Day 21: Never have I ever... been to a Trampoline Park

[For the time-conscious... skip  down to the bottom and click on video montage of our hour at the trampoline park. And try not to laugh too hard at my outfit.] 


Somewhere on these great interwebs, I heard about a trampoline park in San Francisco. It looked amazing. So, I looked up the generic search term "Trampoline Park" just in case there were others like it... and found them to be more widespread than I had thought. In fact, there was one in Boston. And it just so happens that my best friend lives in Boston! Score. 

Weeks ago, we made plans to go to the Trampoline Park during my next visit. We did not, however, plan for her to break her ankle the day before my arrival. (Sad face.) Unfortunately, trampolining was out of the question for her. But since she had to work during the day, I decided that I could still find time to check it out. And I enlisted a friend! Our pal Courtney, visiting from the deep South, graciously agreed to accompany me on a spunky afternoon adventure. She had no idea what she was getting in to. 

We arrived to SkyZone and immediately realized that this was no typical quiet Friday afternoon. There were children everywhere! Why weren't these rugrats in school? Oh. Spring break. Great. 

Check out those sweet sneaks

First, they give you some supercool high-top sneakers to wear for a) ankle support, and b) to ensure everyone is jumping in smooth, tread-less shoes. Getting over the gross-factor of sharing these shoes with thousands of sweaty children (yes, they handed me a boys' size 6 to wear), I actually kind of liked wearing high-tops. Brought back memories of 1992 and my sweet L.A. Gear kicks. Oh yeah. 

Before we could jump, a young referee had to give us the "rules speech". I believe the rules were: 1) If you need to rest, come off the court, and 2)  Don't jump on anyone's head. Got it. 

We were in. It was basically like jumping on a trampoline except you could jump all around, and even off the walls. The sensation immediately brought me back to being 11 years old. Weeee!! I'm jumping so high! I'm like a superhero with super jumping powers!!!

But I quickly realize I am not 11 years old. My heart feels like it might explode. So does Courtney's. We are sweating. We are panting. We look at each other, embarrassed to admit that 7 minutes of this activity is potentially all that we can handle. The kids are flying by us like the gummi bears, bouncing here and there and everywhere, laughing and talking and not winded at all. We are old. 

Over in another area we see some women about our age. So we jumped over towards them. Moms!! Yes, moms are more our speed. They're jumping, sort of. In fact, we feel pretty spry next to these ladies. We feel downright nimble! Except for that one show-off mom, who was doing flips and stuff right next to her daughter. She's probably a former Olympic gymnast and beauty pageant queen.

Me and the Ref. He kept us safe. 

Next, I begged Courtney if we could play trampoline dodgeball. The ref told us that due to "our size", we had to play with the "big kids." Thanks. An elastic pen with 14 tweenage boys, 10 balls, and no mothers in sight. It smelled like feet and hormones. The boys were about, oh 12-15 years old, and raging with an angry sense of insecurity-fueled competition. Right away, yellow-shirt-kid sensed my weakness. As soon as I stepped on the court, he waled a ball directly at my face. I ducked. Take that, yellow-shirt. I threw a few impotent balls in retaliation, and then Courtney and I just ducked and bobbed our way around until the ref blew the whistle (THANK GOD), and we scurried off the court. The smiling ref said "C'mon, don't you want to play again?"  Maybe another day, when I'm wearing a hockey mask and have taken some testosterone injections.

As my grand finale, I decided to try to flip.  So, I went over to a crash pad area and was able to successfully hurl my body forward in a 360-degree flip. It wasn't pretty, but I did . I even landed on my feet two of my three attempts! But I didn't stick the landing. Oh well.

Though we had only used 40 minutes of our hour long sesh, we were both exhausted. Now I understand why SkyZone claims that an hour-long jumping session torches 1,000 calories. I believe it. 

The Queen Bees who snubbed me.

