Phthph!  This month’s masthead is totally sappy. I don’t do sappy well. I hemmed and hawed. I kicked and stammered. But Mr. Wild Dingo, who’s even less sappier than me, twisted my arm and told me to run it.

It’s just as well. This week, I’m giving a yoga class themed on love in light of Valentine’s Day. But luckily, I can pull off a yoga class with feel-good themes and leave the sap at home. There are lots of backbends and heart opening poses planned along with only the hippest tune list in Lausanne.

TravelMarx gave me a new list of great tunes for Christmas, featuring L’Amour by Rouge Rouge. The song rocks and will be fun to use in my playlist. So I looked up the band’s official video. I was pleasantly surprised that it was the perfect balance to the sappiness of this month’s masthead.

Warning:  contains adult humor. If you aren’t an adult or you don’t have a sense of humor, don’t watch it.

Those body suits are giving me serious déjà vu. Leave it to the French to take the sap out of l’amour! Sigh. I love the French.

If you need to cleanse your pallet, here’s another “L’amour” by Rouge Rouge video with really beautiful photography of love.

Oh Yeah: Happy Love Month Babies! 

If given a last meal request, most people would request steak, fried food and creamy desserts. But not this crazy Italian. She’d request Bitter Italian Vegetables sauté. It’s a flavorful dish, easy to make and versatile. You can use it as a main meal adding sausage, as I did above, or toss it with penne pasta. It can also serve a side dish or appetizer. It’s a family recipe that I’ve enjoyed years and it’s been modified and improved with each family member. Starting simply with just escarole sautéed with garlic and olive oil, it blossomed into this colorful dish that’s as beautiful as it is delicious.

• 1 head Italian escarole
• 1 head raddichio or red chicory
• 1-2 heads endive
• arugula (optional)
• small jar of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, sliced in 1/4″ slices
• hand full of pitted kalamata olives, halved
• handful of pine nuts
• olive oil, a good amount, 2-4 tablespoons
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
• hot pepper seed, 1-3 shakes for spice (optional)
• 1/4 cup dry red or white wine (optional)
• Sea salt to-taste

Wash all the vegetables and shred them into large leaf chunks. In a large pan, sauté garlic (and hot pepper seed if using it) in the olive oil until the garlic is golden but not brown. Don’t burn the garlic. Use a medium to low heat setting. Start adding the escarole* in batches, and turn it over a little at a time, letting the olive oil coat the leafs as they cook. Keep adding the escarole until it’s half-cooked and shrunk down some in size, then add the other leafs, the raddichio and endive, etc. Keep turning the leafs over to coat them in oil and not let them over cook.  As the vegetables are cooking you prepare the sun-dried tomatoes and kalamata olives. At this time you can add your 1/4 cup of wine if using it. Cook until they’ve been covered in oil and heated, but are still firm and colorful. Add tomatoes, olives and pine nuts.  It should take about 20-30 minutes total cooking time on medium to low heat. Salt to preferred taste!

*If the escarole is a really large head, it can be steamed down a bit ahead of time in another pot very quickly, and adding it to the pot with the olive oil and garlic with its water, but I find it loses too much color that way. Instead, I use a low heat setting on the sauté pan, and add it in batches, making sure to turn it often as it cooks and shrinks down in size. The color remains brilliant this way.

For tossing with sausage: use an non-spicey Italian sausage sliced in rounds. Brown the sausage in olive oil the same pan first, before you start your vegetables. Remove the sausage.  Rather than adding wine last as above, at this time I use the wine to deglaze the pan and scrape up the meat from the bottom of the pan. Then add more oil to the pan, the garlic and hot pepper seed and begin your vegetables.  When the vegetables are 3/4 of the way cooked to your liking, add the sausage back into the pot.

 Mangiare!

Look at that pansy. He’s not even touching my hand. Switzerland’s softened the cracker. And I told him so.

That totally pissed him off. Yup. He’s still got it.

I found this photo that Mr. Wild Dingo took while he was home for three weeks over the winter holidays. He spoiled the dogs with attention and broke all the household rules.  He walked with us every day and got a real appreciation of the work that’s truly required for these two. And now I have a husband that is much more attentive to domestic duties around the house. Snaps for me. But I really miss our family walks.

Like the rest of the Western world, there’s no snow in Switzerland. We saw this light dusting just before the holidays. Mr. Wild Dingo was on vacation and had the pleasure of a freshly fallen snow walk with the cracker and the criminal in the forest.

