Things I Love: Paula Deen

Hi y’all! [insert infectious cackle here] I have come to tell you about my love for one miraculous woman. A woman who isn’t afraid to laugh at herself and put a stick or two of butter in every single thing she cooks. This woman, with her gorgeous salt and pepper hair and round, but adorable frame is none other than cook and author extraordinaire Paula Deen.

You see, I could be having the worst day ever - I could be depressed and pissed off about traffic and wondering what in the world the rest of my life is going to look like, and along comes Paula Dean, with her bigger than life Southern drawl, her wide eyes and her ability to turn every single into a heart attack waiting to happen and my life is just that much better.

Paula is my absolute favorite chef to watch on the Food Network. It’s especially exciting when she invites her husband Michael on camera for a bit of banter. He’s a quiet, genteel man, I presume. He’ just this big lovable bear and come to think of it, so is she.

Wait. Just wait. I think I had an epiphany. Michael and Paula are the modern day Santa and Mrs. Clause! Am I right or am I right?

Paula brings the most joy when she’s out on excursions with Michael, such as my favorite episode, in which she travels to France. Imagine Paula Deen in France. Go ahead and I dare you. You think you know, but you have no idea. Imagine that Southern American Butter Ball of a woman running amuck in Paris. She was the greatest thing to happen to France since cheese. She pranced around an open market, kissed a French man and ate almost every pastry at a cafe. She also travels to London in the same episode and is equally hilarious there as she is in the city of lights. The episode seemed to have hit a chord with quite a few people, as evidenced by the comments on Chowhound, but I think people are taking it too seriously and really, you are out of your mind if you take Paula Y’all Deen too seriously. You might as well not watch her, because you just don’t get it.

While she wasn’t always on the look out for coronary arteries to clog, Paula has an incredible background. Her parents died while she was in her 20s and she suffered from agoraphobia and would not leave her house. She had no formal food or chef training, yet she used her cooking talents to create a catering service which became so popular that she opened her own restaurant, The Lady and Sons in Savannah, Georgia in 1996.

In short, I think she’s amazing and the most interesting and fascinating food personality on television today. You cannot even compare her to Rachel Ray or Emeril for that matter. Yes, she’s over the top, yes she’s a bit ridiculous. Yes, you might get cholesterol just by standing next to her, but this is all besides the point. She’s pure entertainment and I love every minute I get to spend with her.

Alternatives to the Ugg(Ly) book

While I have more to tell about my shopping bonanza during the wee hours of Friday morning, there is a certain memory I have from that day that stuck out in my mind. In short, the line to get in the Ugg or UGG outlet store in Camarillo, Calif., was literally around the block. I am talking hoards of people lining up for them. I stood there in utter awe and shock as people walked out with bags of them, while others waited probably an hour or two to get in the store. None of it makes sense to me. I just do not understand. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. People of Southern California, please STOP. That’s enough. We get two days of rain and you run out to buy the ugliest shoes in the planet? What are you thinking? You don’t need them here, do you understand? This is not the frozen tundra, believe you me.

Interestingly enough, in my post last week about my disgust for Uggs, I received a comment that contested my point of view. The commentator told me that Uggs are the greatest winter boots out there and that they’re pretty stylish. It was also pointed out to me that if you can’t afford real Uggs (prices run in the hundreds), that there are a lot of knock-off Uggs on the market.

This comment got me thinking. The price, Internet, is definitely not on my priority list for hating Uggs. In fact, I condemn knock-offs of any kind. On the other hand, I thought, if I’m going to be spewing hate for a certain kind of shoe, I might as well provide alternatives. So here is a short list of shoes I would strongly urge you to purchase instead of Ugg(ly) boots.

Colin by Madden Girl - $59.90

This pull-on boot has a padded insole and a low hidden wedge heel and it quite stylish. It comes in brown, gray or black is just the perfect height for a casual outfit. Wearing them with jeans tucked in or out makes them fab.

Treker Boot - Free People - $388

Hello lover. Yes it’s expensive, but I’m including it anyway because I am head over heels in love with them. Made with leather and suede and lined with shearling, these boots are pretty much guaranteed to keep you warm, while keeping you tough. Chic and gorgeous. Toss those fugly Uggs NOW.

Arkansas - Steve Madden - $109.95

Looking for a comfortable full length boot? Here you go. This pull-on Steve Madden boot has a suede upper and rubber sole and comes in taupe suede, a versatile shade that’s perfect for winter.

Reese - London Fog -on sale for $119.50 from $150

You just can’t resist those Uggs can you? Well here is a similar, but tastefully done alternative. A faux fur-lined boot to keep you warm, and waterproof suede to keep you dry, this will satisfy your Uggdiction while keeping you out of the running for Fashion Disaster of the Year . It also has a full-zip closure, microfur lining and a thermolite footbed. Take a look at that, you lucky woman.

