Chez Naranek's year-end newsletter

Life After Work be taking a blogging break until 2010 rolls around.

2010 by ilco

In the meantime, here is chez Naranek's first-ever year-end newsletter that we just sent out to those on our snail mail list, so *SPOILER ALERT* for those who (think they) are going to be receiving something from us, because I'm sharing it with my dear blog readers (including those who read this via Facebook!) ... just please excuse the [revised / redacted parts], k?

Names and locations have been changed to protect the not-too-innocent :)

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Seasons Greetings from Springfield, IL!

The past several years have been quite tumultuous for [chez Naranek], and we have sorta lost touch with many of you – so we are caving-in and sending out our first attempt at a “year-end newsletter” to bring y’all up to speed and (re-) establish contact.

As many of you know, we have recently relocated after about three years in Chicago. [Kosh] had begun surgery residency at [a hospital in Chicago], while Lynne jumped through the hoops to establish permanent residency status, and started laying down roots with her meditation group, random language and pottery classes, and some volunteering. [Things were rather uncertain for a while there, but things worked out such that we are now in Springfield, and should be here for a few years]... That is, unless the world DOES end on December 21^st 2012... :D

We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary in September by completing our move from Chicago to Springfield (our second move in only 3 months!). We’re settling in to town now, and most of the boxes are emptied – although the décor is still predominantly dorm-chic. When we build up enough stamina for another move we’ll consider buying a place down here, but for now we are very happily renting a turn-of-the-century apartment in a historical neighborhood of Springfield. [Psycho kitty] is also settling in well – although she still hisses at the couple of outdoor cats that come peeking in our kitchen window.

Work has kept [Kosh] pretty busy, but thanks to Lynne’s twittering we have managed to meet up with a number of locals and experience some facets of Springfield, such as the local music scene and the Horseshoe. We look forward to exploring some other local interests like all things Lincoln, Route 66, and the Frank Lloyd Wright house. After the hustle and bustle of Chicago, we have found Springfield to be a pleasant change of pace.

We hope you all have a great year-end season, and send our very best wishes for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Ma’al Hijrah and/or any other holy-days you may (or may not) be celebrating at this time. Please keep in touch and let us know how y’all are doing! We are both available on Facebook, or you can read about our adventures on Lynne’s blog at azlynne1972.blogspot.com, while Kosh posts occasionally to [bleeeep!] – we’d be happy to “see” you there!

Best wishes for the New Year – have a great 2010!!

Kosh & Lynne Naranek

If you think you should be on the snail mail year-end list for 2010, please drop me a line, k? In the meantime, please celebrate safely and responsibly... See y'all on the flip side!

Springfield, IL: Land of the Horseshoe!

MS Office clip art

The weekend after Thanksgiving, a friend from college (you may remember some references to a KTN?) and her bf visited us here in Springfield. She had indicated they'd like to take us out for dinner, to a place that was typical of or uniquely Springfield.

I tapped the power of Twitter for ideas, and received a few great suggestions, which you can see in Springfield, IL: What's for dinner?; in the end we decided to go to D'Arcy's Pint for the horseshoe.

No, not the u-shaped metal that gets nailed to a horse's foot... the specialty of Springfield:
Above is what Kosh ordered: The Supreme Seasoned ground beef on Texas Toast, covered in french fries, smothered in spicy cheese sauce, with a sprinkling of tomatoes and scallions, and spicy tabasco-like dipping sauce on the side. I thought it was okay, but missing something (probably the bacon!). I totally loved mine, tho, which you can see below:
They all look the same, don't they? So take my word for it, the photo above is of The Gobbler, the Thanksgiving special comprising turkey on stuffing covered in french fries smothered in cheese sauce. Y. U. M. I opted for the ponyshoe (it's supposed to be half a horseshoe), can you even tell?
We both took half of our food home! It made for a good lunch the next day after Bloody Marys :)

I still wanted to have a breakfast horseshoe ... just add some eggs between the meat and fries, oh and switch the fries to hashbrowns... like so:
This is from yesterday's brunch at a local diner called Sunrise Cafe. I was talked into getting a full horseshoe by the waitress ("... it's only a dollar more for double the food... besides, you can take home what you can't finish!"), and totally anticipated taking home half again... but...
... I musta been hungry, because by the time we were done, our plates were empty (apart from the large glob of velveeta-like cheese that I couldn't bring myself to finish). Kosh had ordered a chicken fried steak with "American fries" (elsewhere I think they are called country potatoes?) and eggs with a side of pancakes. His plate looked like this:
All gone. ... ... we weren't even hungry for any food until almost 8 hours later. Gee, I wonder why??!! :p ... ... and with food like this, I think we're gong to have to keep an eye on this!:

The Scale by crossfire

Ugh.

