Celebrating!!!!

Yahoo! Since June 1, nine pounds have disappeared from my fat little body — I no longer look like I’m three months pregnant (only two months) — the blood pressure is down in the normal range, CardioDoc says I can have a couple cups of coffee in the mornings, and he doesn’t want to see me for another six months. w00t!

This morning I jogged a mile, walked (fast!) for a mile, and walked a half-mile to and from the park. Last night I swam thirty-three laps, which comes to a half-mile of breast strokes, back strokes, side strokes, and (mostly) Australian crawl. After that, the dog ran the human around her usual .66-mile course.

So this evening I’m celebrating: breaking the vegetarian fast to have a nice little piece of steak swathed in (salt-free, MSG-free) adobo. And, by gawd, I’m having a swiggle: a nice gin and tonic, sloshed together with pricey but perfectly delicious Q Tonic Water. So, so  marvelously delicious and cold and refreshing and it’s 112 degrees out there!

Yes. And therein lies the reason why I deserve this gin and tonic so richly. By way of gearing up for said celebration (ohhh steak, ohhh brocolini, oh colorful little new potatoes said to push your blood pressure down, ohhh salad with verboten blue cheese on it), I went out to start the propane barbecue, which also has to hold a passel of cheap meat for the Queen of the Universe.

Starter switch was dead.

Okay. I know what that means: change the battery.

Go in the house, get new battery, install.

Nope.

Huh…

Try to light grill with butane fire-starter thing.

Uh uh.

Change the propane tank — it is low enough to maybe even be out.

Nope.

Noooooooo gas barbecue tonight!

Damn. This means I have to fire up the charcoal grill, which is, to say the least, a chore on the best of days and a species of penal hard labor on a 112-degree day.

Gerardo’s underlings have rolled it a little too close to the massive hanging gardens of catclaw for comfort. Normally I would put the charcoal-lighting “chimney” on the smoker’s rack, but I’m afraid sparks from the mesquite, of which there are likely to be a-plenty, could set fire to said jungle plant. I can’t move the thing…it must weigh at least 100 pounds. So I have to dream up some way to start the chimney without defiling the landscape or initiating a 911 call.

Finally construct a platform from a cinderblock placed in an aluminum steam-tray liner (I use the steam trays to cook Cassie’s meat in the grill, when it’s working). Meanwhile I take the hose and soak the nine-foot-high cat’s-claw vines.

This considerably slows down the preparation of the proposed magnificent dinner.  And as we scribble, the accelerated imbibulation of the gin and tonic is greatly speeding up the intoxication of the human.

Oh well. Meat cooked over a real charcoal fire is infinitely tastier and juicier than meat zapped over propane.

At the corner of Tatum and Shea (lissen up, Abby!) is a gaggle of entertainingly upscale food purveyors: a Whole Foods; the jewel in the scabbard of Fry’s Sword of AJ’s & Whole Foods Destruction; a white-bread but well stocked Trader Joe’s; and (of all things) a Penzey‘s.

Bereft of salt in my annoying diet, I decided to use curry as a substitute. But…the scrumptious Madras curry I picked up from the local Asian supermarket is more salt than curry — one teaspoon whacks you with 13% of your sodium RDA. And I dispense it by the tablespoon. The generous tablespoon. After tablespoon after tablespoon. Who knows? Maybe even by the cup…

So I determined to make my own curry powder mix, something I used to do in my misspent youth as an idle corporate wife, to excellent effect. My spice stash was exceptionally stale — a decade or two old. So decided I’d better replace all that stuff.

This required the acquisition of a fresh new collection of exotica:

turmeric
cumin seeds
fenugreek
white peppercorns
coriander
dried ground ginger
whole cloves

The rest of the ingredients I had in the cabinet. Eventually I will disgorge a curry powder recipe. But not just this minnit. Watch this space!

After gathering about a half-million small jars of spices, I discovered Penzey’s has a salt-free curry. However, a sniff of the stuff suggested a less-than-exciting concoction. I can do better than that.  So the purchases stayed in the analog shopping cart.

To my delight, Penzey’s also has an adobo spice mix. And it’s sodium-free! Who’d’ve thunk it? The grocery-store adobo in my cabinet, by Durkee, is full of MSG:

Sal, ajo deshidratodo, oregano, glutamato monosodico, pimienta negra, fosfato tricalcico, aceite vegetal (de soyo de semillia de algodon), partialmente hidrogenado.

Lovely. That would be…

Salt (the main ingredient!!), dehydrated garlic, oregano, monosodium glutamate, black pepper, tricalcium phosphate, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean and/or cottonseed).

YUCK! At least Spanish speakers have the decency to refrain from the and/or monstrosity. But whatever language you put it in, this commercialized “adobo” is freakin’ poisonous. Penzey’s version would be helped by the addition of some turmeric, but it’s quite respectable as it is.

§ § §

The sun is going down, the dinner is cooked and consumed and was awesome, and now it’s time to clean up and chase the dog down into another neighborhood and back and fall face-first in the sack.