Long Island Drivers, The Worst There Are?

I'm from Jersey so I'm accustomed to bad driving; sometimes I might even say proud of it. But my experience here on Long Island for the past few months has put any bad driving I have seen in New Jersey to shame.

As I've mentioned before, people who don't use turn signals piss me off, but that's nothing compared to what Islanders do. Shockingly I think they actually use their turn signals more often, however, they drive like such maniacs that it doesn't matter. I think the best word that I've heard to describe the whole situation is entitlement. They just don't care about anyone else on the road. I have seen more people run red lights here in 3 months than I have ever seen anywhere else the rest of my life. I don't know if it's true or not but I swear the yellow lights last longer to let more people get through. I will slide by in a yellow light and watch in my rear view mirror completely dumbfounded as four other people follow me through a changing light. Then of course people blatantly go through a light that has been red for ten seconds.

I don't think I've ever been as tempted to road rage as I have been on this island. Everyone cuts across lanes like it's their job. The odd thing is that people seem to switch between manic driving and relatively normal driving for no apparent reason. I get concerned when suddenly I'm the fastest driver on the road, because most of the time people are leaving me in the dust. I wonder if they got a memo that I missed. I've watched people on the expressway weave in and out of traffic across three lanes just to keep going fast. And its not at all unusual to see people make a turn across 2 or more lanes of traffic.

Of course I have to keep pace to some degree or I will get my car smashed up by some crazy person. I've definitely become a more aggressive driver and more likely to run through a yellow that I would normally stop at. No one slows down at a yellow light. NO ONE.

As I've said, it all rests on entitlement. Every driver seems to think they are entitled to do whatever they please with the whole road. Don't even think about going slow or you will get run down. And don't try and merge onto the expressway because apparently you don't have the right to merge into the right lane when there's plenty of space there.

And while you're out there on the road, please make sure to text, call, put on your make up, eat a full breakfast, write your novel, practice your golf swing or whatever else you might want to do to distract you from the boredom of driving.

Every day is a battle. Hopefully the car will survive.

Also, If you are feeling inspired by road rage, check out this neat Etsy find:

The Dinner Files Continue

If anyone is still interested in what I'm eating for dinner ( I don't blame you if you're not) then I will tell you what I had tonight. But first, I need to mention that today I discovered Pat's Farms in North Merrick. It was quite by accident actually. All I wanted was some place to pick up milk so I searched the GPS for Grocery stores near to the warehouse in Uniondale (which has been my base during days on the mobile food pantry).

I was excited by the crowd at Pat's Farms - they even had people directing parking- and it seemed like a small friendly place. There were some fruits and veggies outside ( Strawberries for $1.99 for a big box) and some seasonal flowers. Inside was a Mecca of beautiful fresh vegetables at pretty reasonable prices. I had to restrain myself from buying up the place but I did pick up an eggplant, some endive, a head of lettuce, some nice Jersey milk,a box of yellow rice, a jar of sauce, frozen tortellini and the box of strawberries as well as some much needed salt and pepper. I'm certainly going to have to go back as their prices were very reasonable. Did I mention that I paid under $20 for all that food? There were baskets of fresh herbs and great big papayas cut in half and some odd large radishes and all the usual things. The fruit was less impressive, except the strawberries. There was some nice frozen pasta and a whole meat and cheese section in the back as well as a little bakery. Definitely worth a trip for certain items.

So, having purchased my goods I started planning for dinner. I was excited by the eggplant. I used to buy eggplant quite often from the market near school but somehow I haven't thought about it or seen it in the store recently.

I had the thought of a sort of stew thing. I've had cans of chopped tomatoes and some beans in the cupboard since I moved in and I haven't quite had a plan for them yet. So I decided to make an eggplant/ tomato extravaganza. We were giving out yellow rice today for the food pantry and I realized that as rice goes I do like yellow rice quite a bit more than other rice, so I made some for dinner. In the microwave.

So here's what went into my dinner: Eggplant, Diced Canned Tomatoes, Garlic, Onions, cannellini beans, asparagus, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper.
Then Yellow rice plus peas, carrots, corn mix. And a dab of sour cream.

