" to breastfeed, I'm fairly sure they'd have thrown the screaming terror out the rear exit at 35,000 ft. Or stuffed him into an overhead compartment in the back, with an oxygen mask over his face to muffle the yelling. If I hadn't been his mother - and loved him dearly - I'd have been tempted. The only thing I could do to calm him was to nurse him. I'm surprised the other passengers didn't keep an eye on me to make sure I didn't stop. Believe me, I didn't plan on nursing my child until he was almost four years old. Comments from people who think that's "gross" or somehow inappropriate have no clue - let's face it, would you rather see moms doling out Valium to their tots? I didn't think so. Besides, breast milk is just so much more effective, anyway.

Ban a nursing mother from the plane? You've got to be kidding me. With all the complaints people make about crying babies on airplanes, you'd think they'd make mothers sign an agreement promising to nurse them on demand.

But oddly enough, it's usually other women who complain. I would be willing to bet this nursing mother didn't simply rip off her top or flop out a boob and go for it. I'd almost be willing to bet the other passengers couldn't see a darned thing that wouldn't be revealed in a low-cut top or bikini, if that. Why the sight of a mother breastfeeding her child in public bothers anyone is beyond me. I have never seen one who flopped out a boob and was anything but discreet.

I can't say that for all breastfed babies, of course. I do remember breastfeeding my son in the waiting room at NTB, once, while they kindly fixed yet-another-nail-hole in one of my tires (I lived in a construction zone, so I was a monthly customer for a while). He began to make what I liked to call "my compliments to the chef" noises. My son was anything but discreet in his vocal appreciation of fine mother's milk. Not my fault - no, I had on a nursing top, he was tucked completely into a sling, and I'd thrown a receiving blanket over us for good measure. Finally, the man sitting next to me couldn't take it anymore. He broke into a silly grin and said, "That must be a fine lunch. He really likes that."

I was a little taken aback at provoking comments from a stranger, but I looked the guy over and laughed. "You have kids, don't you?" I asked.

"Three of them, all grown now." He smiled, and went back to reading his magazine, a nostalgic grin on his face.

*SIGN THE PETITION TO SUPPORT BREASTFEEDING: http://www.momsrising.org/breastfeeding-petition
Join me in telling Delta Airlines to get a clue and be supportive of breastfeeding mothers; and also in telling Congress it's time to pass the Breastfeeding Promotion Act, which amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect breastfeeding mothers. Clearly this law is needed now!

If you doubt the power of action, see the update: http://www.momsrising.org/node/430?comments_per_page=50&page=38

And, I hope you'll also join me and tens of thousands of others in one of the most exciting grassroots movement on the Internet: MomsRising.org.

SIGN ON WITH MOMSRISING AT: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/momsrising/signUp.jsp?key=1682&t=longsignup.dwt

MomsRising.org (http://www.momsrising.org) is working to build a massive grassroots movement big enough to impact the outcome of the 2008 elections and beyond. The time has come to break the logjam that's been holding back family-friendly legislation for decades. It's going to take all of us--and then some--working together to get there.

Thank you!

A Bright Little Spot of Color...

One of my "43 Things" was to create comfortable, inspiring, productive writing area.

Now, not only have I decluttered and cleaned my little corner of our shared home office, including the overstuffed and unsightly bookcase (which now houses only books I haven’t read and might actually WANT to; reference books; books on philosophy and religion; and books on language), I have brightened it with two huge and colorful silk flower arrangements I made myself. (The third arrangement, the red roses - those are real. My husband surprised me with those first thing this morning. He also surprised me with "breakfast in bed" - a box of chocolate-covered strawberries from Godiva. They're huge. Each one's practically a meal in itself, and there were six of them! This is in deference to the diet - the traditional gift being a one-pound box of truffles. I do love this man. He could've been a real smart-ass and given me a bunch of carrots - nothing like a healthy Valentine's pun to cheer a girl up, eh?)

My first thought was to go out and buy real flowers. That was immediately followed by the saner, more self-aware realization that they would simply die – and then sit there on my desk until they turned black and brittle and started to grow things not meant to be grown in lovely bouquets. Fresh flowers are nice – delightful – but they are not always a pack-rat’s best friend. They are just as expensive as the silk flowers, but they only last a few days. Let’s get real; I needed stress-free, effortless, colorful decoration to boost my spirits, inspire creativity, and improve my moods on dreary days. I did not need to create a corner of the office that smells good for five minutes, then begins to resemble a funeral parlor on an off day.

A Bright Spot of Color in a Dreary World

 

Office Space