congratulations, you suck at this

A little bit.

a little uncomfortable

Nothing wrong with that.

A Crucial Character Building Phase

Wherein I get sick, receive 40 boxes of household goods, and eat gold leaf.

Under Construction

After nearly six years of residence here at blogger, I will be moving the blog over to Wordpress. I don't have any technical complaints about blogger, except that I have exhausted what I'm able to do graphics-wise and found more options over at Wordpress.

Along with this move, my aim is to bring the blog back to its original intended use - as a way to work on my writing. Over the years, this has morphed into various different outlets, serving as a networking site, a travel blog, and a place to post my photography. But one of my primary goals in this new phase of my life is to get back to the thing I love the most - writing - and to work diligently at it to make it better, sharper, and smarter.

What has resulted is The Letters Project, a series of letters written to an undisclosed recipient. My hope is that this project will continue to grow and morph and attract it's own following, but still retain the faithful readers (mostly my parents and a few friends) who still come to thenewglitterati.com to keep in touch. I hope that this new project takes me back to my roots as a blogger and not further away.

Thanks for bearing with me through all of the metamorphoses of this blog, and stay tuned as I work through the details of set-up. Eventually I will redirect my domain name, thenewglitterati.com, to land on the wordpress site but I am waiting until I have everything tightened up over there and ready to go. This site via blogger will still be available through its own domain name, but my work will continue at the wordpress site. 

In the meantime, you can check out the construction and early pieces of The Letters Project here. 

Happy reading!

First post - new home

Still working on the logistics of porting over the web address, but The New Glitterati is moving!

For a saucy preview, click here. 

Words when there are none...

I can't stop checking for updates on MH370. Twitter, as usual, is my main source of information because it's the most up-to-date, even if it's packed with too much theory. A healthy dose of skepticism and checking the feeds of legitimate news sources usually helps me fill in the gaps.

I have had a sinking feeling in my gut since waking up yesterday to the first alerts regarding the missing aircraft. Aircraft do not "go missing." This is no Amelia Earhart in a tiny plane over uncharted territory, this is a Boeing 777 with over two hundred souls on board vanishing from the highly technologically-advanced radars of multiple developed countries. It has become one of the largest search missions ever seen, with planes and boats from all over the world looking for a single sign beyond a pair of twin oil slicks that this plane is somewhere on earth. 

Adding to the tension is the chilling fact that two passengers came on board with stolen passports. While this may be coincidental, the world's gossip feed - Twitter - is buzzing mightily with theories that it's not. And there's no evidence to the contrary. But right now, it's all just speculation sprinkled with the usual unwelcome fear-mongering.

In my new life as an expat, my world is both shrinking and expanding like some alternative universe. Where once, countries like Malaysia and planes filled with foreigners were so very far away from home, suddenly they are not. My perspective on world events is shifting. This is not to accuse Americans of being as uncaring and desensitized as much of the rest of the world seems to think. But it is an indication of how isolated we are in the world, how far away from everyone else who is crowded onto this side of the planet. Americans have fewer ties with other countries by nature of its geographical loneliness, and also by virtue of its sheer size. The US covers more inches of the map and therefore has more news generated within its own borders than any other country in the world (except maybe Russia...I'm not up on my geographical proportions). Moving to another country, one that is smaller than the US state of Maine, is changing my perspective drastically because suddenly I am living in a place with international neighbors on all sides. While this by no means makes me suddenly some global diplomat, it does mean that I am exposed to and absorbing much more world news than I ever did before.

Additionally, in my new expat life I have made several friends who work for Etihad, the major airline of the UAE. I had the good fortune of becoming extremely close with a former cabin crew attendant (who I sadly had to leave back in Baltimore) and she taught me a lot about the life of a flight attendant and the demands and scares and excitement of the job. I can't stop thinking about the Malaysian crew members aboard the flight, and how, despite extensive training and incredible preparedness, something - who knows what - had to have gone horribly, horribly wrong aboard MH370. I have intense feelings about anyone whose job puts them in dangerous places or risky situations, but for a cabin crew member this is the worst of the worst of situations, regardless of what happened. 