***

I’m running again. Last year I tried returning to my old running routine that I had in my 20s.  Juno needed a trotting pace for muscle-building in her hips and I needed to combine their exercise with my own in order to alternate days I rode a bike. But I couldn’t maintain it due to the constant joint pain, insomnia and exhaustion that plagued me on and off.

It’s been three months since discovering my food sensitivities and changing my diet. And I not only noticed decreased joint pain, but a lot more energy. So last week, I pulled on my sneakers and running clothes in place of my hiking shoes and dog walking kit and headed out for a run. I released the leashes from the dogs and set off on my own pace. When Loki turned to see me jogging, he was so delighted, he ran toward me at a million miles per hour, cracker-jumped his face into mine and let out a lick—but he missed. I guess I’m not the only one happy about my energy level!

On my first run since last spring, I managed 30 minutes with no problem. It’s as if a switch went back on in my body after years of fatigue and joint pain. It suddenly just pulled out its normal 3-mile pace as if nothing ever changed. Sometimes, nothing beats the peace I find with that 2/4 rhythm of my breath in a run.  Since then, we’ve been building and going a bit further and picking up the pace at times. But I’m still no match for a husky.

“Princess, slow down! Wait for mom. She’s still behind us!”
“Jog-schmog! She needs to hook herself up to me on a harness so I can drag her slow butt up this hill and we can all get a decent workout!”

And now you know why I won’t run on leash with them.

“There’s nothing worse than soaking wet Jodhpurs!”

The only downside of the dogs vacationing at Bernard’s is that in the winter, they come home smelling like smoke. All dogs are indoor dogs at Bernard’s, and he and his wife seem to be smokers. But it’s a small price to pay for the luxury of having them stay in a “home” environment. That’s O.K. Neither dog had a bath in months before we left, so they went to their spa ripe with a dirty dog smell. When they came home, the first thing we did–after a long walk at the wet farms–was stick them in a tub.

“That bath sure gave me the blues. I’m lower than a snake’s belly.”

We bathed Juno first knowing she’d be the most vocal.  Naturally she cried like we were stabbing her in the heart as we washed away 6 months of trail runs and floor lounging topped with cigar smell. Loki on the other hand, although not pleased with being picked up and placed in the tub, seemed to enjoy his warm Pantene Shampoo and Avocado rinse, never peeping once. In fact, he leaned into our hands as we massaged the shampoo into his fur and stopped just short of groaning with delight.  But, as each one was in the tub, the other was behind the door in the hallway, crying in sympathy for the other. They may rough each other up but they stand together in solidarity against bath-inflicted torture on the other.

“Princess, you look bought and sold and done for. Who broke you doll?”
“Button your gabber Big Boy. Let’s just say I’m gonna deep-six a pair of
someone’s Danskos.”

The Phaestos Disc is a round clay disc of roughly 16 cm (6 inches) in diameter. It was discovered at Phaestos (in Crete) in 1903. It’s inscribed on both sides with pictorial symbols that spiral from the circumference into the center. Spiral themes are a huge design element in Minoan art and writing, featured on everything such as sarcophagus’, coins and jewelry. I knew I wanted to see this disc when touring Crete, and I have to say, we almost missed it. It’s on display at the Irakleio Archeological Museum, which of course has been closed and under construction forever. One small basement floor is open to visitors however and displays its most prominent pieces, including this disc. The disc was in a case at the end of the first of only two rows of stuff. It’s so small, I walked by it at least three times before finally finding it. 

Dated to 1600-1450 BC, the disk has impressions on both sides of hieroglyphic symbols including human beings, human limbs, a boat, birds, animals and various tools and vases.  Real hieroglyphics give me the goosebumps. It leaves me speechless to see a piece this ancient of a society so entirely civilized.

But here’s the important thing about the Phaestos Disk: nobody has yet been able to decipher it or identify its origins. It’s thought to be a sacred hymn. To Mr. Wild Dingo, however, the message is so obvious:

Party at Bob’s place (the Dude with the Mohawk). Free pizza, live band!  Bring your own Booze.” And then there are directions.

The Minoans were totally hip like that.

If you told me 10 years ago, I would adopt a lunatic dog from Taiwan with a serious case of crackery-nosis, maybe I would believe you. But if you told me I would be journaling his ridiculous behavior on the Web and writing in his ridiculous tough-guy Raymond Chandler voice, I’d laugh and ask you who the hell Raymond Chandler was.

As far as I’m concerned, Loki wrote the book on crackery. When I got him, I had no idea what I was in for. Blogging about that crackery helped us discover we are not alone, but in a world filled with cracked-out dogs.  And because of that, Wild Dingo, for the second year in a row, is a proud sponsor of Mango Minster, only the hippest, most righteous annual dog show on the Net. This year, all categories are open to all critters, canine, feline, equine, bovine and more. Naturally we sponsor the cracker critters category.

