Day 27: The Oscar Reckoning

Welcome to the 4th Annual Oscar Extravaganza! This year was the first in Austin so things would be a little different: less space, smaller kitchen, still lots of awesome friends.

Here's the menu for this year:

The Social Network- Beer Gel Web

The King's Speech- Strawberry and Rosemary Scones with Lemon Tart and English Tea
Black Swan- Blackened Chicken with Coconut Foam
Winter's Bone: Venison Sausage Stew
Toy Story 3- Deep-fried Slinky Dog with Tabasco Ketchup and Mustard
The Kids Are Alright- Brussel Sprout, Purple-top Turnip and Kale Salad with Oranges and Grapefruit from Johnson's Backyard Garden CSA Ingredients
True Grits- Steak and Grits
Inception- Cobb Salad, Inception Style (Red Vinegar, Tomato and Mixed Green Gels with Chicken and Bacon Powders, Blue Cheese and Chives)
The Fighter- Blue Icing Cake
127 Hours- Orange Gatorade Popsicles
All in all it was a terrific evening. Thanks to everyone who came!

Now that this month is over, I'm ready to take a short culinary nap. Onwards to leftovers!

Z is for...

Z is for...DONE! Z involves a few things, but certainly enough to get through the day. Zagnut bars, Zebra cakes and zucchini. Also ziti, but didn't really need to find any. Ate the Zagnuts at midnight, Zebra cakes and zucchini the next day with some Ziegen Bock to wash it down.

Finally finished the challenge but no reflections yet as there was Oscar to prepare...

Y is for...

Y is for yogurt and yams! Yes! Baked a few yams and brought some yogurt to work, then more yam and yogurt for dinner.

One more day and the month is over. Still lots of planning for Oscar night, but it's been crazy.

X is for...

X is for...the spot? Or at least the spot where people would be most likely to break. Twenty-four consecutive days of alphabet eating and you are stuck with a day that has essentially no edible items. Sure you can find the occasional Xtreme candy or gum, but standard food fare is non-existent when it comes to 'X'. I did find one dish, however, from the Goan region of India (where incidentally I'll be about two thirds of the way through the Rickshaw Run next year) called xacuti. It is a coconut curry based dish that I made with chicken. A huge batch the night before and three meals during the day. Oh, and in taking the graduate student recruits for a night on the town, there was always Dos Equis (XX)!

W is for...

W is for waffles!!! Also walnuts. Haven't had Eggos in forever and it was nice to have a convenient food source throughout the day. Waffles for breakfast, waffles and walnuts for lunch and more waffles for dinner. Hooray!

V is for...

V is for vegetables and vanilla in various variations. Vanilla pudding, V8 fusion and five Campbell's V soups: Vegetable, Old-fashioned vegetable, vegetarian, vegetable beef and vegetable orzo. So much soup! Still kind of exhausted after the marathon. Making some progress on the Oscar front though but now for bed.

U is for...

Welcome to the week of doom! Just as one is getting used to the challenge (or as used to as you can for eating differently alliterative foods each day) the alphabet springs on U, V, W, X, Y and Z. Couple that with preparing for an Oscar party and it leads to an interesting week. So this week I'll be doing a few more doubling up on meals to simplify things.

For example, today was all about Udon! Woke up late so I boiled some noodles, pounded some down and brought the rest for lunch. Unfortunately the rush caused massive blandness, so when I made more for dinner I spiced it up with some greens, garlic and olive brine. Went a little on the over-flavored, but it was a nice twist.

T is for...

T is for...maraThons! Woke up early and headed down to the race. Training for this time was much less than last, but I still managed to finish due to a mid-race swap of my knee brace. But a runner's got to eat:

Breakfast: T is for training fuel! A protein bar and Gatorade during the race to get 26.2 miles to the finish line.

Lunch: Chipotle happened to be across the street of the finish line so carnitas tacos sounded like an ideal post-race fuel-up.

Dinner: Had planned on having some tuna and tagliatelle pasta, but my awesome roommate Cleve brought over some tempeh stir fry for me so I ate that instead with some tortilla chips.

Other than that, lots of water and stretching to help out walking the next day.

S is for...

S is for Saturday! Also for some serious carbs pre race day.

Breakfast: Salad with scones

Lunch: Steak with sourdough and Stone Smoked Porter
Dinner: Seriously large plate of spaghetti (which I did not finish)
Off to bed for an early morning tomorrow. Wish me luck!

R is for...

R is for...Pirates! Arrrrr, well maybe not. But it is for lots of things. Unless one is super busy. Then it is for a lot of a few things.

Breakfast: Raisins and Reece's Pieces!

Lunch: More raisins and Reece's Pieces.