De-taching Parts

If you could change one physical thing about yourself, what would it be? Surely, you’ve been asked that question in your life time, as have I. Do I have a choice of more than one thing? This might take a while. The trouble is, I don’t think I’ve ever been at a point in my life, when I have felt 100 or at least 90 percent good about my physical appearance. I know, I know. This applies to most people, but sometimes I wonder if I will ever get to a point in my life when I look in the mirror before going out or staying in and say, you know what? I like this. I like me. It’s not perfect, but it’s where I want everything to be.

I’m not holding my breath.

So when I think to myself, if I could change anything about my physical appearance, I have an entire list ready, but for this post’s sake, I won’t bore you with my self-conscious whining for too long.

• skin - I am now 24-years-old. That’s 10 years older than 14, meaning my skin SHOULD have cleared up by now and when I wake up in the morning, I should be able to look at myself calmly and go pour myself tea, not let out a ghastly scream that confirms the worst: a big juicy pimple, making himself comfortable on the side of my fave. I have unnecessary acne. It’s the kind that doesn’t even make sense at all. It’s just there one day for no explained reason and it’s telling me, “I am going to ruin your life - this might take up to a week or more, please, get comfortable and make sure you turn your self-confidence down a notch.” When I brought up the issue with my then-doctor, who, by the way, had a brain made of the cotton balls she kept in a jar in the examination room, she brushed it off as completely normal, comparing herself to me. “Look,” she said, pointing to her chin, “I’m in my 40s and I have acne too. It’s fine! Let me just prescribe you some medication.” I wanted to yell and say, but you don’t understand, NO ONE and I mean NO ONE my age that I know has arbitrary acne like I do. You just really don’t get it! But I resisted this urge and instead took her prescription down to the pharmacy, only to find out that I paid $26 for a tube of benzoyl peroxide, when I could have just bought it from the market myself for about $5. Useless, utterly useless. They let anyone pass through medical school these days, don’t they?

• weight - Oh, how cliche of me, I know. Look, it’s not that I’m particularly big. I’m not. But when you’re as short as I am, a few added pounds look like 10. Trust. And it’s not like my weight is distributed evenly over my body, oh noooo. It decides to reside in my hips and thighs and make my life a living hell in the process. I’ve tried to get rid of it before, but nothing has worked for me. Mostly because I lack the motivation and energy to go through with it. If I want to lose weight, I’ll probably have to abandon all other areas of my life and go on a show like the Biggest Loser or something like it, because you know what? Food is good. I’ll get to it though, one day.

• nose - The only thing I need to put here is that I’m Armenian, and perhaps like other cultures, we are notorious for and have notorious noses. It’s not as bad as it could be, but I’d just like it to be nipped in the bud a bit. Just a little. Please? Just a tiny bit from the bottom. Pretty please? I guess it makes me unique. Whatever.

• height - Hello, my name is Liana and I am short. Yes that’s right, my dreams of being a contestant on Tyra “Smile With Your Eyes” Banks’ “America’s Next Top Super Model” were shattered when I was conceived.  To be honest, I don’t mind being short all that much. I can fit into small spaces easily. Once I crawled under a steel fence at school to retrieve backpacks that my friends and I had left inside when we had wandered outside to get some food. They coined me “Mighty Mouse.” I hate that my shortness shows SO MUCH when I’m standing next to tall people. I’m only asking for a couple of inches, I’m not greedy. But you better believe, that if I was tall enough, I would definitely try my hand out at modeling. Fierce.

What parts would you like to reattach?

Cumpleañoz Feliz

I turned 24-years-old yesterday. It was a strange feeling waking up in the morning, with a slight lump in my throat. Turning 23 was much better, in fact, in my opinion it’s the perfect age. You’re over 21, so you don’t have any real laws against you, yet you’re still considered “young.”

It was like any other day really, except I got treated to a lunch outing, card and cupcakes at work - that was nice and unexpected and really made my day bearable and lovely. When I came home, there was a cake waiting for me, a gift from my sister, in addition to the fact that she wallpapered my entire door with the dazzling Edward Cullen. I’m bordering on psychotic, I know.

I was going to write about what I accomplished this year, but I’d rather do that for my New Year’s post. I don’t like to count my accomplishments by age, doing them by year is much better and it doesn’t remind you that there are millions of people in the world being more productive than you, while they’re younger than you.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve lived for 24 years. It’s harder to believe where my life would be right now if my family hadn’t moved to the U.S. If I had stayed in Tehran, as I was in the photo above. It’s still harder to think about what my life is going to be, that’s honestly the hardest part. I thought I knew, but I have no idea. We like to think so, but we’re not always the controller of our destinies.

