African Music and Buff Chicks and a Recipe

Okay, WNCW has been playing this band - Tinariwen - and I think I have to have their new CD. Click on the listen to this gig on the link and you'll see why. And it's quite weird for me, I don't usually venture out of the English speaking world for my music, I get too hung up on story over sound. But this is. . . awesome. It's the combination of the electric guitar and the ancient other warbling sounds I think that's getting to me. Too cool.

The gym is being inundated by buff chicks! This sucks! I can't stand it. My gym has always been a haven for aging lesbians and larger, water-aerobics-taking ladies in their 60s - it's a place where I can go in my 80s leggings and giant hideous T-shirts and not feel weird for my lack of spandex. Also, it's a place where I don't have to wait in line to use any of the three pieces of gym equipment I feel comfortable with: the treadmill, the elliptical, and the rowing machine. Actually I'm still a little unsure about the rowing machine. I've been going there for about 3 years and I like it, and until the past couple weeks, I have secretly reveled in the feeling that I was one of the buffest women there. Yes! It was the only place I've ever been that I actually felt like a jock. And a young, hip, jock at that. Well, it's all over now.

All of a sudden there are fit and fabulous 20 somethings in fancy exercise wear (why? Why fancy exercise clothes, oh lord? Why would you wear something all tight and horrible to exercise in? Why spend money on clothes you are just going to sweat in?,) and the machines are full, and you have to sign up, and the gym guy, who usually dozes at his desk with a magazine, is being forced to run here and there as people fight over the machines. This is dastardly. I love the YW, I mean, they want to eliminate racism, what's not to like? Okay that might be a slightly lofty goal for a small town YWCA with a gym, pool and day care center; but I think it's admirable - charming, even - that they have it. So I guess I now have to be glad that they're making more money and thus will be able to eliminate more racism. But all the contrast is now making my tummy look more realistic in the locker room: it looks, in fact, like the belly of a 41 year old woman who has 2 children, who likes to cook and loves to eat and drink beer. Rats.

So, to cheer myself up after the crowded gym, I made a diet meal. . .Post Party Mac N' Cheese! Wahooooo!!! Here is the recipe. Be impressed.

Boil water for pasta. Butter a ceramic lasagne type pan. God my brain is gone - what do they call those things? Like a roasting pan? Not as deep as a casserole dish, and rectangular, with rounded corners. Sometimes made of Pyrex. You have one. Everyone has one. Take all the leftover cheese in the fridge, especially if you have a lot since your mom bought tons for a party and can't use it. I mean all of it, the smoked gouda, the bleu, the parmesan, the feta - all of it. If you only have boring cheeses, then press a couple cloves of garlic in with your cheese. You don't need it if you have exciting cheese like stilton and stuff you don't even know what it is but it came from the Fresh Market and cost like $7 for a little wedge of heaven. Grate it all up until you have probably 2 cups or more assorted grated cheeses in your buttered whatever it is dish. Anyway, preheat the oven to 375. Crack an egg or two, or, for more heart attack, 3, into the cheese. Make a white sauce (there are two methods to this, the correct one, where you melt 3 tbsp of butter in a cast iron frying pan and then whisk in 3 tbsp of flour and gently almost brown it, at which point it is a roux, and then you gradually whisk in a cup of milk or the lazy one, which is what I did, and in which you whisk a couple spoonfuls of flour into an undetermined amount of milk, probably like a cup and a half, and then you nuke it for a minute.) Somewhere in here, you have cooked the pasta. What? You don't have any pasta? The hell with you. Go get some. I personally use Wacky Mac. Now cook it, you fool. Then mix the whole damn thing together, white sauce, eggs, cheese & wacky mac and put it in the oven, uncovered, for about 1/2 an hour or as long as you can stand it. Now pig out and realize that the life of a vegan is a sad and lonely one, and probably will be much longer than yours, but also probably not as worth it.