In addition, this year, Loki was honored with being called to Judge the cracker category at Mango Minster.  And as a cracker would do be prone to do, he jumped 87 feet high for joy at the opportunity. Obviously, Loki knows a lot about being a cracker. Just check out his entry for the first year cracker was offered at Mango Minster.

For those out there not familiar with cracker dogs, here are a few photos and videos to demonstrate a few of their fine qualities:

Toof-Showin’ Bitey Face isn’t just a sport. It’s a lifestyle.

Highly and vocally opinionated. 
Um, Dogtor Hilary, don’t look back. There’s an long-toothed Formosanorous Rex behind you. Stay perfectly calm. I hear they will walk away if you just remain still. Or at least shut their pie hole.

Full of sass while they’re trying to look like Cujo.
“Cupcake come any closer and I’ll cancel your Christmas.”

Able to leap to tall tugs in a single bound.
“Your tug, is lifting me higher, than I’ve ever, been lifted, before.” Sing it babies!

Speaking of singing: They usually have an inappropriate crush.
“My momma told me when I was  young, we were all born superstars.”

They have irrational fears.
“You mean to tell me you did ALL THAT WORK just for a drink of water that you could have gotten less than a foot away without any work?”
“Yes but Princess, the Lac Leman-ness Monster is constantly moving that lake and he’s gonna get me!”

And in case  you didn’t know, cracker dogs are a little edgy as the video below will show. Warning, turn down the volume. The cracker is in da house.

I could go on and on about the unexplainable zoomies, non-stop talking, hissyfits and well, just more plain crackery. But I think you get the picture.

Naturally, the show is very competitive, so there are allegations of judge-bribing running rampant among the blogosphere. But here’s Loki’s official response to all of that:

“It’s totally hip-to-the-tip to be called for jury duty at Mango Minster. The cracker category is only the most righteous category in the show. Top of the heap, babies.

Some crackers are born. Some crackers are made. I was born and made a cracker. I was one of the first crackers outted on the ‘Net. And I know all the cracker tricks in the book. Crackery isn’t about blowin’ your jets or losin’ your cool. It’s about flippin’ your wig, chargin’ your choppers and blasting yourself whacky for no reason at all.

Just because I’m a cracker doesn’t mean I don’t have ethics. I got a points system. But it’s under wraps. After all, cracker rules supreme. Chaos is part of the game.

Word on the street is that some judges at Mango Minster are on the take. But not me. This ain’t no flimflam. And I ain’t no goon from Saskatoon. I got morals. They may be low, but they’re morals. And living in Switzerland, I’ve already got friends in the bones and treats bank.

But every hepcat has his price babies. So if you are into bribing, fess up. Throw me a bone in the giggle department. See if I take the bait. 

So don’t let the grass grow in your ears. Get up and hit the crackery high and hard. Give me a large charge with your entry. Then fall in and dig the happenings babies.  Go, cool cat, go!”

***

As his PR agent, I can tell you, I’ve never seen him on the take. He’s cracked-out for sure, but he’s always been loyal and righteous. Sometimes a little too righteous if you catch my drift. Still, it takes a cracker to know a cracker and I’m pretty certain that though I haven’t seen him on the take, only a real cracker dog can flip him to the dark side.

So are you cracker enough to crack the King of Crackers? Go ahead and try. I won’t report you. Honest.

This month’s header is dedicated to my favorite song by Prince that I’ve been playing on my iPod whenever I ride the indoor bike trainer.

Shortly after returning home from Istanbul, I got serious about solving my health problems. I was pretty sick this summer before my London trip in July.  Remember how I fell asleep at Tate Modern? In August, Mr. Wild Dingo had to drag my ass around the ruins in Istanbul trying to ignore my sour puss from the constant joint pain, exhaustion and my inability to focus on anything interesting.  When we came home, I could barely bring myself to even write this blog. September was a record low for me of only 4 posts.

Somehow the insomnia returned this summer and fall with a vengeance. The pain all over my body and in my joints soared to new highs. No matter how hard I tried, my yoga practice was in the toilet. I felt physically horrible for so long. Anyone reading this, and plenty of doctors too,  would immediately jump to the diagnosis of depression. And while I would never belittle or minimize depression as a real illness (I spent many graduate school internships with children and adults with all sorts of neurosis and psychosis), I knew deep down it was something more. Yet no normal medical tests could accurately identify the pain in my body or the unexplained insomnia or the racing heart rate long after hard exercise. Depressed people don’t travel, ride their bikes, make plans or even want to do anything. I not only wanted to do them, I did them but with very low energy and in a lot of pain.