Just as we were about to leave, amid a sea of boys, I saw a group of tweenage girls gathering near the dodgeball area but not seeming interested in jumping. I always hate it when girls sit on the sidelines as boys get out there and jump into the world (pun inteneded), so I walked up to them and said "Hey do you guys want to play a girls game of dodgeball?!"..... and.... silence. They looked at me with furrowed tween indifference, and I'm pretty sure the ringleader rolled her eyes at me. A few minutes later, they did line up for a girls' game of dodgeball, but they didn't ask me to join. It was sixth grade all over again, except I didn't care this time, because I'm 30 and can buy beer. 

Courtney and I came down off the court and took our shoes off; the floor felt so oddly unyielding compared with the rubber floor we just enjoyed. We debated if this would be a fun adult activity after a few beers, but we both decided that we'd probably barf. 
 

Results: Oh man this was fun! Possibly the most fun I've ever purchased for $12. It's a novelty experience that I highly recommend. 

Status: Success!!!

Day 20: Never have I ever… made stained glass art.

Pinned to the painting: dozens of
cards from flowers she's received.
Most were from her second husband, Ben,
with sentiments like "You're my darling."
The funniest?"Edie, I never called you STUPID."
Ah, marriage. 

This is a self-portrait of my grandmother. Edie. Artist. She is the most diversely creative person I have ever met in real life. Painting, pastels, charcoal, collage, photography, textiles, even film—she’s explored almost every possible medium with which to express her art. But perhaps her greatest love is working with stained glass. I never asked her what she loves about glass so much… but I’d guess that it's partly the treasure hunt. You can mix any paint hue. But you have to find the right piece of glass. Color, texture, thickness, transparency; it was all about finding the perfection-combination to make her vision a reality. I have vivid childhood memories in her studio…. she’d hold up a pristine, thin slab of glass and declare “Look at this glass against the light. Isn’t the color just wondaahful?” She loves glass.

These are two of her lovely works.

Glass window of my childhood home.     Butterflies are the signature Edie motif. 

Sadly, Edie isn’t in the studio any more. After 80+ years of artistic fuel, she is no longer of body or mind to do the work that she loved so much. And one of the cruelties of life is that you never know when it’s going to be your last day in the studio. She didn’t. So, for the past few years, there has been a half-finished lamp just sitting on her studio’s worktable. It stares at me sadly every time I visit her. It begs to be finished. I shut the door and tell it to be quiet. I don’t know how to do stained glass. 

But now with some more free time on my hands, I thought, hey… maybe I could learn how to do stained glass? So I watched a BUNCH of online videos. It looked like a manageable process, but I knew that this was a craft that had held my grandmother’s attention for a lifetime; it couldn’t be easy. But I would try. 

Lamp, inspired by the Hearst Building   The lamp, unfinished view.

I headed out to Long Island to spend the day in my grandmother’s studio. After a bedside visit with her, I went down to the studio, put on my Pandora Mozart station to really get into the EdieZone, and began to dust off the work station. The studio was in bad shape after years of neglect. It took me about 90 minutes to get things in order, find the right supplies, and take stock of the lamp’s current state. The lamp is actually in decent shape. It needs the fourth panel finished, and then joined to the other three. The connecting joint pieces also need to be soldered into place. 

Luckily, about 98% of the pieces were already cut by Edie years ago. And I need no practice cutting stained glass anyway, thanks to an ill-fated attempt at a glass mosaic table that lived, unfinished, in my parents’ basement for about, oh, 7 years. I cut about 300 pieces of glass for that project before letting it fall to the wayside. (And somewhere, my dad is shaking his head as he reads this…) Cutting glass isn’t really hard. You just score it with a glass cutter, hold it with glass pliers, and apply some pressure. Snap. Glass is cut. I cut a few triangles with ease, just to make sure I still had it. 

Next up, the glass pieces need to be wrapped with copper foil. This looked so easy on the video! It wasn’t. The thin foil curls and sticks to itself, and it’s nearly impossible to perfectly center it over an even thinner piece of glass. It takes some real finesse. After wrapping, the copper foil must be burnished down on all sides with a notched tool. This wasn’t hard, just laborious. She did this for every single piece for every window or lamp she ever did?  Yikes.

