I’m feeling very bi-polar today. I waver between thinking this is a piece of cake and totally throwing in the towel. It’s interesting. Nate and I were talking about how if we were in a place where food options were limited, like if we were traveling or something, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But because we are surrounded by options it’s pure hell! Ok, maybe it’s not that bad.

I had to work at my other job today. It turns out that place makes me want to eat too. Go figure. The hardest part of the day was right when I walked in and someone had started a big ole pot of coffee brewing – mmm, rainy Sunday morning coffee. And in the afternoon when a customer offered me a piece of this candy we sell that I’ve really been wanting to try. Oh, and when our friends picked up their dog and gave us chocolate truffles as a thank-you. And when I walked past the Domino’s pizza place on my way to my car and smelled the delicious aroma.

It’s now been raining for 3 days straight.

I WANT SUGAR! Or salt! Salt would be good too! ANYTHING! JUST GIVE ME A SNACK!!! And don’t ask me how it’s going, because I’M IRRITABLE!!!

Just when I was thinking that detoxing had made Nate a little crabby, I surpassed him by leaps and bounds. Of course, it doesn’t help that it has been raining non-stop for 2 days straight, or that there are two giant dogs (we’re dog-sitting) tearing around our house and needing to go out to pee every 5 minutes and then have all 8 of their muddy paws wiped off.

Even though I currently HATE it, so far I am learning a lot about my eating habits. Basically, I eat when I’m tired, I eat when I’m having a hard time getting my work done, being at my office makes me want to eat, being at home makes me want to eat, and I crave sugary and salty things. Well that’s just great. Only a FEW things to work on!

This picture sums up how I feel on Detox Day 2:

So Nate and I started a detox program this morning. For the next several days we will be ridding our bodies of toxins by eating not a whole lot of some pretty boring things. Lots of brown rice and steamed or raw veggies. We spent our last day of food freedom wisely – yesterday was Dining Out for Life day, where lots of Twin Cities restaurants donate a portion of their proceeds to the Aliveness project, a community center that provides services and programs to people living with AIDS/HIV. A great reason for us to eat out for lunch and dinner! So after gorging ourselves yesterday at Azia and Pizza Luce, we are now all about discipline.

We started by weaning ourselves off caffeine earlier this week. I swear Nate drinks twice as much coffee as me, but it was irritatingly easy for him. I, however, had two days of pretty much non-stop headaches. Starting this morning it’s nothing but nutritious food and vitamins. Out, free radicals! Out, I say! Wouldn’t you know though, I come to work and there is a freakin free pancake breakfast in my building! The whole place reeks of buttery maple syrup goodness! Must… persevere…

My goal is to make it to next Thursday, when we can celebrate our success by drinking copious amounts of craft beers at Arborfest. But I have absolutely terrible food willpower, and as for Nate, well, I’m not sure he can go more than a couple of days without a beer, so we’ll see. We’ll be keeping you posted on our progress.

Ooh, daffodils! We did that! Pretty soon it’s going to be all tulips – the first one looked like it might just open today!

Exoskeleton of a big ole bug. cooooool.

And this is a picture of the findings from our archaeological dig. When I was turning over the soil and mixing in compost in a corner of the garden I kept hitting really big, hard things. I started pulling random things out, but kept hitting more, so I kept trying to dig deeper. Finally I told Nate that I simply would not be able to move on if I didn’t know what was all down there, so he may as well come and help me. Which he did. It’s a really bad picture, but we mostly pulled out a bunch of huge rusty nails and wires, big pieces of painted glass, pieces of plates, some chunks of glass that looked as if they had been in a fire or struck by lightning or something, and a couple of what appear to be animal bones. Was it a pet cemetery? Probably not. Just someone’s garbage pit? Most likely. But perhaps they weren’t animal bones…

duhn duhn duhhnnn….

Nate’s birthday weekend included:

• Grilling! Not only was this the first time we used our awesome new grill, but it was our very first barbecue at our house! Our friend New Guy is doing a quite nice job of modeling it below – look out Price is Right girls.

• Hanging out on the deck and putting our new patio furniture to good use. The homebrew and root beer were flowing, and the Hawaiian birthday cake was delightful if I do say so myself.