The week before London, I had to lay on the sofa practically all week just so I wouldn’t get so sick from the non stop insomnia that I would miss out on an awesome time with my brother. I’d have some weeks of everything just dandy in my body, then hit with months of insomnia, joint pain, body inflammation, brain fog, racing heart, forgetfulness and exhaustion. Some days all I could do was walk the dogs. I stopped teaching yoga a while back because I couldn’t understand why my body would just break like this.  If I or most doctors couldn’t understand it, how in the world could I teach yoga or wellness to anyone else let alone be strong enough to make it to a class?

After Istanbul, I had set up multiple appointments with different doctors both traditional medicine and holistic. I like to cover all my bases. I started to focus on eating a really clean diet. Still, at one point, I had enormous pain in my abdomen and had to go to get urgent x-rays. It was then things started to fall into place. The x-rays showed I had major digestive problem. I set up more doctor’s appointments for this but while I waited for them, I went to a juice-only diet to give my body a break. After a week, as things settled down and I noticed the joint pain lessened, I started slowly adding back in normal foods, starting with legumes, eggs, light meats and rice. I added wheat last and that’s when it hit me like a large baguette of French bread whacking me clear across my face. The pain in my abdomen and joints returned the next day. It was so powerful a change that it was completely obvious what was wrong. So I took myself off all wheat and read up on wheat allergies and gluten intolerance. I went back to both doctors for testing and while one confirms that I am allergic and/or sensitive to wheat and gluten the other does not confirm it at all. C’est la vie.

After six weeks of a gluten and wheat free diet, all inflammation left my body, joint pain subsided, sleeping  improved 90% and I’m back to my normal yoga practice. It feels like my brain woke up from a 6-year hibernation and I can actually attempt more French conversation now. French words are coming back to me and I have NO idea where they came from. They’ve been sitting in the corners of my brain, somehow absorbed from somewhere in my past and ready to be used. It makes me want to cry thinking that I was so sick I couldn’t access any of that for so long and now it’s just so fluid. Not that I speak French fluidly. Pas de tout! But a door has been flung open and all those resources are there ready for me to access so I can challenge my mentals again.

A few years ago, a nautropath doctor lightly suggested wheat and gluten allergy for my insomnia and joint pain symptoms. Stupidly, I dismissed it because I had no digestive problems at the time. But what’s really interesting  to me is that no medical doctor (and I’ve had tons over the last 6 years) ever suggested it or tested for it, even though plenty of digestion problems run in my family. As it is, I had two duodenal ulcers myself before I was 21. Still, I was conundrum for every single traditional doctor who’d shrug their shoulders, give me a pat on the back and a bag full of sleeping drugs which only  ever made me worse.  Just as the guru Prince tells us in the song ”Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright will make everything go wrong.”

Reading about food allergies, I’ve learned that the wheat we have today doesn’t resemble the wheat we had only 50 years ago. It’s been genetically changed worldwide for noble reasons (to solve world hunger) and not-so-noble reasons (more gluten for fluffier baked goods).  Hence the rise in “gluten intolerance” in today’s population. If you read about gluten, whether you are sensitive to it or not, it’s bound to do a number on your digestion at some point in most people’s lives. Especially at the amount of gluten in most grain products today. Some medical theories find that some people are pre-disposed to food allergies never to show symptoms but a big life stressor can elicit their symptoms later in life.  That would certainly fit my story given my accident a few years back.

I don’t know enough about my own level of allergy or sensitivity. I don’t know if it’s permanent or temporary. There are many debates, holistic and traditional on the their permanence.  I do know that since healing my digestion and keeping wheat at bay (Ok, I slipped up a few times in Greece), my skin, hair and nails have become vibrant.  I can definitely tell I’m now absorbing nutrients from my food properly. I don’t take vitamins and feel great again. I don’t need them because I can absorb them in my food.  But it’s ironic that just as I discover the joy of cooking and being a real foodie, I discover this.  While it sucks to be sensitive to wheat–I really hate being one of those people who can’t have this or can’t have that– it totally rocks to aware and in control of the unexplainable pain and insomnia I’ve had for several years.

I can’t even look at photos of me in Istanbul or London because I just look like I’m in pain. But photos Mr. Wild Dingo took of me in Greece tell a different story. I’m happy and at peace.