It wasn't quite as good as I was hoping it would be but it was not bad. I think I may have thwarted my appetite a little by snacking on cereal beforehand. But I have lots of leftovers and I still haven't used all my veggies!

Kashi Go Lean Crunch :(

I know I am way behind the times on this one since this cereal has been around for ages, but until recently I'd never eaten it. There are commercials for it frequently and it claims to be better for you than other cereals so I finally decided to give it a try.

I've been craving crunch cereals lately and this seemed like a healthier alternative to granola. The first few bites weren't bad. Actually I think I ate the whole bowl with relative contentment, but on the second bowl a few days later it just wasn't doing it for me.

The problem is that the "crunchies" are popped rice I think. This gives them more of the texture of popcorn, which I don't really like that much to begin with, so eating a bowl full of sweet popcorn is not what I call a good time. It's vaguely reminiscent of that caramel popcorn stuff, which isn't terrible, its just not what I want in a bowl full of cereal. If I want popcorn then I will go see a movie and pay $15 for a ticket and some buttery popped stuff.

Take a look at the ingredient list and see if you see anything that should be in a cereal cause I'm pretty sure I don't see much: Cereal (Whole, Oats, Long Grain Brown Rice, Rye, Hard Red Winter Wheat, Triticale, Buckwheat, Barley, Sesame Seeds)Textured Soy Protein Concentrate, Evaporated Cane Juice, Brown Rice Syrup, Chicory Root Fiber, Whole Grain Oats, Kashi Seven Whole Grains & Sesame Flour (Whole Oats, Long Grain Brown Rice, Rye, Hard Rye Winter Wheat, Triticale, Buckwheat, Barley, Sesame Seeds)Expeller, Pressed Canola Oil, Honey, Salt, Cinnamon, Mixed Tocopherols (Natural Vitamin E) for Freshness.

So, my review on Kashi Go Lean Crunch is a big thumbs down. If you're a popcorn fan then maybe you'll like it; I however, did not.

Starbucks Rebranding

If anyone has been to a Starbucks lately, you might have noticed that the logo has changed. Being that I can't really afford Starbucks on a regular basis anymore, I was first alerted to the change by The Dieline Package Design Blog. My initial reaction was, why would they rebrand such an iconic logo? The black siren in the green circle has been an icon of the overpriced yet delicious coffee joint for as long as I can remember. Now they've done away with the black circle. Apparently they are going for a more artistic look. I was surprised to learn that the icon has gone through 4 stages of development over the years. See the picture below from another Dieline article.

I wasn't all that thrilled by the new logo but I have to say that it's growing on me. I stopped by Starbucks as a treat today and picked up one of the new cups. It is kind of more modern looking. Alright Starbucks, I think I approve.

WIC approved

OK, and now a moment to plug Government Programs....

I took a picture of this in the store the other day because I was excited to recognize one of the programs that we list in our resource guides for our clients at my food bank. This program is called WIC, which stands for Women, Infants and Children. It is a nutrition program which allows pregnant and post-pregnancy women and children up till 5 to get a check for certain kinds of foods. The point is not only to provide food to the low-income bracket but also to provide nutritious foods for mothers and children, so only certain foods are WIC approved. The bread that I bought happens to be approved. I've never seen these signs, or at least never noticed them before starting with Americorps.So maybe only the VISTAS out there find this exciting, but I thought it was pretty cool. If you're interested knowing more about the WIC program check out the FNS USDA website here.

More Dinner Time Stories

It seems I'm either really enthusiastic about cooking or I could care less. The past few days I just had no energy for cooking and took as much of the easy way out as possible. Today seemed like a good day to cook. Maybe it was the coffee I had at 4pm, or maybe just the desire not to let my chicken go bad, but whatever it was, today was a cooking day.

I decided to just cook all of my chicken, which wasn't opened yet, just so I wouldn't have to worry about it going bad. I have never really baked chicken before but I figured it's supposed to be better than frying so I did two pieces in the oven and two in the stove. I may have killed the benefits an oven would bring because I marinated the chicken in oil, lemon and parsley. I need to learn to cook without oil. I baked those two in the oven and I think I've cooked them thoroughly. Then for the stove I made a marinade of tahini, oil, lemon, garlic powder, and onion powder for one and honey, balsamic vinegar and onion powder for the other. I ate the tahini one with spinach and leftover pasta and wrapped up the balsamic for later. So now I have 3 chicken breasts in reserve.Tahini has become a great ally for me in cooking. It goes great with so many things and it's protein!