Tension in the Muslim-nonMuslim world is already rippling and while there are kind, open-minded individuals begging the world's community to pray for these souls regardless of religious affiliation, I know that fear mongering spawns hatred and distrust. There are so many people in this world who believe that terrorism is synonymous with Islam, and it's difficult to blame them entirely for their ignorance when you look at how these things are portrayed in the media. When the Boston marathon bombing occurred last year, my first thought was - "Please let it be some crazy old white man living in a remote cabin and talking to aliens and not anyone claiming to be of the Muslim faith." Ignorance, particularly the fearful and egotistical brand of American ignorance, refuses to acknowledge the basic fact that Muslim people do not do bad things - bad people do bad things. 

That rant may be off-topic and fueled by side conversations and speculation, but my feelings on the subject exist outside of this issue. Regardless - an entire plane has gone missing, and, as usual, the many conflicting faces of humanity are playing themselves out in the Twittersphere with rants and accusations and prayers and "facts" that are not really facts. And then, among the static and deafening noise, there are posts of pure love, of total sadness, motivated by nothing more than the aching hearts of those who are frightened and devastated and hoping for the best but understanding that in a case like this, the disappearance of a plane is overwhelmingly indicative of the very worst. I find hope in these posts, from all over the world, and I find pride for America when I see posts of concern and hope from my fellow countrymen who are so far away and yet still connected. 

I hope and pray for resolution, answers, and peace. For love and understanding. For more of this and less finger pointing and fear and terror. I hope that the souls on board MH370 are peaceful, wherever they may be, and that the best of humanity outweighs the worst. 

New Home!!

The cats and I aren't the only ones with a new home - I am currently working on a brand new layout and host for thenewglitterati.com. Details TBA soon!

It's gonna be so amazing.

In other news: House of Cards whaaaaaaaaat?! We're almost finished Season 2, although Netflix tells us that 3% of its users completed the first season within like 48  hours of release or something ridiculous.

In other news: tickets procured for Macklemore/Ryan Lewis in April and Justin Timberlake in May! 

In other news: I will not be getting up at 2:30am to watch The Oscars live, but I will be attending a get-together tomorrow evening for the recast at 7:30pm. I wish I could say I'd stay off of social media until then, but that's just silly.

Off to pick up probiotics and get new tires for the Jeep. Another exciting day in the life of an ex-pat. I may even go on an adventure to find color balancing shampoo for blondes!

The Bad Night

WARNING: This is a post about cats and vomit. Proceed with caution.

One of the things about going from being in an Extreme Long Distance Relationship to Living Together For The First Time is a period of time affectionately known as Getting Used To Each Other's Crap.

The Gentleman and I have been together for over three years at this point, but we both knew that moving in together was going to require some transition. We are both very used to being on our own. For the most part, however, we've transitioned quite nicely and aside from the rogue argument about wet towels (HONESTLY JUST HANG THEM UP) or an accidental wine spill every day from time to time, it's been just fine.

The Gentleman has been incredibly patient with my out-of-work anxiety, which manifests in delicious dinners (that took 16 hours to make) and him coming home every evening to find that I've purchased some new girly smelly thing or moved things around in the house. He has also been patient with the fact that I've only been here for two weeks and am in the early stages of making new friends and finding things to do on my own.

Hence, the other night, he was quite excited because I had plans to try a new book club and he had plans to play video games on the couch. 

This dream was swiftly quashed.

First, I had been feeling "off" for last day or so. Tired, headachey, angsty...symptoms that I chalked up to being bored but that began to get worse and by Tuesday afternoon were accompanied by that menacing gurgle of the stomach. By the time I was showering to get ready to go to the book club, I discovered a desperate need to lie down and/or die. When I couldn't lift the blow dryer to dry my hair, I suddenly realized that the thought of taking a cab downtown to a social event was but a pipe dream. I put on yoga pants and crawled into bed and it was the best decision I'd ever made.

This in and of itself wasn't so big a deal. I was happy to lay in bed and doze while watching Super Fun Night on my iPad, and The Gentleman had the tv all to himself for video games.

And then Small Troubled Cat began screaming.

I have heard this cat howl before - and it's horrible - but a screamer for no reason she is not. This was a horribly painful, miserable yowling and we both came running to discover that she'd deposited a stomachful of food all up and down the hallway of the flat. I cleaned it up and went back to bed. Small Troubled Cat is not a puker normally (that's the other cat, Sushi, who I start to worry about if he doesn't puke at least once every other day), but I just assumed something hadn't agreed with her. She seemed fine, too; happy to join me on the bed where we convalesced together. Until, suddenly, she started convulsing and yowling again and then proceeded to puke up little piles of white foam.

