February bites

A good friend of mine started a part-time job last week at a local non-profit. I talked to her yesterday, and she noted how working at the same thing all day was mentally quite fatiguing. I couldn’t agree more: my days have been a flurry of emails and actual, real-life paying work, which leaves precious little time for digesting new information and writing. So, after sending off various and sundry invoices (there is a silver lining to the work cloud), I whipped up a few quick tidbits in between ticking things off my to do list.

Michael Pollan and I curled up with a cup of cocoa last night (actually, I don’t know what he was having, since it was only the words in his book, In Defense of Food that actually saw me in my jammies), and I laughed out loud when I got to his rule about avoiding foods “containing ingredients that are … unpronounceable.” For as long as I can recall, the menu posted at our couscous bash lists ingredients so folks can make the choices that work for them. And at the bottom, it reads, “this cook doesn’t use fillers or weird polysyllabic ingredients (except zucchini).”

Darling Husband wanted to go dancing the other night, and I was feeling sluggish, so I motivated myself by dressing up and putting on a face. I think back to those peer-pressure days in high school when I got up early to put on makeup every day, and what a freeing moment it was when my Darling told me he disliked the smell of makeup and how it made kissing me less pleasant. I have learned over the years that his instincts are usually spot-on, and the Washington Post confirms it—makeup may help us feel good, but it is only skin deep, as women slather mercury, asbestos and formaldehyde on their bodies and then wonder why pregnancy seems elusive or they’re feeling bloated. The database at http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ reassures me that my Burt’s Bees stuff is fine, but the stuff I used to battle my teenage zits contains endocrine disruptors. And unfortunately, the soap I use to wash the makeup off scores higher on their toxicity scale than the makeup itself. It’s a bit daunting to wade through the ingredients list, but I shudder at the thought of my father’s lye soap, which would no doubt meet Pollan’s requirements.

Alaska’s in-flight magazine tempted me with a blurb about the Chocolate Fest in Portland last weekend. Darling Husband was ready to jump in the car without packing so much as a toothbrush, but I reminded him that we had children who can’t manage without us for the weekend (yet). He was crestfallen, as he had clearly hoped to witness and partake of the world’s largest truffle. Undaunted, I prepared our own little chocolate fest, a tray of representatives from Amore here in Bellevue, Recchuiti confections in San Francisco’s Ferry Building (just a few of those left), and a big box of truffles from Kingsbury chocolates in Alexandria. I can tell you that we made a dent in all the boxes, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but our sampling was less than scientific, which is how it should be.