I'd like to point out that this was Kosher Chicken, and in fact the meal was Kosher, not that I was aiming for that. I'm picky about the meat I buy because meat kind of grosses me out when I have to cook it. I try and buy either Kosher meat or organic meat because I feel better about the way they were prepared. Yes, I am a hypocrite because I will eat really disgusting meat as long as I don't have to prepare it or see it being prepared.

Fun with Dinner...

The tales of my dinner adventures continue tonight children with more beets. I decided that after several nights of lazy cooking it was time to make something with a little more pizazz. I was thinking about what I had in the fridge on the way home and it seemed like a good day to return to the remaining beets.

I cooked the beets properly this time ( as opposed to being lazy) and boiled them. I got some nifty shots of them on the stove where it looks like there's some kind of alien activity going on because of the way the stove lights up.



My next thought was of the half a cabbage still in the bottom drawer. I fried up some onions and added in cabbage for some tasty treats. Unfortunately I got a little carried away by the excitement of having salt and I oversalted it to a slightly disturbing level. Otherwise it probably would have tasted pretty awesome. I love cabbage and I still have a quarter left.




Meanwhile, I prepared some tofu to be cooked up. I'm certainly not vegetarian or vegan, but a camp I attended when I was younger used to have vegan options and in the mornings they always had scrambled tofu. It never resembled anything like eggs but I tried it once just out of curiosity and it had a lot of spices and flavors. I tend to like tofu just plain but sometimes its nice to mash it up into scrambled egg like quality. I felt like tonight was the night for it so I raided my spice cupboard and added mostly everything I had, which consisted of garlic powder, onion powder, turmeric, curry ( hot supposedly), paprika and salt. Again, I over-salted a bit, but the biggest problem was that I didn't add enough spices the first time so I went to add more turmeric and forgot that the top of the jar didn't have nice little holes to pour the spices through. I ended up dumping a huge amount on the tofu. Luckily I managed to get a lot of it off, but still, I think the damage was done. It just tasted weird in the end. But it looked pretty! You can see the pile I took of the top next to the bowl in this picture.



I heated up the tofu in the pan after the cabbage was done, just because I figured I had to at least give it a shot. I had fun with the beets because it looked like someone committed a murder when I poured out the water into the sink. One day I will actually save the juice and dye something in it.



And finally, my meal was complete! For the sake of the picture I tried to make it look pretty. It was an ok meal. Too much salt and the "eggs" weren't really very good. I didn't eat them all. By the way, I have real eggs in the fridge, I just wanted to eat tofu. And that's another dinner adventure. Stay tuned for more.

Getting Resourceful: Poor Man Pizza

Normally I would look at the contents of my fridge and wonder where all the food was, however I've found that I've been getting creative and somehow what I normally consider not a lot of food seems to be going a long way.

Example 1: Today's lunch consisted of a salad that was enhanced by random things from my pantry. I had lettuce, tofu, black beans, red peppers and mushrooms. Bam. Salad. Then some bread with hummus. There was also one of the last of the original ten for ten yogurts I had bought on shopping trip 1.

Example 2: Dinner came less out of necessity than out of laziness and only moderate hunger.I ate a bagel right after work cause I was hungry for one so by dinner time I wasn't starving and I didn't feel like massive cooking. So, time to be resourceful. I have an open jar of Victoria sauce, which should never be allowed to go bad, and I feel like eating cheese. So, makeshift pizza time. Bread+sauce+cheese+ microwave= poor man's pizza. Tada!! I also still have half a bag of spinach so I threw a few leaves on top of it. I'm sure my Italian ancestors are rolling in their graves somewhere, but come on, if you can have a pizza bagel or a pizza on an English Muffin then I think this is acceptable. I also heated up spinach in a bowl in the microwave. That seems slightly shameful since it takes about 5 minutes to cook spinach, but I didn't want to deal with a pan. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?