The Damage Is Done

You're a fraud
You're a liar
You're a hypocrite
You're despicable
You're disgusting
You're not the role model you think you are
You're not credible
You're ruining people's lives
You're ruining your own...

I can't believe how much I respected you
I can't believe now much I wanted to be you
I can't believe I wasted so much life on you
I can't believe I expended so many brain cells to understand you
...to identify with you
...to commiserate with you
Yet now I despise and resent you

You made me miserable...suicidal
Your latest actions are disgusting
What are you trying to prove?
You can't change it and you know it

Why won't you just shut up and go away now?
You've done enough damage

Jason 

Those of you on Facebook, "Follow" me at http://jasonhoggan.blogspot.com/.

MONO Lessons (Part XII: 229-245)

Meditatively Obtained, Novel, and Observational (MONO) Lessons 

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229.  I am allergic/intolerant/sensitive to:

a. Bean, Green (+1)

b. Bean, Kidney (+2) 

c. Bean, Navy (+1)  

d. Bean, Pinto (+1) 

e. Bean, Yellow Wax (+1) 

f. Beans, apparently…however, not Lima, unfortunately 

g. Cheese (+2) 

h. Egg  (+2)

i. Egg-white (+2) 

ii. Egg-yolk (+2)

i. Milk, Cow’s (+1)

i. Casein (+3) 

ii. Whey – LF (+1) 

iii. In other words, everything dairy.

j. Pineapple (+1) 

k. Pumpkin (+1)  

l. Rye (+1)

m. Tomato (+1) 

n. Wheat (+3)

i. Gluten (52 units)

o. Yeast, Baker’s (+1) 

p. Yeast, Brewer’s (+2)  

q. Zucchini (+1)

230.  The Mexican food I thought was saving my life because it’s the only thing I could get down…yeah…slowly killing me: Pinto Beans, Cheese, Sour Cream, Tortilla, Tomato Salsa…  My mono nausea cure only made me sicker.

231.  A simple, sincere “I’m sorry” can go a LONG way…

232.  Restaurants have gluten-free menus!

233.  Gluten is in everything.

234.  A “positive” gluten sensitivity test is like a positive pregnancy test – you can’t be kind of pregnant and you can’t be kind of sensitive.  You are.

235.  I’m bitter about gluten.

236.  Lesson #228 is no longer valid.  I actually think I would feel worse having a Grand Slam than if I got drunk…ha.

237.  I really don’t have very good gaydar.  I need to accept this fact of life.

238.  I still get shocked every time someone comes out to me.  Haha.

239.  MLIA is hilarious.  TFLN is rather hilarious, but the sex and drugs can get old rather quickly.  FML is just depressing.

240.  “Appetite is the best seasoning.” – Jessica Johnston

241.  “The moral of the story is:  Don’t drink, or your clone will be murdered.” – Jessica Johnston

242.  “Life takes a lifetime.”  (from “Naturally” by Lisa Donnelly)

243.  We don’t do physics.  Physics does us.

244.  IgG anti-gliadin antibodies have a half-life of 120 days.

245.  With an IgG score of 52 units, after 4 months of gluten-freeness, I will be near 26 units; 8 months I will be near 13 units; and 12 months, I will be near 7 units (below 10 is normal, 3 is average).  Hence, 1 year of recovery ahead.  It could be worse.

Jason

Those of you on Facebook, "Follow" me at http://jasonhoggan.blogspot.com/.

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, & Egg-Free Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

On the morning of Sunday, July 11th, my friend sends me a text saying, "I feel like having a cookie."  At that moment, I had the most immense yearning for a cookie that I've ever had.  For those of you who don't know me too well, I'm really just not a sweets fan.  Yes, they're very tasty, but I am content without them.  What I'm saying is, it is odd to have a craving like this consume me so suddenly.

So the hunt began.  After looking through about a dozen cookbooks and searching the internet, I settled on a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free oatmeal raisin cookie recipe from Sophie-Safe Cooking by Emily Hendrix.

Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup (1 stick)   margarine or shortening (I used Earth Balance buttery spread)

1 cup                    brown sugar

1/2 cup                white sugar

1 tsp.                   vanilla

1/3 cup                rice milk (I used Almond Breeze)

2 1/2 cups            GF oat flour

1 tsp.                   cinnamon

1/2 tsp.                baking soda

1/4 tsp.                salt

2 cups                  GF old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup                    raisins

With a mixer, mix the Earth Balance and sugars.  Add vanilla and Almond Breeze and mix again.  Add GF oat flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt and mix well.

Finally, stir in the GF old-fashioned oats and raisins.  Drop the dough on cookie sheets.

