the water pilgrimage.

I just had the weird sensation of realizing that someone has been observing my daily habits, finding them unusual and trying to help me be a little more normal.

Let me explain.

I work in a really really super nice building.

The nicest building I've ever worked in over the (short) span of my working career thus far. When I move and continue working other places, it'll still probably be the nicest facility I'll have ever worked in. There's glass everywhere. Shiny marble. Fabulous modern furnishings in a four-story atrium and a little cafe serving breakfast and lunch.


There are scores of support staff that man that cafe and clean the building (including the bathrooms, all of them, at least three or four times a day.) It's ridiculous. But I am not complaining - it's also lovely.

Anyway. I have these habits. I think they're good ones. I drink a ton of water. Possibly a gallon a day; not entirely sure. I used to go fill up my trusty plastic cup at the water fountain right by my office. One day, or operations director saw me and said (I kid you not), "WHY, pray tell, are you drinking out of the water fountain?! You do realize that we have nice, filtered, refrigerator water in the break room across the atrium, don't you?"

Well, no I didn't, actually. But I guess since the water fountain is off limits (except for guests - they don't get the good stuff?), I'll start walking across the way for my many times daily fill-up.

So, for the past year or so, I've been trekking across the atrium, from my office to the break room across the way to fill up my water cup. I've really started to enjoy it - my office is nice as far as offices go. I have a secondary window that looks out on to a hallway, through another office and finally out an outside window. I get light of day, indirectly. I have a door. But the atrium. You saw the photo. Now, it's a break I look forward to - getting up, stretching my legs, checking out the action in the atrium (that's where visitors come) and enjoying the full sunshine you see in the fully glassed-in area. Plus, I walk like, half a mile a day, to and fro between office and break room.

This morning, my little routine was interrupted by a really pleasant lady who works in the cafe.

"I see you walking way over there at least 25 times a day," she says. "You know the cafe water is triple-filtered, right? And cold? Why don't you just come get your water from the kitchen?" She says this all very patiently, as I'm obviously a tad slow to be walking a half mile per day just for water.

So anyway, I feel obligated to explain to her that I skip the water fountain because I was encouraged to drink the filtered water. I'm not a water snob, I insist. A little fluoride is good for a person.

In summary:

• Water fountain (is less than) filtered breakroom water (is less than) super awesome triple filtered chilled cafe water.
  
• I am a weirdo who drinks way too much water, walks too far for it and thinks she's too good for the water fountain.
• We have entirely too many water options. I mean, seriously.
  

Sigh. Sometimes I wish I could just be odd in peace without people noticing my little quirks and trying to help me out. Although, it is kind of touching that they care.

And, I apologize for sharing the weird again. I do think this little exercise will help dissolve the writer's block I've been experiencing while writing pages for our annual report. So this has been beneficial after all. I think I need a water break first, though...

OH! And so this isn't a total loss. I give you, Barcelona:

EF - Live The Language - Barcelona from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

Hm. This isn't my favorite of the series but it still makes me insanely travel-jealous. We wanted to go here for our honeymoon but realized that there was a bit of a cash flow issue for a weeklong (or more) Euro trip. We had the best vacation we've ever had in Vegas, thanks to a family friend. But Barcelona is still on the bucket list. And it sure would be nice to go there while I still look decent in a swimsuit. Although, I'm pretty sure I never looked like the girl in the video. Seesh.

Bejing

EF - Live The Language - Beijing from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

(By the way, these all came from the ModLife blog, which is almost always interesting reading.)

I am fairly sure I'm more of a Europe girl than an Asia one, but this does make me want to explore the asian side of things as well... Can you study abroad for work? Sigh.

Oh, to be a study abroad student again...

EF - Live The Language - Paris from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

And there are more... I believe I'll share them one at a time since I am the worst blog poster ever lately. This will give anyone who happens to look at my blog something to daydream about :)

Voyage

I love the holidays. But, as I'm sure is the case for many people, they are bittersweet. In addition to the joy I feel being around loved ones and eating food and looking at lights and glittery paper and ribbons, I also reflect on those lost. Bittersweet. On my way into work this morning, I heard this poem and it rung so true. Anyway, not much more from me today, just this:

Voyage

by Tony Hoagland

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

"Voyage" by Tony Hoagland, from Hard Rain. © Hollyridge Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Interestingly enough, my granddad was a ship captain. So was my uncle before he retired. My dad was in the Navy too. In her early twenties, Mom sailed from L.A. to Australia on the beginning of her great adventure that eventually led her to my dad in Spain.

My uncle posted this photo on his Facebook sometime this summer... it's of him on his ship in Vietnam. He met up with my dad there - he's in the reflection.

Granddad had Alzheimer's and many of my more vivid memories of him were in this state since I was old enough to remember. He told this amazing story about when he first left Norway to work on a ship, they still sailed on masted sailing ships. I'm sure it was part of some sort of hazing ritual, but when he was young, they dared him to climb up to the uppermost mast and balance there, entire ship and ocean below, on his belly. Crazy. Crazy what you remember when everything else is gone... Crazy how many life-changing moments in my family, on both sides, began with a ship.