Now please excuse me while I go find something else to eat, LoL! :)

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Custom Header & Button Giveaway!

So on Monday I highlighted my efforts in revamping (for the better!) my friend's new business blog. In a similar vein, today's post is about @taraSG's Custom Header & Button Giveaway I'm eying: did you know that the first blogiversary of a malaysian abroad passed by recently with a barely a whimper?

To kinda make up for it, I'm itching to revamp the site for the new year, and I wonder if winning Tara's giveaway will help fast-track this goal :D After all, I'm also itching to revamp two other sites of mine, and to give Life After Work itself a much-needed finalisation: that's a lot to be tackling, especially when I might be away for the last 10 days of the year!

So here's hoping I'll win Tara's giveaway, that'll be half of one site tackled, LoL!

But if you want to throw your hat into the ring, go right ahead! You have until midnight (I assume it's CST, about -6 GMT) on 31st December 2009 to enter, via a comment on Tara's post, plus bonus entries for tweets and blog posts (like the one you're reading right now!).

Ciao!

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My first blog make-over!

Yes, yes, yes, I've made-over my own blog many times, but today I spent almost all day helping out a friend of mine, Rima Rashidi, who, together with her buddy Siti Hajar, has started her own business: Studio Vocal Siti Hajar!

You see, they had established a blog for the business, but had chosen the cookie-cutter harbor template which pained me so to look at for a business site, and me being me, I offered to jazz it up a bit to the best of my limited abilities...

I had all these fancy ideas for the header, but have very basic photoediting software and skills, so decided to go with black plus basic colors. Blue is a color associated with communication, so I decided to make that the main color. The rest of the day was spent tweaking all those friggin' colors... here's what I handed over to them:


... if you notice, this blog has yet to be properly "completed" in terms of color-tweaking, precisely because I'd get fed up trying to figure out the best combo! But hey, I'm now inspired to do some color tweaking here, and long-overdue header tweaking at my today.com blogs :)

And a final shout-out for my pal: if you happen to be in KL/Selangor, and have been wanting to sign up for voice lessons, why not drop by Studio Vocal Siti Hajar and check them out? They will be open for business & registration on January 4th 2010 @ 6pm.

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21 days to 2010: Foody Friday: turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

I've shared my meatloaf adventures before (not to be confused with my Meat Loaf adventures, LoL!), but today I'd like to highlight my most recent experiment: turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf.  Yeah try saying that three times fast:

. . turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

. . . turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

. . . . turkey/soy flaxseed meatloaf!

The soy part was, as usual, a pack of fake ground beef soy crumbles from MorningStar Farms.

The turkey was a roll of 97/3 Honeysuckle White.

But I was out of breadcrumbs!! fyi, breadcrumbs are used to add bulk and moisture, and to kinda hold things together, so I couldn't just leave it out... So I looked for a substitute ... Found a suggestion to use oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs, and another suggested flaxseed.


Seeing as I had recently bought us a box of Milled Flax Seed, I figured this would be a good way to sneak in some Omega-3 oils into the dish, especially considering the previous box took years to get finished!

But precisely because flaxseed is mega-rich in oils, I knew it wouldn't be wise to do a 1-to-1 substitution: instead of 1.5 cups breadcrumbs, I used about 1 cup milled flaxseed.  All other ingredients remained pretty much the same.


Because I was worrying about breadcrumb substitution, I forgot about my usual diced celery addition.  Oh well.  Totally remembered the "bonus" boiled eggs, tho, yay!  You can see them here, picture taken as I was transferring the soy/meat/flaxseed/etc mixture into the loaf pan.

Then genius that I was, I forgot to set the timer while it cooked.  Once again I'm very glad I got us a meat thermometer, it's come in handy in cases like this, making sure the internal temperature was high enough.