The author suggests making rounded tablespoon-sized cookies and baking at 350°F for 12 minutes making about 4 dozen cookies.  That's nice, but I made my cookies about 3x larger and baked them for about 18 minutes making 18 large cookies instead of 48 itty bitty ones.

Now some notes:

1. Make sure you purchase gluten-free oats!  Bob's Red Mill makes some amazing gluten-free oats that I highly recommend.
2. Unfortunately, Bob doesn't make gluten-free oat flour.  He does make gluteny oat flour, so don't purchase that by mistake.  Instead, make your own gluten-free oat flour with your gluten-free oats in a blender or an Ultimate Chopper.
3. Earth Balance is a gluten-free, dairy-free (and egg-free) buttery spread.

Here is my experience.  First, I don't cook.  That said, I definitely don't bake.  So if I can do this, so can you.

The packaged ingredients.  Yes, I had to actually buy sugars because we got rid of all of our sugar.

Next, in our Ultimate Chopper:

Gluten-Free Oats turn into Gluten-Free Oat Flour!

Oatmeal raisin cookies made with oat flour.  Doesn't that just make sense?

The measured ingredients.  Yes, those are shot glasses...from IKEA!

Now the weirdest thing happened.  About 1 minute after adding the dry ingredients to the mix, I started crying.  It just suddenly happened.  They were tears of pure joy!  I've missed oatmeal raisin cookies so much and now I get to have them again!

Here is the dough after adding the whole oats and raisins:

Yum!

 On the cookie sheet. 

Cookie sheet close-up.

All baked!

The finished product!
 

They taste just like "normal" cookies!  I'm so happy.  For you Despicable Me fans out there, they're so yummy I'm gonna die!!!

Jason 

Those of you on Facebook, "Follow" me at http://jasonhoggan.blogspot.com/.

       

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing my all-time favorite painting:

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

(Un Dimanche Après-Midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte) 1884-1886

By Georges Seurat

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This is a link to the exact print I purchased from Art.com.  I have the 64" x 42" print on the wall above my bed.  Do you have any idea how gigantic 64" x 42" is?  Yeah...you'll never really know until you see it on the wall above my bed.

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• Piece: Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un Dimanche Après-Midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte) 1884-1886.  Now resides in the Chicago Art Institute.  Took two years to complete.  A huge piece of art at about 7X10 feet!  No wonder it took him two years of little dots.

• Artist: Georges-Pierre Seurat

• Birth: Born December 2, 1859 in Paris, France

• Death: Died suddenly on March 29, 1891 of meningitis at age 31.

• Education: Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts 1878-1879

• Artistic Influences: Eugène Chevreul—discovered the basis for the pointillism technique.  Nicholas Ogden Rood—studied color and optical effects important to Neoimpressionists.  Rembrandt and Goya also influenced the young Seurat.

• Known For: One of the founders of Neoimpressionism.  Contributed to the new notion that art did not have to follow the “impressionist” pattern.  He will be remembered mainly for his style called pointillism, also called divisionism, which uses small dots of contrasting color to create small changes in form.

• Style: Neoimpressionist, used the technique of pointillism.  This technique consists of using small, unmixed, closely packed dots of paint on a white background.  To the eye, these points of paint blend creating a full, flowing work of art.  Seurat treated art as a science.

• Other: In Seurat’s lifetime he completed seven monumental paintings, 60 smaller ones, drawings, and sketchbooks.

Here is Seurat’s personal description of his Sunday Afternoon:

“Under a blazing mid-afternoon summer sky, we see the Seine flooded with sunshine, smart town houses on the opposite bank, and small steamboats, sailboats, and a skiff moving up and down the river.  Under the trees closer to us many people are strolling, others are sitting or stretched out lazily on the bluish grass.  A few are fishing.  There are young ladies, a nursemaid, a Dantesque old grandmother under a parasol, a sprawled-out boatman smoking his pipe, the lower part of his trousers completely devoured by the implacable sunlight.  A dark-colored dog of no particular breed is sniffing around, a rust-colored butterfly hovers in mid-air, a young mother is strolling with her little girl dressed in white with a salmon-colored sash, two budding young Army officers from Saint-Cyr are walking by the water.  Of the young ladies, one of them is making a bouquet, another is a girl with red hair in a blue dress.  We see a married couple carrying a baby, and, at the extreme right, appears a scandalously hieratic-looking couple, a young dandy with a rather excessively elegant lady on his arm who has a yellow, purple, and ultramarine monkey on a leash."

Jason

Those of you on Facebook, "Follow" me at http://jasonhoggan.blogspot.com/.