I was about to do the where-were-you where-was-I end-of-the-year list, but I am somewhat concerned that my fridge is out of control. So I am going to do a what's in my fridge and freezer at the end of 2010 and hope to goodness nothing spoils or gets ignored.

Let's see.


In my freezer is

• a big can of Nido, a super-delicious whole-milk in powdered form. Many uses, but mainly to spike the chocolate.
• Scharffen Berger Cocoa. Latest cocoa. I might be slightly addicted.
• 6 different types of coffee - one of which I almost like. What can I say. I think I am compulsive coffee trialist. I buy coffee because I like the smell but later find out I don't like the taste so much for many brands. I really liked Melitta. I should have just stuck to it. Some Colombian coffee in a green bag - I have no idea where to ge this anymore. Not that I want to. Its decent, not great though. Dallmayr is just okay, not so great. I don't like the starbucks, world blends european, and the Hacienda Juanita so much...
• One slab of firm tofu - could last a month but maybe I will make stir fry this weekend and it will exist no more.
• Dried chinese dates. Random discovery of 2010. Tastes like surprise-I-have-tasted-this-somewhere. That's as close as I can get to a description of what it tastes like.
• Trader Joe's unsweetened cocoa. With the grand entrance of S&B, this is getting super-ignored.
• 10 pounds of raw almonds - my ~6 month supply of Vit E and general deliciousness.
• 1/2 a stick of butter from god knows when. This needs to go maybe into a cake?
• Fresh frozen galangal
• Some boxes of homeground spices that I grind obsessively when I am stressed or when I need to think clearly or when I feel like experimenting. I guess the number of boxes shows a good amount of stress, lack of thought and failed experiments...
• MANY boxes of 1-serving homemade soup. 4 kinds. Also an indicator of level of stress and experimentation. Instant comfort breakfast, lunch and dinner.

class="tb">
1. Swiss Chard and French Lentil Soup with Ginger and Garlic
2. Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup with Split Yellow Peas
3. Spicy Zucchini and Green Bell Pepper Yellow Split Pea Dal
4. Zucchini, tomatoes, kale and Moong dal soup with galangal.

• Yeast. Some lady at the store told me to freeze it and I did.
• Chickpea flour - no immediate plans. It can hibernate for a while there.

So what's in the fridge, you ask (or maybe you really don't want to know but I will tell you anyway).

Going from bottom to top.

• Green bell peppers!!
• Hot green chili peppers!!!!!!!!!!
• Drying curry leaves for the next 2 months!!!!!!

(Yeah, the exclamation points exclaim that I am really happy about these!!!!!!!!!!!!)

• Cabbage. Stir fry this weekend? Maybe not... They last forever anyway and this one is a few days old.
• Apples, Oranges, Grapefruit - my trio of perfection.
• Some more latest kind of soup - a fifth kind that will soon move to the freezer.(Carrot, ginger and lentil soup with red hot peppers.)
• Almond milk - Gone!! Just finished the last dregs.
• Celery - soup maybe? Stir fry? Maybe? Maybe not? But it still has a week.
• Soy Sauce -- Hmmm.. I am not sure it spoils.
• Cider vinegar... I don't know what else to do with this other than dress salads... Cider quandry.
• Balsamic vinegar from Guercios - not sure I have been using this too much.
• Skim milk gallon - Half down. Milk is never a concern anyway. It goes fast.
• Whole wheat flour - trader joe's. Make spectacular bread, maybe I should make some?
• Rolled oats from the coop. I sometimes use it in bread... or make granola, but I need bananas to bind the granola and I don't have ripe bananas now.
• Wheat bran - bread making supply, another reason to possibly make bread this weekend?
• Some cooked lentils
• 2/3rds of a red onion from a lentil salad I made today
• Fresh Ginger!!!!!!!!!!!
• Fresh Limes!!!!!!
• Garlic!!!!!!!!!
• Lowfat Yogurt - just opened this but this need to be finished within a week.
• Toasted almonds. My present snack-stash.
• Toasted sunflower seeds. Almost all gone except maybe a few tablespoons. Another reason for bread.
• Carrots - maybe next soup with celery... and pomegranate?
• Pomegranate... I want to make salad with tofu, but maybe soup? Or maybe just a fun salad with apples, grapefruit and with a dash of lime and spices?
• Coconut powder
• More curry leaves - current stash
• Bottled Galangal
• Egg whites - I am experimenting with this. I think I really like scrambled eggs whites with kale, zucchini, tomatoes, ginger and green hot chili peppers. The major discovery is that there is NO eggy smell with these egg whites and they give me a whopping dose of protein.
• Black currant jam - makes an excellent sweetener for fun cakes.
• Homemade banana bread with raisins - only 4 slices. Will go away soon I hope. Having this bread in the fridge is mentally preventing me from making any more.
• More oranges - need to be juiced into a smoothie pretty soon.. maybe tomorrow. Getting some shrivels I am not happy about.
• Cedar heavenly spice hummus. Need to finish this soon as well... Maybe a salad with onions, tomatoes and cabbage?
• Kerala vadu mangai pickle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Asafoetida powder
• Tamarind block
• Homemade Thai green chillie paste. I need to finish this soon..
• Zucchini - gone! Just mixed it with the lentils and yogurt.
• Chocolate-red-pepper shake. Just made this. Super spiky and fun!