Blurry shot of my fresh solder

Next I laid the wrapped piece beside the half-completed panel. It was time for the tricky part: soldering. I heated up the solder iron. Before you solder the pieces together, a thin coat of flux must be applied to the copper foil. Flux is a chemical compound that is inert at room temp, but once heated becomes highly reductive and allows the tin-lead solder to fuse to the copper wrapped pieces. It's basically stained glass glue. I fluxed the joint with a paintbrush and then cut a piece of solder wire slightly larger than the joint to be soldered. First step is to “tin the tip” which means melting a little starter layer of solder on the tip of the iron. 

Whoa, Nelly! This stuff melts in a hot second, literally! I knew that the tin-lead solder had a low melting point, but I didn’t expect the metal to go molten the second it touched the hot iron. Ok, ok. It’s only melted, scalding metal. It will only give me 3^rd degree burns if I have a little slip-up. No bigs. I really wanted to touch this shiny fluid. How hot was it? I felt like Smeagol; the glistening solder was my ring. I'm sure I could touch it... just one little touch... it wouldn't hurt that badly, would it? I was too chicken, and decided some mysteries are best left unknown. I delicately ran the soldering iron up the joint, leading the metallic liquid into the crevasse as I went.  It produced a shiny, beautiful ridge. It was very gratifying.

I repeated a few more wraps and joints and then decided to go up and visit with Edie some more. Her eyesight is poor and her hearing is gone, along with most of her memory. It’s a good visit if we have few simple exchanges. So we just sit together, mostly. I so badly wanted to talk to about the project. I wanted to ask her how long it took to complete her various works, why the flux didn’t take on one spot, how on earth she made these complicated jigsaw puzzles of glass work?! Then, I wanted to punch myself in the face for not asking her all of this while she was still able to tell me. 

Results: I made some serious progress on my learning curve, and I gained a serious appreciation for the patience, skill, vision and detail required for this art. Looking around my grandmother’s home, filled with stained glass pieces in every room, and thinking about all of her works that grace the homes of our family, friends, and the massive glass installation she completed in her local library, I almost cannot believe the thousands of woman-hours that Edie has devoted to her great love. That's a LOT of copper foil. 

Though I didn’t get too far on the project this time, I think I might be able to actually finish her lamp. She might not get it, she might not even remember starting the lamp. But on some level, I think she’ll be happy that I’m trying.

Status: A good starter success. 

Day 19: Never have I ever... explored DUMBO art

Ever notice how easy it is to ignore your local best? The cool attractions directly in our line of sight often just blend into our daily routines. I think this is particularly true for New Yorkers. I always hear of cool events, and think "yeah, sure, i'll go to that thing next weekend." But come next weekend, a friend is in town or I need to do laundry or I'm tired or it's raining or I want to go to brunch instead, and I let another cool experience slip away. And a new experience that would have required minimal effort! Yet I'll block out a Saturday weeks in advance and drive 2.5 hours outside of the city to go to a garlic festival and try 37 varieties of garlic spread, because that takes planning. 

This could not be more true for my next-door-neighborhood: DUMBO. (Note to non-New Yorkers: DUMBO, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass is a historic industrial-chic neighborhood in Brooklyn now dubbed NYC's creative capital due to the fact that more artists live or work here, per capita, than anywhere else in the city.) It's just a 7 minute walk from where I live. And it's arguably one of NYC's coolest neighborhoods. And it constantly offers me exposure to cool art and music and culture, and yet I constantly ignore DUMBO. Sure, I've checked out the artsy shops on my lunch hour. But this 8 block radius is teeming with galleries, events, and funky fun. And yet I never walk the 7 minutes down the hill to check it out. 

So when I heard about a new art fair being held in DUMBO this past weekend, I didn't want to let another experience slip away. The event was called Verge: Art Brooklyn. I headed down on Friday early evening and checked it out. 

The streets were bustling only a little more than a typical Friday night in DUMBO. I popped into a gallery in a big lofty office space. There were two long hallways full of exhibiting artists. Photography, painting, sculpture, multimedia... it was a mixed bag. The coolest, in my opinion, was a an artist who creates huge black and white ink pieces so intricate that the viewer needs a magnifying glass to see the whimsical details. He displayed the pieces inside a dark, screened-in cavern, using a moving projection of his work as the only light source. I would have considered buying one, if not for the $1,800 price tags. The oddest exhibition was a live installation piece: The female artist would dress in three different outfits at various points in the evening, with the other two outfits hanging in the background. I asked her about her inspiration and she said that her piece is about identity formation; how our clothes tell the world what our intentions are. It was an interesting take on a somewhat-obvious concept. 