The end product was definitely oilier than usual:




Here's a glimpse of the meatloaf we'd helped ourselves to it for dinner: that's a bit of egg peeking out at ya, and you can see the pooled slime excess oil at the bottom:




All-in-all it was still a decent experiment, although because of the excess (good) oil, the meatloaf felt a little slimy. Still good, though. Maybe next time I'll try the oatmeal substitute, since that would add some good fiber to the dish.

How about you -- have you had any substitution adventures before? How did they turn out?

NOTE: Images of MorningStar Farms' Meal Starters Grillers Recipe Crumbles, Honeysuckle White 93/7 Lean Ground Turkey Roll and Hodgson Mill's Brown Milled Flax Seed products were taken from their websites.

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25 days to 2010: Rachel Guerzo is "Just Friends"

I'm so proud of, and for, Rachel Guerzo! My junior from high school, Rachel always did have a great set of pipes and lungs on her, and over time has established herself as pretty much the female jazz vocalist in Kuala Lumpur. And now, Rachel is finally releasing her debut album entitled Just Friends.



Here's her official biography:

Born into Malaysia’s most influential music family the Solianos, pianist and singer Guerzo has emerged as one of the most exciting and innovative jazz musician in her own right, honing her craft and playing to discerning live audiences over the past two decades. Influenced by consummate performers such as Shirley Horn, Tania Maria, Diana Krall and Eliane Elias, she both learned from them and gradually discovered her own unique voice.

In addition to playing regularly with her father, saxophonist Salvador Guerzo, and her uncle, drummer Rizal Soliano, Rachel has worked with some very fine musicians such as Michael Veerapen, Steve Thornton, Valtinho Anastascio, Pascoal Mirelles, Lewis Pragasam and Farid Ali. She headlined the Sunrise Jazz & Rhythm Festival in 2007 and her début album will be released later this year. In April 2010 Rachel will make her debut at the prestigious Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS as part of its Spotlight: Jazz series.

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You know what, I might just make my way back to KL to catch her DFP performance next April! No kidding. I'll see what I can do to set those wheels in motion.

In the meantime... ... I've hunted high and low for a good vid to post of Rachel's live performances, to no avail: you can check them out for yourself here. Instead, I humbly ask you to click on through to Rachel's site on AMP (if it's down, try back later, k?). There you can listen to her covers of What are you doing the rest of your Life? and Only Trust your Heart. I hope you'll agree that's one amazing youg lady!

Hope you have a great week! (Mine started out white!)

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28 days to 2010: Foody Friday Lamb Shanks!

This week's edition of Foody Friday started a few weeks ago, actually, when I moaned on Facebook that all of a sudden I was craving the lamb shank at Secret Recipe, and wondered if I should attempt to experiment with that, especially considering I'd never ever noticed lamb shanks being sold in the supermarkets before. To my surprise I had quite a few responses from a wide spectrum of pals who essentially said "mmMmmMmmmm lamb!" and "Yes! Experiment and blog about it!"

So on Monday, I happened to pass the correct place in the dead animal section of Wal-Mart and hey whaddayaknow they had lamb shanks for sale! Each individually wrapped, going for about $7 a pop. Yes, you read that right: SEVEN bucks! That's like TWENTY-TWO RINGGIT! Each. Can you say "Ouch!"?

Lamb shanks - before the "fun" begins

Dahlah mahal... then you realise maybe a quarter of the weight is all bone, and another eighth all fat. See all that white on the "back" of the piece on the left? That's all fat, baby!! Bleeaahhh!! I think I hacked away at two pieces for almost twenty minutes just trying to trim as much fat as I could because we don't have a proper meat-cutting utensil.
[NOTE TO SELF: before attempting to process the other two pieces, GET A PROPER KNIFE!!]

Moving on....

The experiment would be based on this Crockpot Lamb Shanks Recipe from about.com. I (thought I) studied the ingredients carefully, taking note of what I lacked, and what I could substitute. Of course, once I got back from yoga & final shopping on Wednesday, I realised I'd overlooked a whole bunch of things. Typical. But I had to rush and process everything, because it would take 8 hours of slow cooking, and it was already 11:15am! That would make dinner a really late one!!