I ran around the house with paper towels and disinfectant spray, cleaning up the little piles, and she convulsed and yowled. The Gentleman looked up a 24 hour vet, and I frantically Googled "yowling cat puking up white foam."

Don't Google that.

The yowling, according to Google, was because she is not normally a puker and she was terrified every time her little body convulsed. In retrospect, it's quite funny - she is so obviously broken as a cat that she terrifies herself when she vomits. Add this to the list of other things she's scared of - brooms, dryers, hair dryers, the dry cleaner delivery guy, mops, plastic bags, life itself....

Small Troubled Cat puked her way around the flat for a good hour and a half. At this point, I was even more exhausted and feeling like crap, Sushi (the other cat) was perplexed and annoyed that she was getting all of the attention, and The Gentleman (who has never had pets before) kept asking me if she was dying. We finally collapsed on the couch in front of Archer (video games having long been abandoned) after the last violent round of foam pitching, and Small Troubled Cat crawled, exhausted, into my lap. 

Resting after an hour and a half of pure trauma. For me.

She stopped puking after that, and the next morning she scarfed down her breakfast and then proceeded to bring me each of her toys to show them to me. I'm pretty sure she's ok.

We have no clue what she got into to make her puke and convulse like that, and a thorough check of the flat revealed nothing. She's been fine since.

Oh, and in case you were still worried about me, after the cat puking incident I went to bed and slept for 11 hours and felt a thousand times better the next day. While I was loathe to have to skip out on new book club, in retrospect it was excellent timing - had The Gentleman been on his own when the Small One freaked out, it would have been pure chaos and I'm sure they both would have been yowling and vomiting out of fright.

Also, I must add a note here that The Gentleman is the most patient and kind roommate I've ever had. Especially for someone that has never had pets (and was deathly allergic in his youth), he has adjusted well to his fiance and her two cats coming to live with him and has been flexible and accommodating. Except for his office - which is the one room in the flat in which the cats are not allowed and therefore the one room they are desperately curious about, but that is a story for another time.

Black Bean Burgers

Excitingly - and fortunately - I came to this country with a job lined up. Not so excitingly, it takes time to process a new visa and to jump through all of the bureaucratic hoops necessary to get everything done. This can take several weeks and up to a month to complete.

The first week or so I was here, it was pure bliss to have some time to decompress. I'd been living out of a suitcase for the two weeks prior since all of my belongings were packed onto a moving truck back in icy cold Baltimore and are currently making slow, prodding progress across the Atlantic ocean and around a couple of other continents to make its way here.  My last month in Baltimore was exhausting chaos, and then suddenly I found myself with no need to set an alarm in the morning, nowhere to be during the day, and hours and hours to fill. I spent long hours exploring the grocery stores, walking around our new complex, and a baffling amount of time in places like Carrefour.

The second week I was able to settle in a bit more. After the epic trip to Ikea, there were places to put things from the 3 suitcases I'd brought with me. A couple of trips to Carrefour suited us with basic kitchenware. I found a gym that offers yoga and spin, reached out to my handful of contacts here for lunch and beach plans, and began to form my own sort of schedule that stretched to fit the hours of the day that my new roommate (The Gentleman) was at work.

This third week has had me chomping at the bit, however. The newness and basic novelty has worn off, and without any more real "house stuff" to do until my 39 boxes of personal belongings arrive (scheduled for sometime in mid-late March), filling those hours has been increasingly more difficult. There are only so many trips to Ikea one can make, and only so many hours of the day to spend in the gym. There is, of course, the small matter of The Book I Am Writing (story of my entire life), and a litany of excuses to accompany why little progress has been made there, but that's besides the point.

And, for your information, I AM working on The Book I Am Writing. IT'S A CREATIVE PROCESS THAT TAKES TIME. Also, it took me two days to find the proper height for my desk chair and the proper angle that the curtains should be to let in plenty of daylight without flooding the room, and those are both very important aspects to Book Writing.

One massive time waster   procrastination device   new project has been my commitment to eating more healthfully. With nothing but time on my hands for the first time in my adult life, I made the decision upon moving here to try and avoid processed foods as much as possible. After so many years of living off of Lean Cuisines and frozen turkey burgers, I wanted to make an effort to have a little more control over what goes into my body. 

