Letter to the Editor

Dear Biju Thomas,

WTF?

I recently bought your book "Feed Zone Portables" and was very excited to try out the recipes. I had a number of issues that drew me to your book.
1. I'm always hungry.
2. I'm always on the go.
3. I'm a hungry athlete.
Your book seemed written just for me.

As a matter of fact, when I opened to the picture of you standing over the hot stove, I knew you had written this book just for me and that we were destined to meet- for these few reasons:
1. You're hot.
2. You appear to be in good shape.
3.  You can cook. Enough so that people call you Chef Biju.
Hi, my name is Carrie and we're supposed to get married and you will be all hot and handsome while cooking my food.

However.

There are a few things we need to get sorted out before this relationship can continue any further.
1. In the first chapter you address the question of whether I need to be eating all this food to begin with. Maybe it was your co-author, but regardless, I'm offended. I have a fast metabolism! I work out! And if you're cooking it for me, of course I will be eating it!
2. When you say fresh Thyme leaves, you should specify that I should remove the twiggy part of it. I won't even go into the hardship this caused me. Shame on you.
3. Sticky rice. Let's talk about that. My rice is not sticking together. I bought the kind you told me to (except it's the brown whole grain kind) and prepared it how you suggested. I wouldn't call it sticky, Bob.
4. Ok, my biggest beef. This alone has me second guessing our relationship. Let's address the section on how to wrap these scrumptious portables.

First off, individually wrapping each square of rice cake is incredibly wasteful, but I see the utility in it so I'm willing to let that go. For now.

Second, when you say "Fold the two open sides of the foil into triangle tabs as you would to wrap a gift." WTF do you mean? I know how I make triangle tabs to wrap a gift and it certainly does not provide the security and closure that you're suggesting. My triangle tabs require scotch tape which I thankfully own, otherwise my rice cake would end up on the floor of my jeep while dodging deer on the river road tomorrow morning. It probably still will...sticky rice....

Which leads me to my next point. The photos you provide to illustrate how this origami should work are clearly lacking in any, well, clarification. WHAT TRIANGLE TABS?!

You go on to say "Tuck the triangular tabs at each end underneath the wrapped edges." Above is a terrible photo of you seemingly doing just that. And to top it off, the next photo is of your cute little bundles stacked on top of each other- no scotch tape involved.

I tried this with the mushroom thyme breadcake (yeah, that one, the one with the thyme leaves). I gave up after annihilating 2 sheets of paper foil (Why not just aluminum foil?).

I tried again tonight with the (ahem!) sticky rice.

I don't think we can be friends anymore. We are obviously struggling with some severe communication issues. When you come up with a better way to speak to me, you just let me know.

In the meantime I will just stare at you cooking and taste your scrumptious recipes... while eating them from a bowl.

Regards,

Carrie

Accomplished...and then not.

I was feeling super proud of myself this morning until tragedy struck...or I struck it anyway. More on that in a minute, first the background on why I was exuding awesomeness in the first place.

 This week has been a little hectic and it has required me to be always "on". As exhausted as I am at night, it's hard to wind down because all day long there has always been "the next thing" that I'm running off to do.

Every morning I'm in the gym at 5 am, then off to work. On Mondays and Wednesdays I get to work, eat a snack, check my email and then go for a run. I leave work early to head up to Medford for my Algebra class. Then I come home, split wood and haul a load in, eat and go to bed. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have long ten hour days to make up for the short days on Mon/Wed. Have I mentioned we've all been furloughed (but have to work anyway because we're "essential") and basically got an IOU from the government? It's been a mess here. On Friday it's regular length day after gym and running.

 So last night on my way home I had a list going in my head of the things I needed to accomplish. Gas, split wood, haul in wood pellets, cook up the veggies that are about to go bad, shower, eat, bed.

 I got gas and when I got home saw there was a package on my doorstep. My new car stereo made it in! It's nothing fancy, just a cheap one to replace my old tape deck that went under recently. I brought it inside, split two loads of wood to haul into the house, brought in a bag of pellets and started a fire in the wood stove. While the wood started to catch, I grabbed my package and opened it. I glanced at the brightly colored wires. Yeah, I can do this, no problem.