So, as mentioned above, I hacked at the fat, taking way too much time. Then I started subverting the recipe to become entirely my own: no Worcestershire Sauce, so I used Fish Sauce along with salt and pepper to rub the lamb before the next step: braising. I don't know how much time was spent braising the pieces one-by-one. Not that I could tell you the different between braising and just trying to brown all surfaces of the meat and for the blood to not run red. It was a challenge trying to get the meat on the bone to get browned/braised/whatever.

During that time I also struggled with the crockpot liner bag thingy I also wanted to try, since the model we have is the type where the post isn't detachable/removable, so cleaning it later is always a pain. I ended up wasting one bag because for the life of me I didn't see that one side was open (I did the scrunching at every side, nothing gave! grrr!!).

I then scooped about half a bottle of Vidalia Onion Relish (found at County Market) to spread on the bottom of the crockpot.

Finally decided the braising was good enough. Put the lamb in the crockpot, and wondered if the lid would close: looked like it would but only barely.

Not wanting to think about the implications of the other possibility, I went ahead with the other ingredients: two heaping spoonfuls of minced garlic, and a liquid comprising cooking red wine, chicken stock powder, a can of diced tomatoes, and a heaping teaspoon of cumin, allspice, parsley flakes, and Italian seasoning.

Then I tried to close the pot. ... ... nope! Not gonna happen!!

This is so wrong!!! The bones should be IN the pot!!!!

So I was forced to hack the meat off of the bones and dump 'em into the pot; looked like I was going to end up with a stew? I didn't bother to make nice bite-sized pieces -- remember that the clock was ticking big-time! I was really pissed, though... part of why I-who-am-not-a-fan-of-red-meat can salivate over lamb shank is because it falls off the bone and melts in your mouth. I could only hope that without the bone, the meat would still end up with melt-in-your-mouth properties.

So at a little after 12:30n, the crockpot was started, on Low, for 8 hours.

I was all ready to tell Kosh we'd have the lamb the following day because I wouldn't make sense to have dinner so late... ... ... but of course as luck/fate/theUniverse would have it, Wednesday was a day from Hell for Kosh, so much so that he was done at ~8:30pm!

What timing!

And by that time, the house was filled with the aroma of lamb... yummmmm...!!

So we scooped ourselves a bowl of the stuff...
The final product

Verdict? Awesome!

Sure, there was more liquid than necessary (I forgot to halve the ingredients -- did you notice the recipe called for four lamb shanks but I was only using two?) but that didn't detract from the dense taste of the melt-in-your-mouth lamb. Yay!!

But the crockpot liner bag leaked... might have been from when I was trying to force the lid shut on the bones, or, more likely since it wasn't burnt, from when we were scraping at the bottom trying to scoop up all the pieces of meat.

We finished it all, btw. I have perhaps a cup and a half of sauce/stock which I saved: I could use it to add flavour to fake beef soy crumbles, maybe? And there are two other lamb shanks in the freezer: they'll stay there for another month or so before I start digging around for another (non-crockpot?) recipe to try :)

... and so, how about you? Ever experimented with food the way I did with these poor pieces of lamb? Inspired to try? Do drop me a line in the comments, I'd love to hear from ya.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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29 days to 2010: What's in my freezer?

Yes, I'm going to continue with the Food/Health topic a little while longer... today how's about a peek into my freezer?

Here's what's in the freezer door:



You may recognise a few Morningstar Farms products there: I have indicated I am trying to move Kosh and I away from dead animals, so I always have some sort of soy-substitute product at hand. Here you might see three packages of fake ground beef (one of which will probably be used in making meatloaf tonight!).

I'm not impressed with their fake breakfast sausage patties tho, and the fake italian sausage links are crumbly and meh: you might spot one open box each in there.

There's also half a box of Banquet's Heat n Serve turkey sausage links (majorly high in sodium tho, beware!), and maybe one more serving left of Tater Tots (will not be replacing this, since they aren't organic and therefore probably chockful of bad chemicals - bummer!).

And now for the main part of the freezer:
.. a little crammed, ainnit? LoL! Well, I admit I've been on a frozen vegetable spree lately, and I would say about 80% of the stuff in there is frozen vegetables.