One of my faves: A collage piece called "Teardrop"

Next stop: A giant bookstore-cum-art gallery that served complimentary wine. Jackpot! I had a glass of surprisingly good white wine and browsed the artwork and books. This was the most lively venue thus far (I'm sure that had nothing to do with the gratis wine bar.) The patrons seemed like an interesting bunch. I wanted to strike up a conversation to test the theory of the exhibit I had just seen: Their appearance was telling me "here are some interesting, smart, artistically-minded individuals"... one conversation might confirm their visage. But the thing about this crowd... they were not exactly approachable. So I sipped my wine and mingled with the interesting and very approachable books. 


Next I went down the street to the DUMBO Art Center. There was an artist doing a live diamond-dust work on the floor, which was really neat to watch. I loved a gripping photography exhibit called Tent Life (photos of Haitian post-earthquake living conditions), and did not love the over-sexualized gallery with the melted, mutilated and bloodied silicon mannequin in a lace dress and wig. Just another modern art exhibit. 

A rainbow of miniature human heads.

My last stop of the night. Right away... more free booze! There was a sparse Welcome Table of seemingly unchilled and uninteresting beers. Heineken, Becks, Bud. Ick city. Hello, aren't artsy people supposed to have good taste? But then I thought, wait a sec...free beer!! Who was I kidding, the college kid inside me was elated. The exhibitions here were lovely, and I met an older French painter who reminded me of my artist grandmother. She had come all the way from Paris for this show; I thought about how much my grandmother would enjoy speaking this fellow artist. I really would have liked to post a photo of one of her pieces, but she (understandably) preferred that I didn't photograph them. It was a bittersweet note on which to end my excursion, but my two free drinkies were taking the edge off of my contemplative zone. 

There was also a free party just getting into swing at the Galapogos Art Space, which is one of my favorite venues in NYC. But I had friends coming into town and had to get back up the hill to meet them... 

Results: Free art exhibits+Free booze? Pinch me! It was a lovely half-evening in a lovely neighborhood. I only wished my friends were arriving earlier, as it would have been a perfect excursion for out-of-town guests. Why have I not done this before?!?! 

Status: Success! 

Day 18: Never have I ever... ZUMBAed!

The tagline for Zumba really cracks me up. Ditch the workout. Join the party!

I did it! I joined the smelly, sweaty, awkward party yesterday! 

Before heading over to the New York Sports Club to check out their Tuesday Zumba class, all I knew about this trendy workout craze was this: It's a workout to Latin music. And all the ladies in the Bally's commercials are smiling and shimmying and have really nice butts. 

When I arrived, I surveyed my Zumbamates. All female. (Not surprised.) But still, it was a diverse bunch. Young and old. Thin and not-so-thin. Black, white, Cuban and Asian....  It was a real life Will Smith song! 

The instructor, Shelly, immediately blasted very loud Latin music and waved us inside the large space, mirrors to our front, glass wall to our backs. She bellowed "Let's practice! Follow me!" and started dancing. Um, where's the instruction? Oh. There is none. This was a watch-and-learn kind of class. I wasn't aware of this at the time, but she was teaching us the steps that we'd later do in "the dances". This was our warm-up. It was warming. 

Her only demand was that she wanted us to clap after every dance so she "could feel the energy". She also said, "follow me, and if you can't get the steps, just SHAKE IT!!"  And of course these comments made me giggle a little bit. With that, we were off. The music was very energizing, indeed. The steps were fairly simple, if a little silly and whimsical. Lots of prancing. It required a good deal of hip+foot+arm coordination that I found challenging. Having taken ballet lessons for more than 10 years as a child/teenager, and then hip-hop classes as an adult, I'm familiar with how to learn dance steps quickly. I was able to get the sequences easily after a 4-count of missteps. And the format of Zumba is repetitious, so you have a few tries to get it right. 