Over time, I’ll likely try to learn more about my sensitivity level and experiment with trying to keep a varied enough diet and try to introduce it again in small amounts. But I’m not holding my breath. For now I feel so good, I’m happy to leave it out. I feel strong enough to resume a normal life and work again teaching a yoga class again in Lausanne. I also signed up for a new teacher training with Max Strom in Zürich, something I would never feel like I could manage the strength for. I’m totally psyched for that.  I also have a bucket of travel planned for this year.

My crazy energy has returned, so babies, this year is dedicated to “Let’s Go Crazy!”

For fun, go check out the lyrics to the song. In usual Prince fashion, they’re meaningful, fun and goofy.

As you may know by now, Mr. Wild Dingo and I are vacationing in the Greek Islands over the New Year. The Cracker and the Criminal are spending New Year’s with Switzerland’s rowdiest, coolest doggie spa and Pension pour Chiens sans Cage, Bernard’s Kennel. Poor Loki hid behind my legs and put up some big histrionics in front of Bernard–though I know for a fact that he loves him. In fact, Bernard loves to tell me how cuddly Loki is after we leave. But none the less, as we got in the car, We heard sweet Bernard use his “big” voice. No doubt Loki was being a banana head. And by now, Juno and Marley, their walking pal who’s also vacationing there, have paired off trying to pretend not to know the whack-a-doodle cracking out.

I’m taking a few days off, so to hold you over, revisit a few of 2011 best posts.

Les Ciens Noir
Doggie Ga Ga
Methodology of Shoe Tasting
Flooding Agoraphobia
Hold Still
Someone Pinch Me
Orange Crush
Karmic Duty
Big Brother
If You Want to See the Rainbow, You gotta Put up with the Rain
Can You Hear Me Now?
Sexy Phoos
Mini Me, You Comlpete Me
Ten
Looking’ For Love

And of course any of Juno’s Mastications can humor you!

Have a safe and healthy New Year!

By the end of the day, that Santa the subject of a Formosan-Siberian Tug-0-War. The Formosan ended up with the red jacket and the Sibe took the naked Santa as her prize.

It’s so easy to buy for a Sibe. Just buy yourself a present and wrap it. Ribbon and wrapping paper are her dream gifts.

Nothing makes me happier than to make Mr. Wild Dingo uncomfortable. So when our neighbor stopped me in our driveway Friday night to ask if Mr. Wild Dingo would like to be “Father Christmas” for his three children, I didn’t hesitate:  “Yes of course he’ll do it,” I answered. Like I’m going to ask Mr. Wild Dingo his permission before I commit him to something so outside of his comfort zone.  I could already see him squirming. I mean, it’s not like either of us is equipped to entertain any 2-legger under the age of 25. And yet, I felt a grinch-like smile form at the corners of my mouth as I pictured Mr. Wild Dingo in a red suit and struggling over what to say to the kid on his lap waiting for his present.

“Father Christmas? I don’t care if you twinkle your nose or hand out presents. Ain’t nobody looking as whack as you getting by without complete investigation from me!”

After many years of playing the role of Father Christmas to his kids, our neighbor, Guy, thought it would be a hoot if just this once he could be in the room at the same time. “Our Father Christmas speaks in an Irish accent,” he told us. Well, that totally makes sense–given that the family is British and Swedish. So Mr. Wild Dingo spent the day practicing his Irish accent. Apparently, no extra stuffing was needed as Irish-accented Swedish Father Christmas’ are rather trim.

“Princess, do you think we should let him in? I mean I don’t see any presents.”
“Big boy, he IS the present. He’s your big chew toy for the evening. Go for it!”

All went well, and while the teenager knew who it was, the younger two were completely perplexed and a little weirded out by the Father Christmas with bushy brown eyebrows, who’s accent wavered between Irish and American while struggling with all the Swedish names.

Loki on the other hand was delighted at having a life-size chew toy.

“Don’t blame me. I was just wrapping your present.”

You all must think I’m staging this for some publicity. You know, bad publicity is better than no publicity. But I’m here to tell you, I lock my stuff up. She recently discovered how to open doors and drawers. And no, I can’t and won’t crate her. Besides ruining her teeth on both wire and plastic crates, I really hate the way they look in our main living areas. So we’ll have to devise locks on the doors.

“It’s not my fault I don’t have opposable thumbs.”

The other day, while I was sitting at my computer, she casually strolled into then out of the bathroom carrying a NexCare band aid box she found laying on the bathtub ledge. It always cracks me up to see the Sibe casually strolling around the house with contraband in her mouth. I laughed, softly told her “no” and she dropped it immediately.  Because she was such an angel in front of me, I gave her something delicious to chew in its place.

But don’t worry. I wasn’t born yesterday. New anti-sibe systems are already underway.