You see, despite having the best of intentions of eating healthy, I found that whenever I opened the fridge looking for something for lunch or for a snack, the fresh veggies and bagged salads just didn't appeal to me... and if I spied Ben&Jerry's ice cream, heck any ice cream, or Kit Kats, well let's just say I'd scarf that "easy food" down, only to feel hungry again soon after, so back I went searching for something to munch, not finding the fridge contents appealing... etc etc etc.

So I decided to give myself other options: processing fresh broccoli is a pain, but if I were to have steamable frozen broccoli cuts that I just had to pop in the microwave for a few minutes? Then transfer the broccoli to a bowl and add a bit of fake butter, cheese and perhaps cinnamon or seasoned salt? Overall still a much better option than ice cream, candy or chips! And food would less likely to be wasted, thrown out because they went bad before anyone got to them.

Making radioactive mac&cheese out of the box? Add in a bag of peas! Okay so I usually add stuff like diced capsicum, onions, leftover chicken, or tuna anyways in an attempt to add some nutrition to the dish, but when you dump 4 servings of peas? That's a LOT of veggies to temper the mac&cheese with! It's an interesting combination I wouldn't serve to dinner guests, but if you want to try it at home, please tell me what you think, k?

There's also a box of individually wrapped chicken breasts; a large serving of chili from a few weeks ago; an opened box of No Name salmon; an opened package of Morningstar Farms fake chicken strips; a few steam-in-the-bag dinners-for-two (also high sodium, ugh!). The plastic bag contains two lamb shanks ("spares" - I already cooked 2 yesterday, look out for a writeup on that tomoro!).

Yes those are ice cube trays, LoL!

There are probably multiple bags of 4 or 5 types of bagged frozen veggies. It's not immediately obvious because everything's kinda stacked on top of one another, but take my word for it, there are A LOT of this in there:
Courtesy of Sam Walton, this is their Great Value Mixed Garden Medley: sugar snap peas, roasted red potatoes and red peppers seasoned with garlic herbs. Only 160 cals per bag. And it's delicious!! Seriously. After tasting one of these, on my next tip to Mal-Mart I went ahead and pulled like 8 into my cart!
Okay so the potatoes here aren't organic either, so I'll have to not overindulge. But still. So much better than one-third of a package of Golden Oreos, right?

... I know there had been a meme for fridge or larder contents going around the net a while back... maybe here we can start one for the freezer? Let's call it The Freezer Meme! So if you'd like to show off your freezer's contents too, please go ahead, and don't forget to drop a link in the comments so I can come visit! A link back to Life After Work and this Freezer Meme page would be nice too, hint hint! :D

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30 days to 2010: 7 foods experts won't eat

So yesterday I rambled a bit about vegetarianism vs being just plain responsible/aware about what goes on to put all those dead animals on your table, and why I'd like to win me a signed copy of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. Today, I'd like to go over one of those many lists that appear on the Yahoo! homepage: this recent one gave me pause in a few places (marked in red): 7 foods experts won't eat.

The first advised against canned tomatoes. It seems that the acidity of the tomatoes causes bisphenol-A in the can's resin lining to leach into the contents, thus causing ingestion of dangerous amounts of the chemical when consumed. Yeah, BPA's not been getting a good rep, and I'd rather not ingest more than I already have. Of course, I happen to have like 6 cans of diced tomatoes in the cupboard: I've found them extremely handy in the kitchen, they add flavour and body to almost any dish.


The second warned against corn-fed beef. Cows are grass-eaters, not eaters of grains (or cow brains, for that matter!). I'm not one for beef anyway, and my main objective on those rare occasions when actually getting meat has been just to get that with the lowest fat content - it always blows my mind just how fat beef is. I usually end up getting chicken or turkey instead. Of course, unless of the free range variety, these have their own problems too.

The third counsels against microwave popcorn. This hit the news within the past year, I think, because certain chemicals linked to infertility found in the lining of the bags vaporise when microwaved, transferring to the popcorn which is then consumed. I am not a fan of popcorn, but we do have 2 boxes of Smart Balance popcorn, more for Kosh than me. Hmmm...