Another goal with this whole "eating clean" project has been to learn to be a better cook. My family will be dismayed and probably feel betrayed by this very public confession, but it is high time for me to come clean on this account: I am not a very good cook. It's not for lack of talent or taste, because when I take the time to learn things I find that I am actually very good at improvising, but I missed some basic cooking skills early on (probably because I was too busy day dreaming about ponies or some shit) and thus know that I have sloppy techniques. Thank God for my iPad and YouTube. The iPad primarily lives in the kitchen and serves as my bible for all things Basic Cooking Skills. The search history is full of things like "how to slice a mango" and "how to dice a shallot" and "substitute for chipotle" (BECAUSE THERE IS NO CHIPOTLE ANYTHING ANYWHERE IN THIS COUNTRY). And with my newfound (but temporary!) unemployment, I finally have time to focus on the basics.


Pinterest was an excellent place to start as there are tons of die-hard foodie zealots who favor not only healthy foods, but flavorful ones as well. One of the sites I've come across via Pinterest is The Foodie Physician who does some pretty excellent healthy spins on comfort food. On a Superbowl Sunday post, The Doc posted some delicious-looking black bean quinoa burgers and sweet potato fries that I decided to try. "Decided to try," completely ignoring the fact that while we have kitchen basics (some pots and pans, one really good knife, one spatula, one rubber spoon, a rice cooker, and 47 varieties of wine and liquor glasses - essentials), we are still lacking many things which are currently in a shipping container heading halfway across the planet.

So, the veggie burger and sweet potato fries recipe seemed like an excellent place to start, mostly because it involved a shit ton of prep work which would give me some valuable knife skills practice and would take up enormous portions of my day which is extremely important when you are procrastinating in writing the Next Great Novel.

The first step involved a shopping trip to Waitrose. I absolutely love Waitrose, a British-owned chain of supermarkets. I'm sure in the UK it's akin to Giant or Publix, but to me it's British and therefore of superior quality and therefore I love it. Spinney's is also not bad, but the location closest to us is on the smallish side, so I usually hit up Waitrose for big shopping trips and walk on over to Spinney's when I realize we're out of, say, canned chick peas or wax paper. 

One of the rules of being an expat here (aside from "There are no rules," which is a hilarious little epithet meaning that just because something is one way one day by no means will be the same the next; this applies to traffic patterns, hours of business, and the whims of personnel working that day) is that if you see something and like it, buy 10,000 of it because chances are very good that it won't be there the next time. Because everything is imported, it's nearly impossible to depend on certain food items being readily available from one shopping trip to the next. And, thus, it would portend that on my trip to Waitrose to purchase items for black bean quinoa burgers that Waitrose would have no canned black beans available. Only these:

With an obvious hole in my culinary knowledge, I purchased 4 bags of said beans because I planned to double the recipe and make enough black bean burgers to freeze for the coming months when I do actually have a job. Only later did I think to look up the canned:dried ratio and discover that one bag of those things is equal to like twenty cans of black beans. Result: we will not have to purchase black beans for the remainder of our time in the Middle East. Also, the freezer is full of soaked black beans. Money saver!

I couldn't find basic rolled oats, but Google told me that British Jumbo Oats can do. I considered the barley and porridge as bonus healthy ingredients.

Thankfully, I was able to forage for and find most of the other ingredients. Except "chipotle peppers in adobo." There were no chipotle peppers or adobo to be found, and I was hesitant to substitute Thai green chilis or random Chinese pickled chiles. I made do with lots of cumin, dried coriander, and ground chili powder and that did the trick.

Now, despite my lack of understanding of basic canned:dry ratios, I have previously made things with dried black beans and I knew well enough to stick them in water the night before a culinary attempt. But what I didn't expect was that the next day - a good 12 hours later - they would still be hard little rocks in their bowls of water. After consulting Ye Olde iPad, I threw them into a wok to add some heat to the process. This took another TWO HOURS until they even began to be soft enough to work with. I cooked them, and cooked them, and cooked them, adding more and more water. The plus side was that I threw in some chicken stock (no vegans here!) and plenty of cumin and chili pepper so that they were at least very well seasoned prior to being mushed into oblivion, but this took for-freaking-ever and completely ruined my other Novel Procrastination Plan of going to the beach in the late afternoon.