Do you people know how hard it is to get a shot of the infamous Mont Blanc? Seriously Internet. When we walk by it every day and try to shoot it with a “point and shoot” camera (the only one I take on dog walks), the results are less than fabulous. The snow washes out against the sky and it doesn’t compare at all to real life.

Here are a few  basic facts about Mont Blanc:

1. Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps and Europe, at 4,810 meters (15,782 feet).
2. It lies between Italy and France and ownership of the summit has been disputed since the French Revolution, though today’s maps place it wholly with France.
3. Over 20,000 people climb and reach the Mont Blanc summit each year. Though there are attainable routes to the summit for the basically skilled high-altitude mountaineer, the mountain claims several lives each year.
4. Two planes crashed into this mountain on the way to Geneva, one in 1950 claiming 47 lives, and one in 1966 claiming 117 lives. Lordy, I’m so glad technology is better these days.

Yesterday, at the intersection to choose between a farms walk or a forest walk, the husky hesitated and pointed toward the longer walk—the forest. The skies were foreboding. But I was dressed for rain so who am I to argue with the husky?

Obviously, she had the right idea, because the skies had the perfect lighting for that ridiculously bright white mountain. I was able to get these shots with just the point and shoot camera. I metered the light for the dark sky which illuminated the mountain more.

What can I say? The husky knows her photography.

Winter Mont Blanc Work-Day Procrastinations:

1. These Crazy Mo-Fo’s climbed and skied down Mont Blanc in a day. They climbed up it at dark-o-clock in the morning and skied down the north face in the afternoon. The video is stunning. Now I understand why people climb it.Even though I’m a goat, spending more than 2 hours in the snow doesn’t float my boat. So I’m just really happy to watch the video. Check it out.
2. The company Mont Blanc has an amazing tribute to the topographical massif, with several airial video’s. Click the National Heritage link and then mouse over the Flash control on the bottom to see all five video’s.
3. If I had an ounce of creativity in me, I would totally do The Beauty of a Second Challenge sponsored by Mont Blanc. If you like doing creative videos, check out the challenge. Or just click on some of the submitted entries. Some are just incredibly moving.

Finally, Internet procrastinations that are worth it. You can thank me after your boss nails you for it.  But you’re welcome.

They’re an unlikely pair. Juno and Mr. Wild Dingo. He prefers goofy, gruff, manly dogs and she prefers me. But every Sunday, the one day per week the four of us are together,  she’s his and he’s hers for the day. The ritual of taking her leash each Sunday has bonded them in ways beyond my imagination.

The other night, he called her up on the sofa for a snuggle. A snuggly dog she is not. But she stayed. For a long time. And her face revealed complete and utter bliss.

Yesterday morning,  she woke me up, tapping the hard floor in the bedroom with her paws, letting out a small cry. A signal that she wanted to explore the events outside the bedroom door. We were alone in the room. I got up to open the door, but it was open already. She could have easily left at her own will. I heard Mr. Wild Dingo’s voice below, sweetly talking to Loki. Loki responded with soft groans of delight.  I told her to go out if she wanted to and went back to bed. Yet, she never left the room. Later Mr. Wild Dingo entered the room and knelt down to snuggle with her. She let out a loud groan and growled deeply.

He was taken aback. ”Why is she suddenly growling again,” he asked.

“You cheated on her,” I told him. “And she knows it.”

This cooking thing is new to me. In my pre-Swiss life, I had a career and a two or three big hobbies that kept me too busy to try to do more than a few pastas, sautés, rice dishes, easy soups and salads.

I’ve been trying for about a year to get my beef braising right. I’ve made plenty of stews, from Julia’s boeuf bourguigunon  to plenty of much easier Italian recipes. Each time, I followed the recipes to the T and each time they would come out “just ok.” Certainly flavorful and more than edible but failing to provide that perfect mouth-watering beef that melts in your mouth.  And while I always ordered the meat fresh-cut from the butcher the meat just seemed unimpressive. I  don’t have a slow cooker because most stores here just sell rice cookers and most of the brands available online to deliver here in Switzerland here have gotten luke-warm or bad reviews.  So my braising needs to be on stove top or in the oven.

By far, the best of the cook book recipe I tried was a simple beef braised in beer, from the book “Just Four Things.”   Since I can’t have beer anymore (a gluten and wheat allergy is another post), I can’t  eat that anymore. So using the cooking times from that recipe, with just enough meat, fresh from the butcher, for me and Mr. Wild Dingo, I winged it. I made up this simple recipe as I went and cooked by intuition. Voilà!  Mouth-watering, melt-in-your-mouth beef, that broke apart with a spoon. I should have known. Prior to trying to learn how to really cook, I’ve always cooked by intuition. It worked for me back then.  Why not now?

