Sent from my BlackBerry! hurray

Yes, I know it’s actually the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, but my God, that’s a glaring oversight on the part of Corporate America™. It should SO be the Salsa Bowl. What is a Fiesta Bowl anyway? Actually, this soup might be one…

It’s in a tomato-cilantro base but would also make up well with canned diced tomatoes, or if you are one of those peculiar humans with an antipathy towards cilantro you could substitute a neutral green like chard or spinach. Cilantro is the “green” in this soup; one full bunch is not a typo!

1/4 cup olive oil
1 cooking onion in 1/8″† dice
1 fresh jalapeno, minced finely
3 cloves garlic, minced finely
1 medium zucchini in 1/4″ dice
1 red bell pepper in 1/4″ dice
Sea salt and fresh black pepper
1/2 tsp. ancho chili powder
1/2 tsp. whole cumin
1 package frozen corn OR 4 or 5 cobs’ worth of fresh corn kernels
1 small can black beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed
1 bunch cilantro, some stems reserved for garnish, the rest chopped finely
1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes
3 “chicken” bouillon cubes
Couple of splashes of Bragg’s
3 bay leaves

In a large soup pot heat olive oil on medium high. Add onion, jalapeno, garlic, bell pepper, zucchini, ancho chili powder and cumin; season with salt and pepper. Saute for about 7 minutes, until onion is translucent and pot-bottom is dry when scraped with a wooden spoon [You may need to turn the heat up; the veggies‡ should be cooking pretty briskly. Stir often!!]

Add corn and black beans; stir to cover and continue cooking, stirring regularly, until heated through. Add canned crushed tomatoes and water to fill the soup pot about 1″ shy of the top. Throw in Bragg’s, bouillon cubes and bay leaves; give it a stir, cover and heat until boiling, then reduce heat and simmer for at least half an hour. Serve with fresh cilantro sprigs, whole-grain toast and maybe even a bit of Monterey Jack grated on top if you’re into that kind of thing.

†Confession:  It should come as no surprise to my friends and readers that I scored pretty high in the online Asperger’s Disorder test [a 32, where 35 is a confirmed diagnosis].  So I am coming at this vegetable cutting thing in a very organized, some might say even frighteningly specific way:  I take the size of the ingredient I can’t change [in this case, corn and beans] and cut the other vegetables so that they are basically the same size.  [M interjects that this is pretty typical culinary technique] So far, so good, right?  BUT!  But.  Then you scale down slightly to find the size of yer onion-cutting.  Because if I find cooked onions that are bigger than any other item in a soup or mixed vegetable dish, I have to wash my hands thrice and turn around counterclockwise before I eat it.  No, not really, but I do pick them out and I don’t like it I DON’T LIKE IT.  There, now you have it.

‡I’ve made this soup as a base for tons of different veggie combinations:  yams, celery, other peppers or squashes.  I toyed with putting in 1/2 cup of dried quinoa at the bouillon-adding stage but since the broth was so pretty I chose not to.  If you love quinoa and are needing to increase the ol’ whole-grain intake, give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.

Oh man.  I kind of knew this day would come, I just wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it.  How I feel about it=bummed!

Yeah, you just keep smiling, there, Ms. SkinnyRibs. Grrr.

I used to work for a cruise line [we shall draw the curtain of charity over the cruise line's name, in the hopes that I will be free to rant subsequently about said cruise line with impunity] singing songs in their back lounge.  One of the benefits of this gig was that lovely women in my circle of family and friends leaped, I say, LEAPED at the chance to get their super-ultra-extra-fancy sequinned/beaded/satin/spangled/strapless dresses out of the dry-cleaning bags at the back of the closet and on to a real live human, esp. since they could then imagine the glamour and mayhem the dress underwent throughout the cruise ship’s itinerary.  [Anybody else feel that way about the clothes they lend out to friends:  like, it's OK if they have them but you want to have each item fitted with a little radio collar so you can track its movements in the wild?  "Did you wear that long black sweater-dress to the job interview?  Oh, yeah?  And then where?"]

