Today, I shocked people when I told them I was eating my first wrap ever. That's right...until today, I had never eaten a wrap sandwich and frankly, I don't see what all the buzz is about. Good old bread kicks a wrap's ass any day.
People's reaction to my wrap comment prompted me to want to share some other fun food revelations. Here it goes...In 29.5 years on earth I have never eaten:
1) a tuna sandwich (I love tuna sashimi, seared, grilled, ahi, fatty, yellowtail...all that, but no way on the canned stuff)
2) a bagel with cream cheese (love bagels, love cheese, no cream cheese)
3) clam chowder (Manhattan I've tasted, New England is barf in a bowl)
4) egg salad sandwich (yuck, do I really have to explain this one?)
5) will not knowingly eat mayonnaise on anything but Wendy's or a BLT and the occasional potato or pasta salad
I am THE grill master! We had a little Sunday BBQ today and did a monster 2.5-lb. flank steak. Made up a great marinade with a little Asian twist. Not sure of the exact measurements but you should definitely give it a try:- 1/4 cup olive oil- 1/2 cup soy sauce- 3-4 crushed garlic cloves- 1.5 tbsp minced ginger- chopped green onion- 1 tbsp brown sugar- two dried red chilies with seedsMix all that up and pour it on a flank steak covered in some cracked black pepper (no salt - the soy sauce has plenty of that already). Let that sucker sit for about 4 hours. Be sure to scrape the stuff off before laying it on the grill - it will catch fire and cause the ends of the steak to burn. Cook it to medium rare, then let it sit for a few minutes to collect its juices back. Slice it and enjoy.You're welcome!
If you read my last rant about lawns here, you know that I have been way into grass this year. Found a cool site dedicated to grass growing. It's called Watching Grass Grow. Check it out. My personal favorite is the 1-year time lapse.
Yesterday we went crib and stroller and playpen and car seat and glider shopping. As this is our first baby, the whole experience was totally foreign to me. It's weird, like anything else, you begin knowing nothing and then after a few excursions, you're explaining to a total stranger why the 30-lb rating will get you through an entire year while the 22-lb is going to put you back in the store at about 10 months. Wow! We went to a few different places first but ended up at Buy Buy Baby. This place is major. You've got your doe-eyed young expectants (like us) walking around like "we need this and, oh, we need that" and then your battle-hardened experts with three toddlers in tow and the husband on the Blackberry (left mine at home). The sales guys at this place are like a car lot meets a furniture store meets the handbag department at Nieman Marcus. You can't walk 10 feet without someone wanting to show you something. But they are good. Our guy - a late 40's live with his mom-type - knew every spec of every stroller in the whole store. Good for us but how did he get to that point? Anyway, we need a cool stroller, a good man stroller, with good wheels and a slick look. Even though we're having a girl, this thing needs to be a man-pushable package of baby-carrying technology. I am learning that baby shopping is like a new frontier of cool gear. Why just get wheels when you can have shocks and wheels...why buy a seat when you can get one that vibrates? So watch out! I am picking up the lingo, checking out the color patterns and thinking about the bells and whistles. I guarantee that our stroller will be something I'll be proud to roll around town.
There is something about having your own little piece of property that makes you obsessed with grass. We had some work done in the back of the house that left with zero grass. I started the season with pure dirt and rocks. Since then, I have been near OCD about seed spreading, watering and the casual observation of said grass as it peeks through the soil and begins to grow. I moved around the yard caring for little bits at a time as if my grass was a pet. After dinner, I would go spend time with the grass-to-be, I would fluff it, water it, pick foreign objects away from it, scare birds and squirrels away from it...I would talk to it, encourage it, negotiate with it. Four months later, I know have Yankee Stadium-esque looking grass in my backyard and it's freakin awesome. Sure it's a mix of Kentucky, Bermuda and some crab (a result of many different seed combos), but it's my grass that I planted from scratch. I am proud of my little lawn. From now on when people say "it's like watching grass grow," I might think that's a good thing.
Every Saturday begins the same way:1. go to bagel shop for taylor ham, egg & cheese on a plain bagel with SPK (that's salt, pepper and ketchup), a Yoohoo and an everything bagel with low fat veggie cream cheese for the Mrs.2. go to Dunkin Donuts for two large regulars, one with milk and sugar (me) and one with milk and Equal (the Mrs.)3. stop at convenience store for Daily News for an easy read during commercials4. go home and eat breakfast while watching College GameDayWhat do you do?
Football season is dangerously close. Every year at this time, something changes in me. I start wearing jerseys around the house, making sure we have no plans on Saturday afternoons and buying Tostitos medium salsa con queso by the metric ton. It's an animal instinct, the way a salmon knows to swim upstream or a wolf just knows how to kill its next meal. Way back when, I played football. I played junior football as soon as I was old enough, then again in high school and even continued on at a division 1-AA college. After college, I took some time off...didn't go crazy for it. I was busy going out in NYC and doing other things. Sure I followed my teams - Rutgers, Notre Dame and the NY Jets - but I wasn't fanatical about it. So a few years ago I got bit by the football bug again. Like an amputee scratching an itch on a leg long gone, I have begun to make football a central part of my life again. What I used to put into physical preparation, I now compensate for in attire, comfort and good food. The hardest part now is not becoming a lard ass couch ornament. That is why I always watch games with a ball in my hand. Simulate a pass, toss a few up to yourself, stand up and do a few Ray Rice moves to keep the blood flowing. That's how I do it!