The most unfortunate part of this class was the floor-to-ceiling mirror directly in front of us. For Zumba, which is more about exercise than perfecting the steps or the form, I would have preferred to not see my awkward, flailing reflection. I tried to focus on Shelly's form and not watch my own. But occasionally I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like a wounded stork. 

Luckily, the rest of my classmates were no more graceful than I. Save for a tall girl who danced directly in front of me. She clearly Zumbas with frequency. But there was no art in her steps; only precision. She knew all the steps immediately, and perfected the "shake".  Oh, what's the shake? Well, Zumba occasionally involves shaking one's ass violently from side to side with forceful hip motions. There are also lots of forward hip thrusts. Does this make one's butt cheeks firmer? Rounder? I don't know. It sure feels like ridiculous motions to perform in front of others. But all I know is that after an hour of dancing behind the tall girl with the good shake, her ass was inspiring. 

Results: Zumba is fun! And a great workout, I was sweating. I still prefer the art and skill of hip-hop dance classes, but I'd happily Zumba again. I just need to work on looking less like a limping bird and more like a Latin princess. 

Status: Success! 

Day 17: Never have I ever... crashed a black tie gala

I live a reasonable life in a fabulous city. I am not the woman with the perfect, shiny hair laughing over a glass of white Bordeaux in a sleek SoHo restaurant. I don't frequent establishments with velvet ropes of any sort. Though I am a fan of establishments with other sorts of ropes, like climbing or nautical. And my black-tie gala experience is mostly comprised of some lovely events I've worked on.  (I usually attend these events sweaty and frenzied, having changed into my gown in a hotel bathroom stall while simultaneously shimmying my pantyhose on and shoving a piece of pizza in my mouth.) Glamour. 

But the fabulosity of New York City is an intriguing environment to inhabit. Some days I love it. Some days I hate it. Sometimes I'm envious. Sometimes I get exhausted just looking at the fabulous people leading fabulous lives because, Dear Lord, I just couldn't look that fabulous all the time without the help of a daily blow-out, manicure, make-up artist, and personal stylist. And a therapist to help me with my impending identity crisis.

Party-crashing has reached epic proportions in recent-ish media. How hard is it to be faux-fabulous for a day? I dared myself to crash an honest-to-goodness black-tie gala as an imperceptible interloper. Haven't we all wondered if we have a little Gatsby in us? 

Pre-crash mirror-shot

This task required buddy. I knew exactly who would be up for this silly and somewhat daring challenge: my pal Beth, the ultimate performer. She agreed to be my wingwoman without hesitation. Hesitation is the enemy. 

The plan was to pick a gala, dress to impress, and then brush right by the registration area while speaking French to each other. (I didn't say it was a good plan.) Beth speaks French fluently and impeccably, and I planned to say the minimum number of French words required to feign a normal conversation. If approached, act confused and attempt to explain that we were searching for a party, in broken English, of course. Should we get nabbed, we figured that flat-out lying was a no-no and could land us in hot water. But friendly, lost French ladies? Innocuous! 

For Plan A, we picked a Mother of a gala: The Director's Council Winterball for the Museum of the City of New York. Held at none other than The Plaza Hotel. Attendance by invitation only. $3,500 per ticket. Yikes bikes. For Plan B, we picked the 100 Black Men Gala at the Hilton New York. Mainly because I've done several events in that hotel, spent literally hundreds of hours inside of it, and know the Ballroom names, floorplans, and square footage by heart. Plus, the security is a joke, and I know it. 

@ the Plaza, longingly peering in

We learned that the Winterball began at 6:30 pm, so we arrived around 7:45, hair did and dolled up. The Plaza was crawling with hotel staff, men in penguin suits, and ladies in floor- sweeping sparkle gowns. Confidently, we nodded at the hotel greeters and breezed right through the giant floral arrangement in the lobby. Straight ahead there was a set of glass doors and a small line formed in its opening. Beth concentrated on our faux French dialogue while I scoped out the situation. We followed the other guests and stood in line with them for a hot second, until I craned my neck around the huge blond head in front of me and saw a firing squad of a registration table.  Then I was blinded by the flash of hired paparazzi-like photographers. Crap. This wasn't going to work; there was no way to get past these doors. Abort mission! I motioned to Beth that we should step out of line, which we did. From there, we worked our way around the outside of the windowed ballroom for a clear view inside. The set-up was intense. Once past the registration table, every guest was then funneled into a receiving line, where two photographers took photos of every...single...guest. We slipped out the side door. 