Dinner: Ramen noodles!

Dessert: Reece's Pieces!

Never had a chance to get to the rainbow chard and rice, but giant bags of raisins and Reece's can be surprisingly filling. 'S' day will be surprisingly carbo-loaded in preparation for Sunday. Stay tuned.

Q is for...

Q is for quiche, quail and quince...none of which I had today.

Breakfast: Big bowl o' quinoa.

Lunch: Quesadillas!

Dinner: More quesadillas, including one who forgot Pacman should have been yesterday.

Now that my tortilla and cheese stomach feels like a party the size of the Queen Mary I'm ready for bed. Tomorrow's busy day will be a run through my meals, though I'll save the actually running for Sunday's marathon.

P is for...

P is for plethoras of food! Seriously there were so many things that I couldn't make room for in the day. A short list: potatoes, pie, pork, pudding, pumpkin, popsicle, pasta, peaches, pancakes, popcorn, and pineapples. What I did have, however, was:

Breakfast: Pears

Lunch: Pizza

Dinner: Pirogis

Tomorrow is about the opposite of 'P', although 'Q's last of depth may make it a little easier to figure out what to eat.

O is for...

Oh boy, oh boy. Another semi-tough letter, 'O' had fewer possibilities than many of its surrounding neighbors:

Breakfast: Oatmeal. Before this I usually had oatmeal for breakfast almost everyday so this was a bit of a return to normalcy.

Lunch: Olives and MORE OATMEAL!

Dinner: Omelette- one of those beautiful lettered dishes that allows for the consumption of leftovers. In this case, I still had a bunch of stuff from my last CSA so I made a kohlrabi, scallion, blue cheese, avocado omelette.

As a side note: I've at least semi-finalized my Oscar menu. Not sure which will be trickier, preparing for and making the meal or fitting all the people in my place. Here's the menu:

The Social Network- Beer Web Gelee

Black Swan- Black and White Poultry

The King's Speech- Tea and Kingly Scones

Winter's Bone- Venison Stew

True Grit- Texas Ranger LeBoeuf and Grits

Toy Story 3- Deep-Fried Slinky Dog

The Kids Are Alright- Local Farm Salad

Inception- Savory Layered Mindmeld

The Fighter- Blue Icing Cake

127 Hours- Orange Gatorade Popsicle

N is for...

With M finished I'm onto the second half, so being the Final Countdown! (Cue pre-illusion dance!) Today's plethora of N includes:

Breakfast: Mixed nuts with a nectarine.

Lunch: Naan, more mixed nuts and Nerds.

Dinner: Nachos, Necco wafers, Now & Later, and New Belgian beers.

A final note: My mom knows about this challenge and sent me the Mixed Nuts (the black out in the picture is her doing), Necco wafers, Now & Later and Nerds as a Valentine's Day gift. Isn't she sweet?

M is for...

Today was a bit of a relaxing day. No real defined meals, but rather just a series of 'M's. Mango, dried mango, fried masa, mozzarella, maraschino cherries, Milano cookes, Milky Way, macaroni and cheese, Magic Hat and Motherboy XXX. Tons of options for 'M'.

Half way done. While being prepared makes things much easier, it feels like I've been doing this forever. Should be an interesting second half.

L is for...

L is for lunacy! Or in this case:

Breakfast: Lemon pies

Lunch: This is one of my few rule-bendings of the month. I went up to Waco this weekend to visit the sister and attend a Blacksmithing course from the Homestead Heritage (http://www.homesteadheritage.com/index.html). The full-day course included a lunch so I had few options. So today's meal is dubbed Lunch, Blacksmithing-style as I had no real way to work an 'L' into the lunch of the course. On the plus side, I did make this:

Dinner: Of course I had to do a lentil dish. Since I had a few things leftover in the fridge I decided to do a lentil stir-fry.

K is for...

K is for:

Breakfast: Kiwis and Kielbasa

Lunch: More Kielbasa!

Dinner: Headed up to Waco to visit the sister and a quick phone search yielded a Mediterranean restaurant. Kebab plate for dinner finishes out the day.

'K' is an interesting letter in that most dishes are ethnic dishes but from all around the globe (kielbasa, kimchi, kebabs...). In conclusion, three K dishes does not a White Power Bill make, but rather a fascinating endeavor in world cuisine. Onwards to 'L'!

J is for...

Michael: Hello?

George Michael: Hey Jerky! I wanna buy a house, Dad. It's gotta be big!

Michael: You said Dad, buddy.

George Michael: (Dejected.) Shut up, Jerky.

The above quote is from Arrested Development. If you haven't seen it, do it now! Seriously, I can wait. It's streaming on Netflix. Don't have Netflix? Steal someone you know's password at jerky-point and then watch it. Now.