More than anything, what I’d like for my birthday is to share it with my grandpa. I wish he could have seen what I’ve become, what my sister and cousins have become. I miss him immensely and would have liked to share so many moments of my life with him. Sometimes I remember him and realize what a passionate man he was. I think I might have gotten my passion from him. When he would sit near the dining room table and speak about Armenia, his motherland, his home, his love, his eyes would well up with tears. I used to laugh it off and tell him to stop, but almost 15 years later, I understand. I completely understand.

Here’s to another year. I hope it will be better.

Winding Down

This four weekend weekend was truly sent from above to make my life better. Thanksgiving was wonderful, the crazed shopping in the early hours of the morning was insane, seeing Twilight again was amazing (I feel like an idiot, but I don’t care) and just spending time at home was the best medicine. I am so tired of not being able to do what I want to do and if this weekend had come any later, I would probably have had a nervous breakdown.

As you’ve noticed, I have been posting every day this month, as part of NanoBloPoMo, otherwise known as National Blog Posting Month. It was an interesting journey. I don’t know how I did it, what with everything else on my plate, but it was overall great. At times I felt like giving up, because I didn’t feel like I was contributing anything useful to the World Wide Web, but I stuck with it, and here we are on the last day. I urge anyone who has a blog to try it, you might write about things you never expected to because of the mandatory everyday posting.

Tomorrow, life starts again and needless to say, I’m not too thrilled. There’s still so much left to do and not enough time to do it in like the craft projects I have to finish, the articles I have to write, the pitches I have to submit, the graduate schools I might apply for and the Christmas decorations I have to put up.

I better stop writing here and get to them.

Snow White

Orange Cardamom Muffins

Introducing Orange Cardamom Muffins. They’re a “wintery” type of concoction, but not by too many ingredients. The cardamom gives it a good kick without being too overpowering and the orange introduces your palate to a taste of what’s coming in future months.

A member of the ginger family of spices, cardamom is known to improve digestion and is most commonly used in Indian and Asian cooking and baking. In fact, Web India gives cardamom the prestigious title of “Queen of all spices.” While you may be a bit wary of putting a “spice” in a muffin, rest assured that cardamom is commonly used in sweet treats and is more like ginger than you think.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cardamom
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
zest and juice of 2 oranges
2 large eggs
2/3 cup yogurt
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and ground cardamom. Set aside.

3. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, sugar and orange zest together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, orange juice and yogurt and mix on low speed until the ingredients are well combined. Then fold over the flour mixture in by hand, making sure not to over-mix.

4. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and bake for 15 to 18 minutes.

Makes 10 to 12 muffins.

Adapted from “Good Cooking’s Delicious Desserts.”

I’m Sad That It’s Going Away

I

love

the rain.

But you already knew that.

Gloomy Greatness

Today I was in an unusually good mood, far from my scowls and confusion I’m usually faced with these days. It was almost euphoric, today. Perhaps it was because I knew that we would be closing down the office four hours too soon, to get a head start on Thanksgiving. Maybe it was because I was looking forward to finishing up the second Twilight book, “New Moon,” tonight (more on this in the future). One thing was for certain - the weather had an enormous amount of responsibility for my jovial mood. I heard the rain break through last night while I was driving and as God is my witness, it was incredible. I even saw the lightning. Los Angeles is beautiful when it rains. The smog and fog filled sky looks almost breathtaking, like some Apocalyptic painting no one was ever meant to see.

I smiled all the way home.

When I left work today, the weather wasn’t any different and I was enjoying every single minute of it, knowing full well that in an instant, it would disappear and the sun would pierce through again, ruining my rendezvous with the rain. I wasn’t as excited about the freeway as I was about the rain, I’m sure you’ve guessed. It was clogged with cars in every which way and I had no choice but to suffer through it all. I took comfort in the fact that I wasn’t exactly heading home, but to Whole Foods to buy some Quorn “Turkey” Roast for myself for tomorrow’s festivities. I can’t believe it has been almost a year that a piece of meat hasn’t touched my lips. Of course, because I still eat fish, I’m not a vegetarian in the true sense of the word, a bit like Edward Cullen I suppose. I don’t like talking about it when people ask me why I don’t eat meat. The idea of having to explain to them my thoughts on the matter are almost unbearable and definitely awkward and painful. This isn’t the first time I’ve gone pescetarian. I didn’t eat meat for about 10 months a little less than two years ago, but when Thanksgiving came around, I caved in. Once I tasted it, there was no point not eating it again on a regular basis.

I was taking a different route this year though. I didn’t have a particular interest in eating turkey, the smell of it repulsed me a bit, so the Quorn brand of faux-turkey was my next best option.