It's beer-thirty

Did you know there was such a product?


I had no idea. I saw them at a quickie-mart last Saturday in Nashville.

You learn something new every day.

Hope they're not as nasty as this beer/malt liquor caffeinated concoction. Yikes.

Spoiled rotten

Marrying a cook has its perks. Sure, the hours are unforgiving and after his slow Monday and Tuesday we pass like ships in the night most weeks, me trying to stay up to see him when he gets home and him waking up earlier to have some coffee as I bolt out to work.

But sometimes, he pulls out all the stops and cooks for me. And a girlfriend. At his restaurant. I'm talking a multi-course fiasco here, complete with sorbet palate cleanser and full wine pairings.

How 'bout a course-by-course review of last Saturday's epic tasting menu to end all tasting menus?

Like an idiot, I forgot to take pictures of the first two courses, so you'll have to use your imagination...But here is a nice sunset one overlooking the putting green and the rest of south Huntsville I got before I was distracted by our first glass of prosecco:

Course one:
Six fresh shucked oysters on the half shell - three Island Creek (tiny and fatty and briny - in a GOOD way, these were my favorites) and three Savage Harbor (also delightful, larger) - with a champagne mignonette, which is quite possibly my favorite condiment ever. Can I call it a condiment?

Course two:
Butternut squash soup, drizzled with a lemon agrumato and garnished with fresh parsley. Hey - this was a learning dinner as well... Did you know that agrumato is made when olive oil presses are cleaned with fresh citrus and the cleaning oil? Well it is.

Course the third:
A lovely, palate-cleansing lemon sorbet with mint leaves.

(Hey, guess what? I finally remembered to take photos starting... now!)

Course four:
Warm purple cabbage salad with goat cheese, walnuts and chicken sausage. I had a version of this salad at Mezza Luna last fall and let me tell you, it embodies everything that is the best about fall. Perhaps Mezza will feature it again this fall? You should definitely go check it out if this is the case. Purple cabbage reminds me of this Norwegian side dish my Grandma used to make (and my mom does now... surkal... better believe I had to look up the spelling on that one. Amazing dish.) The goat cheese/walnut combination added some delightful creaminess to the dish and the chicken sausage tasted homemade. Mmmm.


Course five:
The most amazing fried fish I've ever had in my life. This course reminded me of a fish fry, but the best possible fish fry ever. The flounder itself was everything I love about fried food (crispy, lightly bread-y, crunchy) but underneath the crust was amazingly cooked fish. Like, perfectly cooked. With the amazing fish was a honking hunk of grilled cornbread (the hush puppy), some super tart slaw with julienned granny smith apples and shaved fennel keeping the green cabbage company and some surprise sugar snap peas hidden under the flounder. This may have been my favorite course. Maybe.

Course six:
Braised short rib with fried gnocchi (which, as it turns out doesn't have to be made of potatoes can in fact be made of any sort of starch... who knew?) and roasted root vegetables, including turnips, parsnips, carrots, rutabaga and some other rooty veg. The whole thing was topped off by an amazing gremolata (another new food term for me) and the best, most concentrated jus you've ever tasted. The jus was everything that made the short rib amazing, combined with red wine and reduced down to its most intense form and drizzled all over the plate.

Remembered to take this photo before I demolished the short rib. Not in the most pristine state, but Kris give it thumbs up nonetheless.

Dessert course (course seven):
Pumpkin cheesecake. I'm not gonna lie. For me, sweets are typically an afterthought. If I get to eat an amazing meal, I'm usually so stuffed by the end that I don't have an intense desire for dessert. But as they were only six courses into a seven-course tasting, the dessert was inevitable. And wonderful. The cheesecake was incredibly light and airy and whipped. Not like the heavy brick-like ones you find sometime smothered in cherry goop. We got tiny little pieces and ate every last bite because we had to be polite. Naturally. The final glass of prosecco made those last bites go down quite nicely.

Hello there, Kris (and pumpkin cheesecake). The bubbles were the best.

I concur.

Since J will graduate in December, we hope that he will transition from cook to some sort of 8-5 food scientist position. I will miss the restaurant ambiance and J in his starched white chef coat (complete with embroidered name... le sigh), but I hope this will bring about a new round of experimentation in his free time that he's never been able to attempt previously due to a rigorous work/school schedule... I'm thinking charcuterie, bread making, at home canning and pickling. If all goes according to plan, there will still be plenty of ways for me to remain fatter than I would like to be. But happy. Yum.

Here's one of the man in action, making ravioli (not from tonight, but some other time. See what I mean about the starched white coat?) He's on the right.

Thanks J!

And because ALL I have been doing this fall is eating, stay tuned for my Taste of Atlanta recap.

Is it tomorrow yet?

I am beyond ready for "The Rocky Horror Glee Show".

'Glee' Does The 'Time Warp' @ Yahoo! Video

BEYOND. READY.