 I got my tools and my flashlight (it was getting dark) and set about removing my old stereo. I looked at my watch. 1900. I needed to be in bed by 2030 at the latest in order to get up at 0430 for the gym. You're not going to make it.

 I removed the old stereo and started stripping and twisting wires together. Mid-way through I started thinking about how well I was doing in Algebra even after hearing a couple guys seated next to me talk about how they're so lost. First algebra, now I'm wiring a new stereo into my vehicle. Bad ass.

 The instructions said to solder the wires together after twisting them together. Solder? Seriously? Who just randomly has a soldering iron laying about? Not me. No one's soldering anything. After soldering, they should be taped. I went on a manhunt to find my electrical tape and could not find it. Masking tape it is. Lord help me if this causes a fire.

 There were a couple extra wires in the end. One that was labeled Auto amplifier. I was pretty sure there was no amplifier in my vehicle. The other coming out of the new stereo was labeled "Illumination". What? Like to light the face? There was no matching orange wire coming out of my vehicle. Crap. Hopefully I can still see this thing in the dark.

 The only other one left was a brown one. Something about a telephone. I didn't have one of those in my vehicle either, so I let it go. I put it all in place and re-attached the negative cable on the battery. I turned on the vehicle.

 Bam! Music! And the face is all lit up. I don't know what the illumination wire was all about. Who is not only rocking algebra but also wiring stereo equipment? This girl! Hell yeah!

 I cleaned everything up and looked at my watch. 2030. Damn. I still haven't eaten dinner. I ate some quinoa quiche muffins while I loaded more wood into the wood stove and packed my lunch and clothes for the next day. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Crap! Forgot to shower. Oh well, not happening tonight.

 I went to bed feeling pretty bad ass.

 In the morning I was tired and didn't want to get out of bed. UP UP UP!!! Always up!

 I got up and coaxed the wood stove back to life, changed, drank coffee and a protein shake and headed to the gym. After a great workout, the last of the week, I headed to work.

Here's where it gets tragic people. Avert your eyes if you're squeamish.

 I was bopping along to Pon de Replay by Rihanna on my new stereo, driving the winding river road to work in the dark. As I came around a left curve I saw a couple pair of beady blue eyes moving up the embankment as they came out of the road. Uh oh. I started to brake.

 As I got into the curve, my headlights shone onto an entire herd of baby deer. I kid you not. What was this, some sort of kindergarten field trip?! Everything happened in slow motion.

 I braked harder as I bore down onto 3 baby deer. "Ooomphh!" Came the sound out of my mouth as I braced my core to try to keep from being thrown forward in the vehicle. I didn't want to brake hard enough to lose control of the vehicle but I had to stop quickly. The baby deer kept their trajectory, right into my headlights. One disappeared to the right, the second disappeared under my headlights. Wait for it... CRUNCH, CRUNCH. "Arrgghhh!" I growled as the front right tire lifted up and over the little body of the baby deer.

 The third little guy turned around and headed back in the direction from which he came. My vehicle came to a stop and stalled...being as I did not have my other foot on the clutch. I put it in first and started it back up again and watched the third baby deer scamper off down the road. I steered the vehicle to the left a little to avoid running the darn thing over with the rear tire...although in retrospect maybe I should have run him over again just to make sure he wasn't still laying there suffering on the side of the road. Good lord.

 As I continued to work, I mulled it over in my head. Deer have got to be the dumbest animals alive. Those things ran straight into my headlights. I'm serious. I have a very vivid memory of that third deer coming right at my vehicle just before changing direction. Those jerks need to stay out of the road.

 I had a brief thought of the survivors coming out to check on the little body lying in the road. I wonder if the dump truck coming behind me hit any of them.

 (As an added note, as I sat here at my desk editing this thing...kinda in the dark, something crawled onto my leg. It was too dark to see what it was. I jumped up, gasping and brushing at my leg. I flicked on the light and searched for it. When it finally started to move again I found it. I have no idea what it was. Lately we've had some very strange bugs in this place. But I'll have you know that instead of killing it, I scooped it up onto a piece of paper and tossed it outside, Just like the other unrecognizable bug I tossed out yesterday.)