And because it’s my recipe, I’m happy to share it with you. Keep in mind, since this is by intuition,  you’ll see lots of approximate rather than exact measurements.

Oh-My-Gawd Braised Boeuf
Serves 2 (with maybe 2 pieces left over for the dogs)

• 1/2 -3/4 lb braising beef (preferably chuck) cut into 1″-2″ squares chunks by the butcher
• 2 carrots, peeled, cut in chunky rounds
• 2 stalks of celery, cut chunky
• 4 small yellow onions peeled, quartered. Or a  bunch of small white braising onions, peeled and left whole. All the veggies should be about equal in size.
• 1 - 1.5 cup dry red wine. Go BIG here, meaning a BIG bodied wine you wouldn’t drink without dinner. It should be delicious but difficult to drink without food! I used a 2006 Barolo but Cote de Rhone or Burgundy will work.
• 1/2 large bag of frozen peas or 1 small bag, thawed
• 1 cup beef broth (optional)
• Olive Oil
• Salt
• Bay leaf
• An all-clad sauté pan or iron skillet but not a teflon pan
• Iron clad casserole dish with a tight lid or aluminum pot with heavy bottom and a tight lid. I just bought and used for the first time, an iron clad, Swiss-made, casserole dish and it worked the best. So if you have it, use it.

1. Take the beef out of the refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 150 C/300 F
3. Prepare the veggies in separate bowls and set aside.
4. In a small sauté pan–iron or all-clad, not teflon, do I really need to repeat myself here?–heat about 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil on high. Or like me, just pour in what looks right to you.
5. Dry the beef chunks with a paper towel, soaking up all the blood and put in a bowl ready to sauté. It browns better this way. Have faith and trust in JC (that would be Julia Child)!
6. In batches (I did batches of 4 pieces each), brown the beef VERY quickly in the pan, barely a minute or two total for all 4 sides. Use tongs to flip them over. The beef should be seared on the outside, not cooked through and still bloody. As they finish browning, take them out and set them aside. I think this is where I made a lot mistakes in past attempts. I thought the beef should be really “brown crusty” but it’s not the case.  Use the hottest part of your pan. I only have a VERY large sauté pan so I had to use the center and sauté a few at a time rather than the full pan. But it goes really fast.
7. In the same pan (leave the heat set to high or lower to medium), toss in the quartered onions and sauté until half translucent. Some can be a little browned slightly. But they shouldn’t burn!
8. Add the carrots and celery to the pan and sauté for a few minutes just cooking the outsides of  the veggies, so they’re slightly browned and lightly cooked, still very firm though. It would help to have exact time here, but you’ll have to use your brains. They should not be cooked soft. Use your judgement on pan heat in how you like to sauté veggies.  I leave the heat high and sauté fast.
9. When the veggies are done to your liking, scoop out half of them and place them in the iron casserole dish. Add the beef and salt. Then add the rest of the veggies on top of the beef.
10. Turn down the heat to medium on the sauté pan (unless you want to wax your eyebrows) and add the 1 cup of dry red wine to deglaze the pan. Use a wooden spoon to scrape up the meat seared on the bottom of it. Let it simmer for about a minute or minute-and-a-half constantly scraping the bottom with the spoon.
11. Add the wine from the pan to the casserole dish.
12. Add these optional ingredients: bay leaf, another 1/2 cup or more of red wine, 1 cup of beef broth. The braising broth (can be all wine or a little of beef broth and wine) should come up to about 3/4 of the way of the veggies and meat, just barely covering it.
13. Cover the pot tightly and put it in the oven at 150 C for 3 hours. Check on it from time to time, give it a stir and make sure it is BARELY simmering. If it’s too high, turn it down. I fluctuated between 150 C-140 C.
14. Go do your yoga practice or play with your dogs.
15. At the 2.5 hour mark, add your thawed peas.
16. At the 3 hour mark, take it out and test the beef. If it’s good, turn it all the way down to a warm. I used 50 C to keep it warm until ready to serve.

Now that I figured how to really braise beef properly, I’ll be experimenting with flavor, herbs and braising broths. The recipe above doesn’t have a diverse dimension of flavor as I just focused on getting the braising right. Also if you want a thicker broth, strain the whole thing and boil down the broth, adding a little thickening (flour or whatever) then toss them back together again. But I can’t be bothered with such trivial French details. I’m starving by now having walked my dogs, ridden the bike trainer and practiced yoga for the last 3 hours. In our Italian house, simpler is better.