Next, we headed over to the 100 Black Men Gala at the Hilton. Into the lobby, up to floor 4 where the ballroom balcony would likely be empty. Bingo. We walked right in and peered down over the edge at the hundreds of guests below. There were several empty seats, and it would have been a piece of cake to go from the balcony to the ballroom. But, we arrived just as Mayor Bloomberg was speaking about the night's award recipients. There were several men standing in line, waiting for their moment of glory. And they would all have speeches. Long speeches. We were already a little buzzkilled from the Plaza ordeal, so we decided to leave during the dinner portion of the gala (which we didn't feel right about crashing, anyway), and return for the after-party. Having checked out the after-party room, it was enticing. A big dance floor, two large bars, and a huge stage with a 8-piece band set-up. 

When we returned a few hours later, we waltzed right into the after-party. La-dee-da. Unfortunately, we came back a bit too late. The band was still going strong, but the dance floor now held only a few stragglers. The surrounding cocktail tables were still populated by event guests conversing and enjoying the band, and so we sat down at an empty table. The bars was open (hooray!), so yes, we did order a glass of wine, and no, we weren't charged. Oh, this is the whole crashing part. It felt wrong and exciting. Weeee! 

The party featured a fantasic jazz rock band. The lead was a Grammy-winning (and gorgeous) female soul artist named Maya Azucena. She was joined by a voluptuous secondary vocalist named Honey, a rapping keyboardist, an androgynous saxophonist, and a groovy lady bassist. The band alone made the night worth it. We toasted with our free glasses of wine and soaked in the great music, fashionable guests, and all around fabulousness of the dwindling party. 

Results: Plan A went bust; the Plan B for Plan B did work, technically. With a little confidence and dressing the part, we did go to a black-tie gala for which we weren't invited guests. It wasn't quite our epic vision of mingling and dancing the night away, but we didn't get arrested or held in hotel jail (yes, they have one), and that's a win.  

Status: Mild Success? Primary Fail? You decide. 

Day 16: Never have I ever... sample the fruits of a real Indian market

Another belated post.  Why is 30 days so long, but also so fun?

After a tasty Indian lunch last weekend, we popped over to the Indian market conveniently located next door. I didn't know exactly what to expect, having never been to one before. We went in search of prepared/frozen Indian vegetable dishes, on recommendation from the parental units. But what else would I see? Fresh goat meat? Curry in bulk?

As soon as I walked in, I was in an Indian market half frenzy/half trance. It was awesome. Big barrels with new and interesting dry beans and grains. Indiscernible flavors of cookies with adorable smiling Indian children on the box. Exotic soda flavors. A huge display of incense (that I embarrassingly mistook for candy. brightly colored boxes!) And my personal playground: the produce section. I loved walking up and down the aisles examining all of these edible plants that I had never seen before. The shapes and colors were fantastic. Roots, legumes, leaves, and fruits... I had no idea how any of them tasted. How are they prepared? Had I ever eaten it before without knowing what it looked like in it's raw, whole form? I was so curious.

I selected a vegetable medley that spoke to me. The ones with most interesting skins and textures and colors. There were literally dozens I wanted to try... every single one! But I reined myself in, leaving with a harvest of six: toori, karela, tindori, white muli, parval and chayot. 

The next day, I googled each one. All are technically fruit, save for the white muli which is a root. (though chayot and toori are "gourds" which still falls into the fruit classification.) 

 Clockwise from top center: white muli, karela, chayot, parval, tindori, toori. 