See? Wasn't that awesome? Now for 'J'-day.

Breakfast: Black cherry Jello and juice.

Lunch: Beef jerky with a few pickled jalapeño slices.

Snack: Bag of Jolly Ranchers.

Dinner: More beef jerky with the last of the Jello.

Hooray for Jerky! I've always loved it and now I had an excuse to eat it all day. Onwards to 'K'!

I is for...

I is for ICE CREAM! and ICED TEA!....but mostly ICE CREAM!

Despite some awesome suggestions from friends, I figured to muscle out today with just ice cream and iced tea as a) I didn't have time to go to the grocery store yesterday or today and b) I had no booze to make Irish coffee. So, breakdown:

Breakfast: Half pint Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream. Two glasses of iced tea.

Lunch: Full pint of Blue Bell Happy Trails Ice Cream.

Dinner: Remainder of Cookie Dough Ice Cream and more iced tea.

Sugary beverages and iced cream for three meals of the day. It is a child's dream! Tomorrow should involve fewer glucose spikes. My pancreas will thank me.

H is for...

H is for healthy to heavy to hearty (except for a midnight ham raid):

Breakfast: Honeydew melon

Lunch: Hamburgers from Jack-in-the-Box

Dinner: Hash with corned beef, corn, and purple top turnips.

Midnight ham raid led to no planned lunch but luckily hamburgers aren't super hard to find in this country. Tomorrow is 'I'-day so by this time tomorrow I'll inevitably be neck-deep in ice cream.

G is for...

G started out with a midnight raid on that tasty pack of gummi bears there. Continuing:

Breakfast: Grapefruit

Lunch: Gyro plate with stuffed grape leaves. Grapes and ginger snaps as a snack.

Dinner: Mixed greens salad with goat cheese, grapes and garlic green beans.

Great googali-moogali lots of 'G's! A refreshing day of plenty of 'G's is nice as some crazy days are coming. Should be interesting.

F is for...

F is for fricative frittata. 'F' began with fries at Frank's after midnight and a sweet Robert Randolph show Saturday night. Slept in late and then went for my marathon crucible run. Managed to finish 20 miles which means that I can finish the marathon in two weeks. Woohoo! So my only real 'meal' of the day (as I didn't finish my run until 6pm) was this: a feta, fontina, fig frittata. Quickly devoured, it was tasty.

Went to HEB to pick up some stuff for the next few days. 'I' proves to be tricky as I have iced tea and ice cream. Sure, I know that spending all day eating ice cream isn't the worst thing in the world, but if anyone thinks of anything to supplement it let me know.

E is for...

E is for eggs, in all of their forms.

Breakfast: Plate of fried eggs.

Lunch: Broiled eggplant slices.

Dinner: Egg-fried eggplant with....more fried eggs! Needless to say by the end of the day I had consumed my daily allotment of eggs and eggplant.

D is for...

D is for Day, Snow. Hooray for snow in Austin! Still went into lab but it was pretty cool to see snow covered streets and mostly empty roads on my way in. Stopped by Ken's Doughnuts on the way to grab breakfast leading to:

Breakfast: Doughnuts! I asked for a random assortment and started eating them when I got to lab. Had planned on giving lots away but since almost no one was there I occasionally grabbed another. And another. And another. And then realized I had eaten ten. Soooo many doughnuts.

Lunch: Dates stuffed with Danish blue cheese.

Dinner: Pork dumplings with some Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA.

All in all a solid day (mostly filled with doughnuts). Still need to go shopping for the upcoming letters. Onwards to 'E'!

C is for...

C is for crazy culinary cooking challenges! Or in this case:

Breakfast: Dried cranberries and cashews.

Lunch: More dried cranberries and cashews. Serious, so many cranberries and cashews! I brought the carrots and celery as well but only had brief periods to eat and it was too much work to open new bags. At the end of the day both bags remained unopened although along with my onion I have plenty of mirepoix to begin a plethora of future French dishes.

Dinner: Cole slaw and some carrots but not from that bag but rather from my CSA that I picked up today. I figured I'd leave the HEB bag for another day and eat the ones that were plucked out of the ground this morning.

Speaking of my CSA, I now have spinach, beets, rainbow chard, scallions, purple top turnips, lettuce, bok choy, kohl rabi, dill and cilanto to work into dishes in the near future. As always suggestions are welcome.

So despite what seemed like a plethora of letters a few days ago, but next few days are a bit scarce. I wasn't able to find any convenient 'D's at the Co-op during a quick search, but with the help of suggestions I think I will pick up some doughnuts in the morning, dates and Danish blue cheese for lunch and perhaps grab some dumplings for dinner. Maybe find something that uses my abundance of dill. Who knows what tomorrow will really bring?