I think that's about it. Not as grand as you thought it might be, huh? I really need to work on finishing 3/4th of everything before I buy any more things...

PS: I will justify all this fridge craziness by pointing you to a fridge of *real chef*

may not make me taller...



but by the looks of it, might just make me laugh.

These is something so entertaining about absolutely inane fluffy pointless rudderless movies that are sheer stupid fun (and zombie movies of course... but maybe they belong in the same bin). And the team that made pineapple express definitely sweeps the prizes in this category.

Can't wait! :-)

It's like I am having a Spanish version competition with (e:uncutsaniflush).

Maybe I am. ;-)

But I just want this song to be on here because I like the tune so much. Maybe a tad too slow for salsa but absolutely lovely song. I wonder what kind of dance would go along with it... I am guessing a latin version of a slightly fast waltz. While I know a little bit of salsa now, I literally don't know anything about any of the other latin dances. Maybe I should take a general latin 101 dance class - if there is such a thing.



I suspect that if it made my grocery shopping karaoke list, I might get more than my usual share of curious looks, though...

First, la India resembles my aunt and my cousin so much - right down to all that tough attitude! It's so hard to not think of them as I watch her. She may not be the queen of salsa but she is very much the rebellious princess. And second, I love love love this song! I could listen to it on a loop the whole day. It's such a perfectly composed duet. The beats per minute are awesome for dancing and the melody is so uplifting!



Marc Anthony should really have kept all that gorgeous hair!

They say that the first step to kicking an addiction is to own that you have one in the first place. I am owning it. I am addicted to salt.

I have tried to rationalize this in the past with various reasonable-sounding excuses such as:
-- Food without salt is like dimensionless tripe. Eating tripe is bad enough, but eating dimensionless tripe sounds ghastly.
-- I don't eat processed food so much and it is the "processing" that does you in and not the salt.
-- Salt has added iodine in it. I totally need it for my thyroid gland.
-- True story. I bought iodine-free salt by mistake and my brain stopped working for a week.
- HOW ELSE can I get iodine??! I don't want to eat fishy smelling kelp.

Other dubious excuses have included...
-- It's just salt. At least it's not sugar!
-- I drink a ton of water, surely it must wash it all away
-- Everyone needs to die someway. I choose hypertension.
-- Hypertension has genetic roots and no one in my family has it.
-- Wait, I think one of my grand parents died of a kidney failure. Does that mean there was a possibility there of an incipient hypertensive process at work? Oh well.. shut up. Everyone knows kidney failure is clearly multifactorial.

And some completely bogus ones:
-- Other people also like salt, as do I. It proves that I am not a mutant alien.
-- Salt is like the national food where I am from. It would be so unpatriotic to consume any less. No-one wants to be unpatriotic. I don't! Do you?

But everything really boils down to one truth.
-- Mmmmmm salty... OH SO SALTY!!!!

I don't like pretzels too much. I am not a big fan of peanut-butter either. But around thanksgiving, I somehow acquired a box of Anderson's peanut-butter filled pretzels.

(FINE. I intentionally bought it!).

Because all those perfect crystals of salt on the pretzels were too hypnotizing to resist. Needless to add, not only did I relish the crystals, as a bonus, I also ate the COMPLETE box of nearly 681 grams - all by myself, in ONE week. (That's 1.5 pounds, you non-metric heathen.) You know how much of salt that is? 8000 mg or 8 grams of salt. And of course, I didn't just eat these pretzels the entire week. I also ate other things also heavily laced with salt. And I go through 1 cylinder of salt in roughly 1.5-2 months.

I decided to finally own it and honestly tracked my sodium intake over the past three weeks. Turns out I consume more than 5000 mg (5g) of salt every day. To put it in context, my daily requirement of salt is around 1200 mg ~1.2g. That's more than 4x times over the healthy limit. It is starting to look like I am the druglord of all salt addicts across the planet.

So I guess one of my new year, new decade resolutions would be to cut down on the salt. They tell you to go easy on yourself when you make resolutions. But going easy might still mean around 3x salt consumption. I am going to have to tread the hard path strewn with rocksalt.