fighting the good fight

I'm at home, fending off a rather persistent, but fortunately mild, cold; so there may be a lot of blogging today.

I don't have rehearsal until 4 so I had planned a big day including a jazz turns class with the fantastic Ann Barrett (www.annbarrett.com) and a trip to the SF Zinefest at Cellspace (www.cellspace.org), but the show opens in 2 weeks and I'm supposed to be on a plane to LA tomorrow so I've enslaved all my desires for physical activity and fun to good sense. I should receive two DVDs (Tsotsi and the first season of Queer As Folk) from Netflix this afternoon and until then there's plenty of prep I can do for rehearsal.

In other exciting news, I cooked chicken for the first time ever yesterday. For those readers who don't know I became a vegetarian in 1993 and in May of this year I started eating fish and I have since also had chicken and duck a few times, turkey once, and an accidental nibble of bacon in a quiche (I think I may have also had a bite of Tony's beef out of curiosity, but, strangely, I can't remember). My diet is still largely vegetarian, though I eat fish at least once a week. I am not a fan of duck and turkey and, at the moment, I seem to be into chicken (I had chicken soup on Thursday, chicken breast yesterday, and I have the stirrings of desire for chicken soup again today). Yesterday I ate a salmon bowl at Samovar for lunch and later in the day I bought a free range breast from this market in the Mission.

The market is a huge, cavernous space below ground with two long rows of glass-encased meats, fish, and poultry. I found the whole place mesmerizing and surreal and the chicken feet particularly fascinating - they were surprisingly human in their appearance, like pale, slender, long-nailed fingers. The rabbits, which I've never seen before, was skinned and decapitated with a kind of bloody orifice at the top of the neck. The squids and octopi were small with a sleek glaze and the Vietnamese prawns flecked with mysterious blue spots that looked like stains or little pebbles trapped inside their bodies.

I sauteed the chicken breast in olive oil with rosemary, pepper, and a little bit of oregano and made a side salad of arugula and gorgeous orange and yellow heirloom tomatoes. I also had some delicious white corn on the cob from the farmer's market.

I just decided I'd do some good, old fashioned googling about transitioning from a vegetarian to pescatarian or more omniviorous diet. I'm interested in what might be happening with my physiologically to inspire these dietary alterations and, of course, I'm always interested in the ethical considerations since they were the motivating force behind my vegetarianism in the fist place. I came across this gem:

"Fortunately science might solve this one too. Scientists have already grown small amounts of edible meat in a lab (also see New Harvest). Someday we may have the ability to grow meat in abundance without having to kill an animal to get it. Imagine eating the most succulent steak, genetically altered to produce Omega-3 fat instead of high cholesterol fat? Vegetables grown as meat!"

(www.nobeliefs.com)

I also discovered that there is a vegetarian food festival, Kin Jay, in Thailand every October (the first nine days of the ninth lunar moth). It is a festival of purification and presence (and, interestingly, more or less coincides with Yom Kippur). Perhaps I will have my own Kin Jay and try a new vegetarian or vegan creation every day during that period. It would be fun to do with people - I wonder if I can convince Tony, especially as I will be in LA during part of that time.

What else?

Yesterday I went to Osento, the wonderful women's bathhouse/sanctuary in the Mission, with Silvia (one of the Big Love cast members) and then we stopped at a delightful store run by an idiosyncratic Japanese woman who talked loudly and ehthusiastically on the phone the entire time we were there. She had gorgeous hats and scarves and I bought one of each.

Here are some pictures of me in my new, fuzzy, hand-knit hat.



Then I saw Eating Skeletons, a play in the Fringe Festival (www.sffringe.org) and went to Original Joe's where I reunited with assorted people I hadn't seen in ages and met some wonderful new LA-based folks.

Okay, that's quite enough rambling for now. I'm off to buy some Ricola and make something of this house-bound day.