Giant phallic squash

You’ll see that I used up my daily allowance of intellectual words on today’s earlier post.  Immaturity and crassness ahoy.

Well last night’s dinner was a huge, embarrassing failure.  I thought I’d go all gourmet and whip something up on the fly.  Putting 7,000 pungent, aromatic ingredients together does not a tasty dinner make.

I took a pork tenderloin, split it to open it up, pounded it thin, and sprinkled with salt and pepper.  Then I put arugula, gorgonzola cheese, and garlic down the middle, rolled it up, and baked it.  On the side I made onions and mushrooms sauteed in EVOO, beef bouillon, and  red wine.

Here are the problems with this dish:

1. the arugula was waaaaaay too spicy.  Is baby arugula milder?
2. the gorgonzola was funky.  It was still well within the “best by…” date, but it tastes different than it did when we first opened it.  You know that scent/feeling of baby powder, how it kinda plugs up your nose and punches you in the back of the throat? (can you tell I detest, loathe, abhor baby powder smell?) Anyway, this pungent cheese pungent-ed me in the back of the throat just like that.
3. the pork should’ve been marinated in something.  The crap in the middle created way too much of a contrast with the bland pork.

I like this roll-up concept, so I’ll keep tinkering with combinations.  I just think I’ll stick to tweaking one little thing at a time.  I had a couple splashes of this to help choke my dinner down:

It was really good, especially compared to the last red I had – that crappy Halloween table wine.  Today I’ve been going through more crap, figuratively pertaining to several things.  Here’s one of the things I came across which is both bizarre and inspiring at the same time:

What is this?  As a kid, I collected nail polish.  I wanted to find a way to organize my nail polish, so I started collecting these can tabs.  I would paint each tab with a different polish, write a number on it…

…write the corresponding number on the nail polish cap, and then let everything fester in a drawer where I would select my nail polish just from looking at the bottle.  I went to all the trouble to meticulously organize the polish, but I never consulted the system.  I’m TERRIBLE at following through on projects!!  I can identify my shortcomings but can do little to solve them!  I just told Chanelle on Twitter (and I’ve said this numerous times) that my brain is Type A, but my work ethic is Type B.  I HATE clutter.  It makes my brain itch.  But I’m lazy and sentimental – which means that nothing gets done, dealt with, tossed, what have you.  This dichotomy makes me CRAZY!!!!  So every now and then (like lately), I’ll get in a crazy mood that makes my body catch up to my brain, and I’ll run with it.

Gee, how much can I talk about cleaning and organizing?  Bleeeeh I’m boring myself.

For lunch, I made a southwest barbeque ranch chicken salad.  Sounds fancy, right?

Eh.  It tasted good though!  Lettuce + chicken strips + yogurt ranch dressing + green tabasco sauce + BBQ sauce + a sprinkling of cheese.  And some old cucumber I found in the fridge that I shouldn’t have included.  I love making spicy, flavorful salads!!

This afternoon, I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods looking for a very specific item with my dear friend, Deidra – SKI PANTS!!!  That’s right, I’ve tentatively agreed to go snow skiing in a couple of weeks for the first time ever!!  I commented on Mary’s latest post (which is great, BTW – go read!) how I’ve sat on the sidelines my whole life, the fat kid who was too self-conscious to get involved and be active.  I’ve passed up numerous ski trip offers because I was too scared, too fat, too depressed, but I’ve kinda always wanted to try!  I’m scared shitless at the prospect of it, but I’d like to see how it goes anyway!  I’ll keep y’all posted. 

For dinner, I had a hamburger patty with green beans on the side.  Not interesting.

But what is interesting is this GIANT PHALLIC SQUASH I bought today!!!

I could use it as a peg-leg!

Or I could chop it up and make butternut fries out if it, which is exactly what I’m going to do.  But you can bet the first thing I did when I walked into the kitchen and took that squash out of the bag was this:

And y’all know I’m not joking, right?  Would you expect anything less from me?