Tindori and Parval. Both looked a lot like miniature cucumbers; Tindori looks quite similar to cornichons, but smoother, and parval looks like a baby garden cucumber. Short and fat and smooth. Raw, they have a lower water content as cucumbers, and both tasted like a young zucchini. 
Toori. Also known as the ridged gourd, this fruit is popular in African, Arabic, and Asian lands, and looks a lot like the offspring of a zucchini and a starfruit. The skin was very thick and rough, and so I used a peeler to take off the most rigid part: the ridges themselves. I left the balance of the skin on. Raw, it tasted like a mealy zucchini. 
Karela. Also known as bitter melon. This was the most interesting to examine, as it looked like a warted up pod or freeze-dried sea creature. My google research yielded two interesting factoids: 1. It's touted in ayurvedic cooking/medicine and supposedly works wonders for controlling blood sugar for diabetics, is known to balance various skin ailments such as acne and psoriasis, as well as being regarded as an antiviral, anticancer, antimalarial, and even antiscabies. What can't this plant do?! 2. I also learned that if you cut into a karela and eat the red seeds, this is anecdotally linked "Brain Fever", which is Victorian-era speak for meningitis or other viral infections that affect the brain. These two factoids contradict each other, I know. I cut my karela open and found... red seeds indeed. Oh well. Brain fever here I come. Raw, this thing tasted like ass. Bitter ass. Nothing melon-y about it. 
White Muli. This big guy is the parsnip's secret twin, in terms of looks. Would it taste like one too? Nope. It's the Danny Devito of twins, tasting like a biting and spicy radish over a verdant and earthy parsnip. 
Chayot. It looked a little like a mango or other tropically delcious fruit. It's bright chartreuse hue was appealing, but it's form odd. At the bottom there was a navel that looked like a toothless old man pursing a big lip-less mouth. Inside, there was one large seed, and I found the cut form to be much more aesthetically pleasing than the whole. Raw, it tasted incredibly bland. Just the general flavor of plant.

I sliced, diced and chopped each one and then sprinkled with salt. I then sauteed with olive oil, salt, pepper, a little chili powder, red pepper, and turmeric. Basic spices to enhance flavor, but not overpower. 

Cooked veggies, nom nom

Results: Cooked, the chayote was the tastiest of the group, now having a fresh and easy flavor. White muli retained it's radish-like flavor and now was just cooked radish. Parval, toori and tindori were still bad zucchinis, with parval as a slight favorite due to it's crisp texture. Karela was just as unpalatable cooked as it was raw, and I spit it out each time I tried to consume it.  It was great fun to experiment with these foreign fruits and vegetables, and to imagine how second-nature the preparation of these items are to so many millions of women in the world. And to me, they are an exotic kitchen adventure. Perhaps our most banal of produce staples, like mushrooms or celery or carrots, are alien plants to many peoples of the world? They eat these dirty, odorous fungi that is grown in horse manure! And these weird green stalks that taste kind of bitter, with chewy strings inside! And then there are these beautifully orange spikes...

Status: SUCCESS! 

Day 15: Never have I ever... eaten Goat (Indian food fun part 1)

I'll try any meat once. I've had venison, lamb, kangaroo, rattlesnake, ostrich. But I would never try goat, despite being emphatically told it was delicious by several palates that I trust well. 

Something about eating goat just doesn't sit right with me. I think it has to do with the fact that when I was growing up, my childhood best friend's family had several sheep and a goat. We would head down to the barn to feed and play with the animals in their large pasture, and Gretchen, the goat, had a lot of personality. Sometimes Gretchen was a friend, sometimes a foe, but I liked her. And now, I find it weird to think of eating an animal with that much personality. I know, I know, I will happily scarf down chickens and cows and pigs and ducks, and I know they may have winning personalities as well. But what can I say.... every time I see a plate of curry goat, full of bones and meat, I envision that I'm consuming spindly little goat legs, better meant for climbing meadowy hills! (yes, I know that usually legs are never eaten...) 

But at Indian lunch yesterday, I tried the curry goat, indeed. The meat was succulent and tasted more like beef or veal than lamb. It wasn't gamey at all. But it was hard to truly discern the meat's virgin taste through the thick veil of curry and coconut flavor in the sauce. 

Results: I came, I ate. It was good. I can certainly understand why many people of all cultures enjoy goat meat. Perhaps if my Gretchen-guilt subsides, I'll enjoy a goat dish again in the future.

Status: Success!