February was less of a wasteland than January.

Making the effort for Life List #17 (see a new local band each month) introduced me to Low Man, who’ll have a new album in March for me to write about.

Impulsively tackling #11 (grow my own herbs), led me to Baker Nursery, a Phoenix New Times best-of winner, thus also meeting #18 (try one such winner each month).

Indeed, a theme of February was how goals interconnected, so a Super Bowl Sunday shopping spree leads to the historic cemetery above leads to… a horse. Of course, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

Smugness is not a danger in recounting January’s progress on the Life List. In fact, that’s why I decided to do a recap at the end of each month of 2012. When I read about the latest and greatest in approaches to self-actualization, I envision cheery, well-balanced people striding systematically toward their goals, possibly while sporting toothy grins and bouncy, shiny hair.

January 2012 sucked. Also, my teeth are not my best feature, and the hair fights back.

January 2012. My favorite coworker bounced between the ICU and the nursing home for the entire month and may never recover enough to come back to work. It seems almost selfish to notice how picking up his workload affected me. Then the external review that was supposed to be routine and painless turned into a visit from the Men In Black, only they didn’t bring the neuralyzers.
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“Balls,” said she.

Fishballs, to be exact.

My progress this week in the World Cup Food Challenge has had as many staggers and falls as a malingering Ghanaian, partly due to a compulsion to eat hamburgers. The Paraguay-Japan match was supposed to get an exciting pasta using soba noodles, fishballs, and a seafood-oriented take on Caruso Sauce. That went pear-shaped (and not in a poached-in-wine with chocolate sauce way) when, in mid-poach, I tasted a fishball and my first reaction was: “Ew! Gross!” Many things can be saved by a good sauce, but “gross” is not among them.

I considered pretending this dish never started to happen. I considered whipping up something else with such ingredients as were handy, an impulse known as “let’s make nectarine-jalapeño dessert pizza!” And then I let myself be egged on (in a throw-’em ‘n’ dodge ‘em way) to write about what goes into (and comes out of) a foodie culinary disaster. A bad recipe can’t be to blame, as I treat recipes as something between loose suggestions and the half-untranslated documents of a distant civilization. In that vein, we’re going to listen to Nacirema (listen), hip hop with a lounge feel. Settle in, as I want your feedback for two questions at the end… Read the rest of this entry »