I finally managed to get them to a decent consistency. The recipe calls for leaving some of the black beans to the side to work into the paste whole for consistency, and I highly recommend it. 

Here came the second problem, however - without a food processor or a masher, I had to figure out a way to mush up the beans. I started out with my bare hands, then experimented with a small gardening hoe that came with the new set I got at Carrefour (14 dirhams!), and ended up crushing minuscule numbers of beans at a time with a basic fork. It took for-fricking-ever. But, finally, I had my basic bean paste. 

A third problem arose with the rolled oats. How to grind them up into the proper consistency? The oats are a crucial ingredient to these burgers - so many veggie burgers can just totally fall apart, and the addition of a binding agent is necessary. Too often, binding agents used can be unhealthy additions - fatty bread crumbs for example - so I was definitely keen to use the oats but lacked the equipment to prepare it. Hence, some major improvisation took place. 

I took an empty wine bottle from the recycling bin, poured half of the oats between two sheets of wax paper, and proceeded to roll and pound those suckers out using the empty bottle as a rolling pin. When I'd done about as much as I could, I took our one good kitchen knife and chopped the hell out of them until I was left with a nice - albeit somewhat still chunky - powder. In the end it turned out to be a decent enough consistency to hold the burgers together, and I even think the final product benefited from a little courseness. In the future if I make these with an actual food processor, I probably won't grind them into anything finer than what I did here.

I actually already had a ton of cooked quinoa that we'd made with dinner a few nights prior, so that was one time saver. Still, I officially began the veggie burger process the night before around 11pm when I put the beans in to soak. I started chopping ingredients around noon yesterday, and by the time the last thing was chopped, sauteed, and ready to go into the big bowl to actually make the patties it was encroaching on 4:30pm and I still needed to refrigerate the patties for a few hours prior to cooking. Hence, my clean eating project turned out to be a masterful time-taker-upper and I had spent nearly the entire afternoon working on it. Another day of not writing, hooray!

But just look at how they turned out:

Those little orange splotches are egg yolks. The eggs here are bright orange. I have no good explanation for this.

I refrigerated the patties for probably 3 hours before I actually cooked two of them. The rest I wrapped in wax paper and put into freezer bags so future dinners, and I saved two of them for our friends who live in the next complex over. Overall, I made about 12 decent-sized burgers which was a successful doubling of the recipe.

The sweet potato fries turned out to be super easy to make. I - again - underestimate how much a single unit would yield and ended up with enough fries to fill two smallish freezer bags (about 2 portions per bag) which I froze. They will just need to be defrosted a bit, tossed in seasoning, and thrown into the oven for future dinners.

Right before hitting the grill pan

By a stroke of luck, Waitrose did have these in stock: 

I am an avid breakfast burrito eater, and I love these things. They are also good for sandwiches or for toasting to use as a snack with hummus or guac. Or, in this case, as a black bean burger wrapper.

I finally managed to serve dinner just before 9pm which was actually good timing because The Gentleman didn't come home from his swim practice until shortly after that. I served the burgers in a wrap with mozzarella, tomato, and avocado (for me - The Gentleman is strangely highly allergic to avocados) and seasoned the fries with olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, and chili powder. Everything turned out surprisingly delicious, and I could definitely taste the difference of homemade black bean burgers vs frozen. They were more flavorful and fresher, and - despite not having any kitchen appliances to assist in the process - the consistency was much more palatable.

However, I am left with the impression that making all of one's food from scratch takes up a tremendous amount of time. And I didn't even make those tortillas, which are the only processed food there mucking up the balance (aside from the ketchup, but whatever - I LOVE KETCHUP). I think that relegating one day or night a week to making a big batch of food that can be frozen or eaten throughout the week is a decent goal to aim for. 

Besides, I'm supposed to be Writing A Book.

PS: Writing this entry took an hour and a half. But only because halfway through, while the photos were loading, I had to go take a 20 minute nap. There are some aspects of being temporary unemployed that I am relishing, and a 20 minute midday cat nap is one of them.

Today's Lesson: Cooking Takes Forever.

Real post (with photos) to follow, but suffice it for now to say that if you decide to make black bean burgers from scratch without:

a) a food processor
b) canned beans (only dry)
c) a masher
d) all of the above 

(correct answer is, of course, d- all of the above)

...it will take you 16 hours. Doesn't include actual cook time once the patties are made.

My stuff needs to get here soon.