• Easter/birthday brunch at Cafe 28. And the rumors you’ve undoubtedly heard are true, we ate pork sausage and bacon! First time I’ve had pork in like 10 years! It’s all part of my decision that supporting meat producers who are doing things the right way (free range, organic, sustainable) will make a bigger difference than just not eating meat at all. This restaurant buys their meat from Fischer’s Purebred Hog Farm, which raises happy, healthy piggies in an environmentally sustainable way. I’m not sure how much Nate actually cares about all that, but he sure seemed happy to have a reason to eat meat! The other exciting part of brunch was finally getting to have our first taste of Surly, Minnesota’s new beer. Very exciting, and long overdue.

• Easter baskets! When putting together last year’s baskets, my world was rocked by the discovery that no longer are there just Reese’s peanut butter cup eggs, but you can now get ANY candy bar in the shape of an egg! Of course I had to buy one of each kind – for both of us! I learned a valuable lesson from the guilt and chub that was the result of eating each and every one of those eggs. So this year’s baskets came from Whole Foods, not Walgreens. And they actually were pretty awesome – and sans the self-loathing. I did the worst job of hiding them EVER – how could I possibly have not realized that the kegerator would of course be the first place Nate would look? Even if he didn’t look there first, he probably would have gone there to get a beer to see him through the search!

That, my friends, is a giant mosquito bite on my right foot. Frankly, I’m confounded. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous these last few days, but I swear, it was nice for like a day when I got this! I sometimes like to think I’m tough, living in the land of extreme weather conditions and actually liking it, but I am humbled by the mighty mosquito. The long, dark, cold, snowy Minnesota winter makes you kind of forget about these critters, but give them one day of balmy weather and they return with a vengeance! Often called the unofficial state bird of Minnesota, these little buggers have made a nightmare out of many a picnic, hike, and patio dining experience for me, and actually ranked #2 on my Con list when I was trying to decide if I should move back to Minnesota from Colorado (#1, in case you were wondering, was hay fever – ahhh, ragweed). Nonetheless, I couldn’t be more excited about the arrival of spring! I can’t wait to garden, and hike, and camp, and lounge on our deck. I am armed with citronella candles, Deep Woods Off, and Burt’s Bees bug spray (which I got for Bruno – is it weird that I’m ok with putting deet on me but not my dog?). There are buds on trees, crocuses blooming, Nate has busted out his bike in a big way, and the grill is scheduled to debut on Saturday for his birthday bash (his b-day is actually Sunday, but we heard there was some other holiday thing happening that day). Yay spring!

Oh, and now that I have a new supafly digital camera of my own, expect more weird photos from me from now on. Consider yourselves warned. I’ll try to ease up on the maimed body parts ones though.

The other day I decided that working in my office hasn’t been going well, so I should give an alternate environment a shot. And so I ended up at Cupcake, a local coffee shop/cafe/bakery that specializes in gourmet cupcakes. I actually started to get the first productive work done that has happened in weeks, so I stuck around.

Round about lunch time, I went to order one of my favorite things in the world, their Moroccan Carrot sandwich. This creation entails grated carrots in some kind of awesome red marinade, green olive tapenade, and a delicious white sauce of some sort. It sounds gross to a lot of people, but to me it is one of the most wonderful things ever to grace this girl’s palate. Every once in awhile I get an overwhelming urge for one, the kind that simply must be satisfied. And since I have never tasted anything else like it, Cupcake is the only place to find satisfaction. To my horror, when I tried to order it on this occasion, I was told that it has been discontinued! What?! How can this be? What in the world am I going to do from now on when I get that overpowering, must be satisfied craving?

So as I sat there eating my second choice sandwich, this green apple, brie, cranberry mayo thing (which actually was very exciting, but no Moroccan Carrot), I thought that maybe I should ask for the recipe. But being slightly socially-phobic as I’ve been lately, I thought that I’d much rather email them and ask for it. I took advantage of their wireless internet (I love you cybercafes) and did a quick search for "Cupcake Minneapolis". It seems that they don’t have a website, but some sites with reviews and other info about them came up. I clicked on one, and a local girl’s blog with the following post responding to someone asking for advice appeared:

Dear Girl Friday,
I’m at a loss: my girlfriend is a holiday / special occasion fanatic, and I’ve been having a hard time matching her enthusiasm for certain days of the year. Next up is Valentine’s Day, which I’ll admit I totally dropped the ball on last year. I have issues already because I feel like it’s such a manufactured holiday, but this year I need to come through — I’m not talking gifts or candy, I’m trying to come up with something fun we can go out and do. Maybe a nice meal, a fun show, or…? What’s the hot (non-contrived) tip for a young couple who both work way too much and probably need some one-on-on time out on the town?