So I’ve been bragging about this lavish closet of mine since I left the ship, and every once in a while I flip through them, seeing their wears and tears and pulled threads [it's different to have evening dresses that you actually WORK in].  There really are tons of them, enough to ensure no duplicates for a month of full-on formal nights:  one my Mom made in rust-coloured satin, a real stunner that consists entirely of glass beads and wears about 200 lbs, some sleeper hits from corny prom-type stores on Eglinton that looked absurd on the rack but tremendous when worn, and a few genuine vintage gowns:  full length, none of this wussy cocktail-length bushwa.  I am proud of them, but let’s face it; they don’t get worn very often.  My uniform these days is more like what they wear on Star Trek TNG:  stretchy gender-neutral pajamas, to provide maximum practicality, so I can teach and bike and walk and whatever all else I do in comfort.  Not very glamourous I’m afraid.

Imagine my delight at getting invited to a proper New Years’ Eve party!  Time to pull ‘em out!  And the boas and gloves and earrings and whatnot!  I hasten home, disrobe, and enlist M as Senior Zipper Technician…

…and not a single one fits.  Not one.  And not in the usual ways you’d think they wouldn’t fit, either.  Bottoms, thighs and waistline are all relatively unscathed [a couple notable exceptions about which the less said, the better], but Sr. Z-T reports being consistently stymied at:  THE RIB CAGE.  The rib cage!  Yoga is SO UNFAIR.  All this “cultivating more fullness through the back body” and now I can’t wear my awesome dresses.  John Friend, you and I are going to have to have a little talk!  And then of course, I’m immediately assailed by a series of complicated and not altogether pleasant thoughts:

1.  I thought I wouldn’t care about this kind of thing when it happened.  But man, I really care a lot.  I also feel like I shouldn’t care, that part of this practice would free me up from feeling bad about weight or body image.  Self-Confidence=Ur Doin It Rong

2.  All the people I’ve been bragging to about these dresses are going to suspect me of pathologically lying

3.  I don’t want to give them away but I can’t use them anymore.  Huh, I kind of see how I came to end up with them in the first place.

I worried my way into a big wine-coloured flowy number with a sequinned bandeau top [that barely did up, I'll have you know] and enjoyed a most excellent NYE, but man…what am I going to do with them now?  Anybody going on a cruise ship anytime soon?  I’ll get them all fitted with radio collars in advance.

Can I kick it? Yes, I can.

Well, well, well…Happy New Year, blogosphere-dwellers! I threatened to change up our Big Fridays and the following was our Kickoff Playlist.

It’s sometimes hard to shift when you’re grooving on something and I do love and will miss Big Rocks [they will return, I promise]. But it’s good to remember that it was a change that started that whole thing, and so change [even though it's weird at first] is the only constant. Ya dig? Especially in a New Year. I am notoriously TERRIBLE at change. When my parents would drive me to camp I’d moan and whine all the way there, and then when they came to pick me up I’d weep piteously for a day and a half. And in spite of almost two decades between now and then, really I am as accustomed to my little routines as Evelyn is to hers. So I was nervous about unveiling this one.

Luckily I saw so many beautiful hip openers and challenging postures executed very well this afternoon; some smiling faces, some impromptu rhymes and R&B licks, and most importantly: rump shaking.

A Tribe Called Quest, “Bonita Applebum”

Dead Prez [No, really], “Hip-Hop”

Beastie Boys, “So What’cha Want” [A shout out to all my Raw Canvas NYE partiers]

Blackalicious, “The Craft”

Beastie Boys, “Body Movin’”

De La Soul, “Big Brother Beat”

Common, “The Light”

Common, “Funky For You”

Digable Planets, “Graffiti”

De La Soul, “Trying People”

The Foreign Exchange, “Happiness”

Curtis Mayfield, “Eddie You Should Know Better”

Eligh, “Riding Water Over Time”

D’Angelo, “Alright”

Aaliyah, “It’s Whatever”

André 3000 feat. Norah Jones, “Baby Take Off Your Cool”