Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself...

Hello.

My name is Juewon, and I will be a co-blogger on tastybuttons.

Here are my first thoughts:

1) This is my first blog (excluding xanga), so please be gentle.

2) I was asked to contribute to this blog by my tastybutton, Jane.

I will by typing in Courier because it's old timey, and Jane likes it. Jane will continue typing in Helvetica because she got to pick first.

3) Jane and I met in medical school. We have a cat together named Pumpkin. Apparently this was not enough of an overt sign of commitment, hence I am now writing in this blog.

4) I have a rough outline of what my contributions to the blogosphere will be:

I) Food

A) Eating in

1) Recipes!

B) Eating out

2) Some clever scoring system?

II) Musings

A) Opinions

1) I have them

III) Cat Pictures

A) It IS the internet, after all.

5) I plan to assail you with my cutting wit and incisive humor. Feel free to respond in kind in the comments section.

So with that, I wish you all a happy 2012, and please enjoy this newer, edgier, sexier version of tastybuttons.

Here is a cat using an iPad.

-JK

gluten-free musings

This year was probably most dietarily significant for my discovery of a gluten intolerance. The short story is that I had always known I felt queasy after large pasta meals and just assumed it was because carbs weren't good for anyone. After a five weeks carb-free, however, I was feeling great and thought it was due to the exercise and general better nutrition. As exams rolled around, I started eating carbs again. It wasn't until a few days after I started that I got hours-long attacks of fatigue and nausea. My friends were visiting me for my birthday, and I just couldn't keep me head up at the restaurant. This went on into my first week of my new rotation, and I would barely be able to keep myself awake especially after lunch. Finally, one day I ate some veggie sausages and a few minutes later felt extremely dizzy and nauseous. I looked at the ingredients, and found that the first was wheat gluten. Since then, I've cut out gluten from my diet and been feeling much better. It wasn't that hard to do, as I found that I had naturally been avoiding it pretty well on my own.


Though I am morally opposed to dietary restrictions, I was extremely relieved to find an answer to the periodic, nonsensical attacks of nausea I'd been experiencing for a few years. I tried eating more vegetables, acupuncture, exercise, and chinese medicine all to little avail. This morning I thought about how I came to realize this, and thought that perhaps the reason why gluten issues have been rising across the country is that we engage in this frenzied love affair and then desolate rejection with no other food than carbs. We turn to it in mass quantities whether having pasta for dinner or when feeling sad, and then swear we'll never touch another carb again for days. We are perhaps inducing an intolerance to this simply by shocking our systems just when we've eliminated it from our diets.


In any event, I tried what I thought was orzo yesterday and felt surprisingly little. Later in the evening I had some dizziness but it was extremely mild compared to what it had felt like before. Either I had rice instead, had a sensitivity to something other than gluten, or had eliminated gluten really well from my diet just like the first time I discovered this and after a few days the symptoms would return. In any event, diagnosable intolerance or not, my stomach has been so much happier with gluten free products and I've experienced so much less dizziness and nausea overall that I think I'll stick with this for awhile.

- Jane

so fierce and so clean

If I had an alter ego, she would be named Beyoncé. You can't say her name without attitude. I hadn't realized her new album was out until I walked into Best Buy, with the glamorous intention of buying a vacuum cleaner, when I saw her poster and let out a very uninhibited "whoaaaaa" despite the many employees circling the entrance. Her first single Run the World was awful, but the video had sick choreography and costume. Watching her perform always puts me in awe but also makes me feel inconsolable turmoil, as I am filled with the strongest longing to quit my day job and work at jazz clubs until I make it as a singing dancing sensation, but also the hard bitter truth that I neither have the talent nor dedication for that business. Nevertheless, her entire album is available to stream. It's her first self-managed album after her year hiatus. Enjoy!


P.S. About that vacuum cleaner. It has changed my life. I had been using a handheld to no avail, leaving me with a carpet from which I could grab fistfuls of hair. I finally realized hygiene was hygiene and shelled out the $100 for a proper upright Hoover. I had every intention of returning it after purchasing, but after filling up half the container with possibly a year's worth of dirt and hair (I don't judge you), I am never going to let anyone pry this machine out of my hands. Best purchase all year.

pesto cheddar crostinis, tea, and musings

I write to you from a sleep-deprived haze. Unlike the trials and tribulations of my classmates who are helping to save lives in hospitals, I found myself staying up all night due to a curious case of animal psychology. I awoke an hour after falling asleep to the sound of paper bags crunching and chairs being pushed around. After a moment of annoyance that my cat baby was pouncing about the kitchen, I decided to get up to play with him to tire him out. I grabbed his laser pointer and tried to get him to play, but he only looked casually at it and did not chase after it in a frenzy as he is apt to do. I put the laser pointer away, and noticed that he had run into the bathroom. As he never went into the bathroom without a person to bother, I followed him out of curiosity. Then I noticed a mouse on the floor. A small, grey, adorable mouse baby. And what was my cat baby doing?? Not attacking it ferociously as I would expect, but instead pouncing, holding the mouse in his mouth, and then releasing him to play with him more. At first I was annoyed. Was this senseless behavior the result of a cat living in luxury? That he would cease to perform basic cat duties in favor of finding himself through play? But as I watched him play I felt a sense of sympathy for his loneliness, that he would play with a mouse because he had no other cat friends to play with. Since I felt it irresponsible to have seen a mouse and let it go, I decided to let him play with the mouse to his heart's content by closing the bathroom door. Later on the evening, I opened it to find a nonchalant cat with a mangled mouse body. So he was useful for something after all. This was followed by another such mouse chase, hours of squeaking and pouncing, to be followed by crunching and another headless mouse body.

Pumpkin, having had his fill, left me no choice but to wake up and make my own breakfast. The winner of my Whole Foods shopping trip was a mild white cheddar cheese from the deli, $5 a pound and extremely flavorful. I toasted sprouted whole wheat bread, chopped smoked turkey and sauteed with cumin (cumin makes everything taste better, no?), and melted the cheese squares on top. Then I finished with a dollop of pesto, and poured milk into my lovely English breakfast tea. Though I did not attack my crostinis or paw at them for hours, I very much enjoyed this delightful breakfast!