At this point, I was thinking "Ha ha, that sounds like Nate". And then I read the last sentence:

Help me, Girl Friday. You’re my only hope.

And then I thought, "Ohmygod! Description of us + Star Wars reference = Nate. That IS Nate!!" So I emailed him with a link and a "Dude, did you write this?". At this point, the juice ran out of my laptop, so I went home. About an hour passed before I fired it up and logged in to my email again, during which time, Nate panicked.

The first email in which he admitted it was him and wondered how in the hell I found it was pretty normal. But the second one got a little wiggy.

Um, FYI, I don’t have a problem that you love special occasions so much, I think it’s really cute, and I’m honestly trying to make them more fun for both of us. I hope you didn’t take that email wrong, because that and her answer makes it sound like I have huge issues – which I don’t. Just little ones, but trust me, you’re worth it. Ok? Why you no write back?

Tooooooo cute. You can actually visualize the sweat breaking out on his brow. Aww. Though the temptation was there to string him along for a little bit and make him think I was all offended, I just couldn’t do it, and wrote back telling him I thought it was hilarious. After all, not only did he receive a gold star in Karen’s Book of Holiday Achievements for this year’s Valentine’s Day efforts, but he led me to the discovery of my new favorite blog. A girl obsessed with cupcakes who writes about food and drink in the Twin Cities? How is it possible that we are not already best friends? And it is freakin adorable that he was stressed to the point of seeking advice from strangers about what to do. Might have been a little weird and possibly disappointing if the favorite breakfast / powdered sugar heart thing had been her idea, but lucky for me it was all him.

My conclusion from all of this is that sometimes the worldwide web is a very small world.

Nate and I recently invited our friends Peter and Madeline to become part of potato chip history with us. Last summer when we were at the Uptown Art Fair we visited the Kettle Chips booth, where we were given a free bag of chips and got to vote on what we think their new "happy hour" inspired chip flavor should be. If you are not familiar with Kettle Chips, you should be. They are an awesome company that converts 100% of the waste vegetable oil from their production into biodiesel, they have an enormous rooftop solar energy array, restored wetlands around their facility, and oh, did I mention that they have Cheddar Beer flavored chips? And Spicy Thai? Roasted Red Pepper with Goat Cheese?!? YUMMM!!

Anyway, at the art fair, I of course submitted a suggestion for a bloody mary-inspired chip flavor, of course. The good people at Kettle Chips either took the five most popular suggestions or the five they liked the best (not sure) and made a limited amount of each. They then assembled 500 People’s Choice Happy Hour Party Packs, containing one 5-oz bag of each flavor, a tasting guide and ballots. Needless to say, I simply had to have one. And so approximately two weeks later Nate and I journeyed to Peter and Madeline’s house in negative 20 something temperatures with our box o’ chip fun. On the agenda for the evening? Watching Winter Olympics (did you SEE snowboard cross?!? So. cool.), experiencing the glory and wonder that is the boardgame the Settlers of Catan, and being part of potato chip history. Worthy of risking frostbite and car engine failure? We obviously think so. 

Some of us (Madeline) followed directions better than others (Peter), but in the end, we each judged the following very exciting flavors:

• Spicy Mary
• Dirty Martini
• Tuscan Three Cheese
• Creamy Caesar
• Buffalo Bleu Cheese

We each filled out a ballot and submitted our votes online. Here are the current stats:
Total voters: 4089
Buffalo Bleu Cheese: 3.37
Dirty Martini: 2.61
Tuscan Three Cheese: 3.78
Spicy Mary: 3.28
Creamy Caesar: 3.62

Unfortunately, it’s not looking good for my top choice, Dirty Martini. Buffalo Bleu was a close second for me though, and it still has a chance. I think Nate chose Tuscan Three Cheese. I can’t remember how Peter and Madeline voted, so they will just have to comment to let us know.

And by the way, voting goes through the end of March, so you too can still get in on the history-making.