The fourth advised against non-organic potatoes. Actually, all root vegetables absorb all those pesticides, herbicides, etc that end up in the soil. Potatoes in particular undergo intensive chemical exposure. ... well, I don't buy potatoes per se, but I do occasionally splurge on potato products like tater tots... Time to just not bother with them, I guess. ... oh no, does this mean no more sides of hashbrowns with breakfast at the diner? And what about the "fact" that the potato's skin is its most nutrient-rich part? Is the skin then as chock-ful of chemicals as the rest of the spud?

The fifth shook its head at farmed salmon. Similar to the concept of corn-fed cows, farmed salmon are fed all variety of things unnatural to them, and as a result contain lots of contaminants including dioxin and DDT. Grrr. They take away my fish treat!! I bet all that lox comes from farmed "fresh Atlantic" salmon... I'll have to look out for wild-caught Alaskan salmon instead.

The sixth warned against milk produced with artificial hormones. This is something not new to me. Lactaid claims to be r-BGH free, and we kinda go back-and-forth between that and soy milk (but I don't bother with organic).

Finally the seventh counsels against conventional apples. Again, liberal use of pesticides results in skins that are full of stuff that's bad for you. I know that. But I still get 'em. ... If you are reluctant to shell out for organic apples, they advise washing (duh!) and peeling (eh...) the apples.

I am most pissed off by the canned tomatoes thing. Here I am thinking it's a good thing I've found a great and easy way to add some veggies and taste to my cooking, only to be told I'm poisoning us all with BPA. Oh no!! [In case you can't tell, I'm typing with some sarcasm here] But still... I guess I'll be on the lookout for tomatoes that come in glass jars or tetrapaks on my next grocery outings.

How about you, were you surprised by anything in the list?

Photo credits:
1. Cows by arkhanje
2. The Apple Bucket by Prepaan

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31 days to 2010: Eating Animals

As 2010 approaches, my thoughts are moving more and more towards eating better, making better choices when it comes to providing the body with fuel vs satisfying the emotional side to eating.

This is why I am looking forward to Kilax's giveaway of Jonathan Safran Foer's non-fiction book on starting an informed discussion about what is being done in the name of putting food on our tables. Entitled Eating Animals, it's not a call for vegetarianism per se, but seems to nudge folks in that direction. While I wasn't impressed with his works of fiction (read one, saw the movie adaptation of another), I am quietly curious about what he has to say, and how he says it.

For those who have known me over a long period of time, you might recall I used to be a (lenient) vegetarian, sticking to fried noodles or rice with curry-without-chicken, eating eggs and cheese but consuming bits of an actual dead animal once a week or so. This came about from reading Fit for Life: it was extremely impactful to me at that time. I still remember the first time I ate just plain lettuce, and was blown away by how sweet it tasted. Sadly, I drifted away from this under the influence of a partner who complained I was "being difficult". (I've come a long way since then -- that's a topic for another time, if ever. Moving on...)

Parallel to this, I was also known to not eat red meat. Even now, the smell of beef cooking makes me gag. I've just not really liked it. However, I'll not turn down a nice steak. So perhaps a big part of my aversion grew out of the poor quality meat used in local dishes you'd find in stalls, even restaurants. Stringy, fatty, chewy. Ugh. But I'll take beef in the form of burgers (I hear it's Prosperity Burger time back in Malaysia now... waaaaaah!!! That's only like my most favouritest McDonald's burger EVER!!), and here in the US the meat used in "Chinese" dishes like Mongolian Beef or Beijing Beef is usually pretty decent, so my aversion to it has lessened. But still. By default, anything that calls for ground beef, I substitute with ground chicken, turkey, soy crumbles, or a combination thereof.

I'm not sure if I would want to go "all the way" i.e. vegan, seeing as I really like my eggy and cheese breakfasts. At the same time, however, I do not want to be part of a system that feeds cows anything but grass, and bulks chicken up with antibiotics, all to get more and cheaper meats to our table, sans the nutrients that would have been present in "natural" animals.

I have a feeling that Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals will resonate with me - the only real questions are how much, and what I will do after reading it.

I've checked: Eating Animals is available within the Lincoln Library system, so even if I don't win the giveaway, I'll get my hands on it easily enough. But winning is always nice, isn't it? So I'm quietly hoping it's my name that Kim will pull out of the hat on Dec 6th.

Peace.

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