While I tried to make progress on the freeway, the rain suddenly turned violent and vicious and unleashed a three minute wrath of hail on everyone. I was enjoying myself, but remembered back to documentaries I had watched on the Discovery channel about golf-sized hail balls leaving cars looking like Swiss cheese. I had to remind myself that this was Los Angeles, and we had earthquakes and fires, not tornadoes and killer hail.

The parking lot of Whole Foods was an absolute nightmare. I had never seen it that bad before. Parking attendants were directing traffic and people were pulling in and out with carts. I eventually found a space and quickly got myself inside, focused on finding my Quorn Thanksgiving dinner. Inside was worse than outside. I was turning claustrophobic and had to take a dive in the hair care isle to stop myself from leaving without finding anything. No one else seemed slightly annoyed by the fact that there were so many people around. Maybe it’s me, I wondered. I found my Quorn and picked up some low-carb bread as well as some Ginger Peach tea from Republic of Tea - a treat to myself.

When I left, the rain had started coming down hard, so I ran to my car, but my paper bag was soaking wet. As I settled in my car, the smell of wet wood descended around me from the bag and forced me to open a window. My next order of business of getting the third Twilight book before I finished the second one, in an attempt to satiate my appetite when I finished. That search turned up fruitless, as the only version they had was a hardcover version, and I wasn’t in any mood in shelling out $20 for my guilty pleasure unhealthy obsession for a clumsy, accident-prone girl and her dazzling, vampire boyfriend. Sorry Stephenie Meyer, I had to draw the line somewhere.

When I walked out of the bookstore, it was drizzling. I pulled my umbrella out and propped it up. I hadn’t been walking in the rain for so long. It was beautiful. The gloomy skies, the wet ground, the silence of the entire city. I walked back to my car, disappointed, knowing full well that I could order on Amazon but the wait would be excruciating.

I got home and literally devoured the second book, and didn’t rest until I was done. This whole “Twilight” thing has turned me into a raging lunatic and I really don’t know how to stop. Mostly, I’m left wondering, “Why is this happening to me!” I have my theories I guess, but discussing them makes me sound crazier than I am now, so I’ll stop.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I have some intense baking to do in the morning, as well tidying up and then entertaining at night. I have my hopes set on traveling out to a J.Crew outlet for their “Hurray-For-The-Holidays” sale which starts at midnight tomorrow night. I know it sounds insane, especially since it’s Thanksgiving, but you don’t understand. No, you really don’t. It’s 50 percent off clearance, plus an additional 30 to 50 percent off regular stuff. It’s going to be fun little road trip for the three of us, including my sister and Nat, since it’s about 60 miles from my house. I’m afraid that our trip might be like that one episode of “Friends,” where Monica recruits Rachel and Phoebe to go wedding dress shopping with her and they have to communicate with whistles.

Crawling to Bed

I should be sleeping, seeing as to I have to make it to work at a reasonable time tomorrow, but my mind is racing after finishing the first of four books in the Twilight series. Yes I am a dork. No, I do not care. I was thinking back to when I started this blog in 2006 and looking at how far I’ve come, not only in terms of my subject matter and topics, but in terms of myself. I can’t believe it’s been two years. Sometimes I ask myself why I have this space to myself. Why do I write here? What prompted me to create a website? It would be easy and also a lie if I said it was just a more convenient way to write down my thoughts, instead of transcribing them in a notebook by hand. In some ways, that’s true, but obviously I wanted more. And yet today, I really don’t know my goal for this little web space I have. Is it just to write down my thoughts? Is it a release for me, an experiment in writing, or am I writing for someone, whoever that may be? Do I have an audience? I don’t even know for sure if anyone really is reading what I write, or why they would want to. But I guess it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I wish my blog was well-known and visited, sometimes I wish I could write in private so no one would have to see. I can’t seem to figure this place out, or the direction I want to take it in, but I suppose that’s a running theme in my life at the moment: confusion.

Sometimes I give myself rigid restraints on what to write about and how - and then I remember that this is just a personal blog and there are no rules and I can write about whatever I want, however I want. Maybe that’s the beauty of this place though, I can swing whichever way I want, without even thinking. One day I could be talking about situations in my life and the next day, I could be declaring my love for all things Paula Deen and then talking about my enormous hate for Ugg boots after. It’s really refreshing, have a space I can fill up with anything I want.

Yes, I should be sleeping. It’s almost 1 a.m, but this is a perfect opportunity to write. The house is completely quiet and dark, with the only light coming from my laptop. Henry is fast asleep, instead of flinging around his toys and our shoes in the living room and because I’ve spent the majority of my day so listless in a cubicle, my mind is awake and racing and conjuring up topics to write about and ideas to get to. This is unfair really, almost torture. Why aren’t there more hours in the day, more days in the week? Most importantly, when will I finish the second book from the Twilight series. I am slowly being recruited into the League of Morons because of you, Stephenie Meyer.

I better get to bed before I pick up the book to read and never go to sleep.