Off to bed, long day tomorrow. Oh well, 'C'est la vie.

B is for...

Day 2: The 'B'eezneez

The picture above shows my meals for the day. They were divided as such:

Breakfast: Fresh blueberries

Lunch: Big bag of banana crisps. Had I realized I would be at lab as late as I was I probably would have supplemented it with Matt's offer to grab a Chipotle burrito after class.

Dinner: Broccoli and baked beets with bacon bits heated in butter. Tasty way to finish off the day.

Two down, twenty-four to go. (Cue clock noise from 24.) Thanks for all of the suggestions for 'D' day. I'm heading to the grocery store to pick up my CSA tomorrow (http://www.jbgorganic.com/) [which should be interesting to integrate into dishes in the next week or so] and will see what I can find. While some of the high point Scrabble letters (e.g. Q, Z) in the future are surprisingly easier than might first be imagined (quail, quinoa & quiche, zita, & zucchini), the one I'm having trouble with is 'X'. I can't think of any ingredients but perhaps there are mysterious ethnic dishes out there that have eluded me. I'll keep you posted.

As a final side note: I'm working on my Oscar menu which happily is on the 27th this year and thus the day after this challenge is complete. For those who have not partaken in such a culinary marathon, for the past three years I've thrown a Oscar dinner party during (and usually through the course of) the ceremonies that consists of a dish for and themed around each of the Best Picture nominees. The first years grew in challenge as more people began to come (I think somewhere around 24 is my high so far) while last year the Academy must have gotten wind of my masochistic plot and decided to double down and increase the number of nominees to ten. Thus last year and this year ten courses are created. Since this ridiculous notion requires some planning I try to finalize a menu as early as possible and practice as many dishes as I can before the big night. This year there is extra pressure since unless the dishes begin with letters at the end of the alphabet practicing becomes infeasible. So I'm diligently working on creating my final tour de force so that I may have time to rehearse. Should be fun.

Onwards to 'C'!

A is for...

Welcome to my newest culinary adventure.

As with the lentil adventure (http://thegreatlentiladventure.blogspot.com/), this one started with a conversation with a friend. My buddy Matt mentioned in passing one night that he had once partaken in an adventure of alphabetical proportion: eat and drink things that only began with one letter of the alphabet each day and progress through the letters for twenty-six consecutive days. When I mentioned that didn't seem too

ridiculous (relatively speaking) he mentioned that he felt himself going crazy by the end. So naturally I took up the challenge and for the better part of February we begin this adventure.

Some ground rules:

1) All food and drink consumed must begin with the letter for that day. This can be either whole ingredients (e.g. avocados, eggs, etc.) or traditional dishes that begin with that letter but feature ingredients that may not be in said letter-family (e.g. guacamole can count for 'G' although it contains avocados, peppers, etc.).

2) Brand names counting for a given letter are frowned upon although primarily can be used for beverages (e.g. Lone Star Beer [The National Beer of Texas] on 'L' day).

3) My two exceptions are water and coffee because I don't want to die of dehydration or fail as a grad student, respectively.

As these will be daily posts they may not be epic in length or contain lots of beautiful photos, but I will try to include them when possible.

On to 'A'!

As today is the 1st, I begin with 'A'. My trip to HEB yesterday yielded apples, almonds, dried apricots, arugula, avocados and asparagus. Here's what I've had today:

Breakfast: Two apples.

Lunch: Pack of almonds & a pack of dried apricots. Here's where it gets fun. Most of the time when you buy food at the grocery store it is designed for more than one meal (especially with things like nuts, etc.). But, since that letter quickly passes, if I don't finish a given ingredient I either need to keep it until the end of the month or find a way to use it in a future dish. Turns out I was on campus for most of the day and ended up finishing both packs, but I foresee this being a consistent challenge in the future.

Dinner: Steamed asparagus with an avocado & arugula salad.

End of day assessment: 'A' is an easy starting letter and there are plenty of things that I had to leave out (artichokes, anchovies, etc.). Future days will become more challenging. Additionally, since I can't eat one day's leftovers for the next (unless they can be conveniently transformed into another dish) all of my meals will need to be single serving. Planning will be key as the challenge unfolds.

As for tomorrow: I have blueberries, banana chips, bacon bits, broccoli and beets, which lends itself to a fairly good breakfast/lunch/dinner distribution. So far my biggest challenge is 'D'. I have dates and will probably grab a danish for breakfast but I haven't thought of what else to do. As will be the case for the entire challenge, recommendations are strongly encouraged.

I thank you all in advance for your ideas, so let the Alphabet Adventure Begin!