Enjoy with the rest of the red wine and either add a salad, potatoes or fresh baguette (if you’re lucky enough not to have a wheat or gluten allergy) to sop up the juice.

Bon Appétit!

Or should we just move?

This is just a small peak into the tornado that seemed to blow INTO my home the other day. Someone TP’d the downstairs foyer as well. Three rolls of toilet paper unrolled and chewed up along with only one flip-flop. Loki’s so disgusted he can’t even turn to look at the trouble-maker.

There was a big pile of trash under Mr. Wild Dingo’s desk as well, shredded paper, cardboard and some of my dirty laundry.  Plus two books, my Eyewitness Guide to Greece and Mr. Wild Dingo’s Roman History book by Livy were shredded. Obviously someone doesn’t know her geography because the Cyclades section was attacked viciously by Siberian mastications, but the Crete section, the island we’re going to this month, was left in tact. But I think she made her point.

“Ooospie! Sorry Mom.”

“Insincere apologies make me hungry. Less chattin’ more snackin’. “

Ahhh! Now I get it! So that’s where the term “goatee” comes from. It’s funny how goatees on men give them a bit of a sinister look, but on a goat, with their bedroom eyes and pink smiles, they just look darlin’.

The reason goatees looks so sinister? When Christianity came into fashion, they borrowed a lot of imagery from pagan myths. In medieval and renaissance art, Satan was depicted in Pan’s imagery, who had a goatee. Isn’t it funny how these images settle into our memories and resurface as vague and not really logical feelings?

Sometimes Mr. Wild Dingo grows a goatee. And he looks so badass. But next time he grows one, I’m just gonna remember these guys here, instead of Pan or Satan. I can’t wait to tell him how adorable and cuddly he looks with his facial hair. I’m so betting he’ll be thrilled to hear that.

“Ah, they don’t look so badass to me Mom. In fact they look a lot like… dinner.”

And for your music-video pleasure, here’s a little do-hicky I put together on socializing the Cracker and the Criminal with goats.

I’m so depressed. This time last year we had a Winter Woonderland. There was fresh snow and visiting family.

Now, there isn’t a flake of snow in sight.  How could I top last year’s masthead?

But my two beasts can sometimes be the sweetest little sugar plumbs I ever did see.

So this month’s masthead is dedicated to the Sugar Plum; the candy and the holiday fairy. I have no idea what an actual sugar-plum looks like. And I have no idea what this plant and fruit is in these photos. But I’m calling them sugar plums. Just to make my life easy.

Apparently sugar plums aren’t really plums at all.  They are a piece of dragée candy made of dried fruits and shaped in a small round or oval shape. Apparently there are many images for the sugar-plum on the web. Sometimes, they can be made of dried plums, apricots, figs or dates. And I thought the French language was one big contradiction.

“Princess, I have visions of sugar plums dancing in my head.”
“Big boy, I got my sights set on something bigger than sugar plums. And they won’t be in my head. Tee-hee.”

Does anybody out there have the illusion that having a working dog will help pick up some of the slack around  your house? Think again!

“This basket is empty. What we have here, is a problem.”

Working dogs are a lot of work. I’m constantly battling my guilt over not working them enough.

Loki has a lot of drive to work and some juice for search. But, besides the mistakes I made early in his training, I’m also a sloppy trainer, progressing too fast from step to step, skipping important details between easy and more challenging behaviors. It’s evident he wants to work. He’s at full attention whenever any training tools come out. The rewards are part of his drive, but for him reaching the goal is as important as the reward itself. Even if I had the lowest value reward, he’d keep working for me.  I wish I had more time for formal training. But I don’t. So we make it up as we go along. And I keep reminding myself he’s so much better off with me, a sloppy trainer who doesn’t work him nearly as much as he’d like, than how his life started.

And Juno’s not half bad at search or other work herself. Not surprising for a husky. But many of her handling issues would require even smaller, more broken down steps than Loki’s. Her drive is more tied to the reward itself. Are you surprised? Still that doesn’t stop her from giving me her paw, or pulling out a roll over just because I want her to. And boy does that just tickle me when she shakes her paw for nothing but a giggle from me.  But because her focus is distracted by the reward so strongly, even if it’s hidden, her brain doesn’t connect her behavior  as quickly. So she’ll offer about 87 other behaviors until she gets it right. She requires so much more repetition before she’s confident about the right behavior. Once she’s confident, that will be her new “go to” behavior.

So you see, working a working dog is whole lotta work! And I have two. Woah is me.

Enjoy the 3-minute video below. Even if you’re bored watching the search games, you’ll probably enjoy the music!