Power Brunch

It has been entirely too long since I've posted anything about my latest food creations. Although I've been collecting pictures and notes about my latest endeavors, no actual evidence has been produced...until now!

In my true old lady, food obsessed, fashion most things on my birthday wish list this year were food related. Namely a new coffee maker, a cast iron grill pan, and my new favorite secret weapon, a mini food processor. As soon as I unwrapped my mini Cuisinart, saving him from a life of flavorless solitude inside that cardboard box, we got to work. My first creation? Homemade pesto. Although I cannot give you an actual recipe for the pesto here, (due mostly to the fact that when I cook I almost always just guesstimate until it tastes right) I can show you what I did with the pesto to spruce up a very delicious power brunch. If making homemade pesto ain't your style try this recipe with store bought, or sprinkle fresh chopped basil over the top instead of the full blown pesto sauce.

And finally...Behold my super duper power brunch!

This deliciousness was created and inspired by a variety of things. At one of my favorite cafes in Santa Monica, Huckleberry, the have a delicious twist on green eggs and ham where the ham is actually delicious, salty prosciutto and the aforementioned "green" is really just pesto slathered on top of fried eggs. Being that this is one insanely delicious combo I started out to make simply fried eggs with some homemade pesto and toast. As I was browsing through my refrigerator, as I often do, I realized I had left over brown rice, and some veggies that needed to be used, namely spinach and mini heirloom tomatoes which are a personal Trader Joe's favorite. A frequent breakfast in my kitchen is a fried egg on top of fresh spinach with sliced tomatoes and chopped basil...and suddenly the mind wheels were a whirring. Why not combine this green egg, spinach, tomato madness? All I needed now was to replace my usual slice of toast with hearty brown rice and I had the meal of the century...okay, maybe that's an overstatement. Either way it was the best breakfast of my week.

Here's how it goes:
Olive Oil
1/4 c brown rice 
1/2 c mini heirloom tomatoes halved (feel free to use any tomatoes you've got)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 c fresh baby spinach
1 egg
1 Tbsp basil pesto
salt and pepper

Since I'm using left over brown rice, I pour it onto a plate and microwave for about 1 minute. Remove from microwave and set aside.
In a medium sauce pan heat 1 Tbsp olive oil, tomatoes and garlic. Cook about 2 minutes, until tomatoes begin to puff up.
Add spinach, a dash of salt and pepper and cook another minute or so until the leaves begin to soften and turn a bright green. 
Remove the tomato, spinach goodness from pan and pour onto your already cooked brown rice.
In the same pan heat another teaspoon of olive oil.
Crack egg into hot pan and fry until desired firmness. (I like my yolk nice and runny)
Slide egg on top of the brown rice, spinach, tomato pile.
Add a dollop of pesto, sprinkle with some salt and pepper and enjoy!

This is perfect if you've got a long day ahead without much time to stop and eat. If you eat it at brunch time (11am or so) you're likely to be full until dinner!

Happy Eating!

Midnight Musings

This evening I went to see the new Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris. (No, not the homemade sex tape of Paris Hilton.) It starred all kinds of wonderful actors including Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams (a personal fave), and Michael Sheen who's in another upcoming movie I am dieing to see; Beautiful Boy. I may just end up spending my whole birthday weekend at the movies since I still haven't seen Bridesmaids OR Hangover 2! It seems every where I turn there's another movie coming out I want to see, and after missing Water For Elephants I am determined to catch as many as possible.

Anyhoozles, the movie - Midnight in Paris - centers around Wilson's character who seems to be stuck in the past. Not a past he has lived though, but rather a historical era that he idolizes. He fantasizes about 1920's Paris, all the artists and writers, the culture, the glamor etc. and somehow manages to be transported to this time period where he gets to rub elbows with the likes of Ernest Hemmingway, Cole Porter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald to name a few. During his time with all of these, now, wildly famous people he finds that they are just as disillusioned with their own era and generation as he is with his. He finds that their lives are not perfect and tidy but rather very messy and rambunctious. 

When we have heroes that we look up to, or aspire to be, we place them in a realm of memory and nostalgia that cannot possibly be accurate. We look at past generations and think how amazing it must have been to be there when...(and fill in the blank) or how amazing it would have been to meet...(fill in the blank again). I find myself doing this too. I've had the amazing pleasure of working with a few people who danced for some of the greatest choreographers Broadway had ever seen. Namely Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins. And when people talk about these great geniuses of dance they use nicknames and share anecdotes with complete nonchalance. "Oh Bob would get so pissed at this...." "Jerry spent hours working that..." "I saw Bob throw a girl out of rehearsal for this." When I hear these stories I feel that same awestruck yearning to have been there when, to have just been in the room with those people.

But I think what the movie is trying to tell us is that no matter how much we think all the generations before us had it figured out, they were just as messy and screwed up as we claim to be now. The reason we ache for the past is because we are so unhappy, or bored, or terrified with our own present. It's a way of escaping the utter unknown of what's to come by looking back. Hindsight is 20/20 even when the memories are not yours, but those of your greatest idols and influences. I think it shows that no matter how much we look back at these people with feelings that they must have really had it all figured out, in reality they were probably just as scared, insecure, and scatterbrained as we are now in our own lives. We think about successful people and can't fathom they ever doubted themselves the way we all do everyday. Someone of that magnitude must have known all along they were great, that everything they wrote or created was brilliant. Not like now, not like us.

Maybe the movie serves as a way to humanize our idols. To remind us that no matter the time or place, everyone has these very real human fears about the present and our unknown future. Everyone wonders how their lives will pan out, and maybe we need to believe that generations prior had some magical cure to all their instability in order to get through our own. In order to believe somewhere down the road we'll find that magical cure for ourselves in this generation.

Fat Free Cream Cheese Creeps Me Out!

Just like every other female in America, I set out at the beginning of 2011 with the resolution to lose weight. Okay, so maybe not in that obsessive hydroxycut, Special K diet, join Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem sort of way. I think the conversation in my head went something like this. "Hey, it's a new year. Maybe my resolution should be to eat better, what if you gave up sugar, for a whole year! It can't be that hard. You could totally do it...ooh Yogurtland. Yah I'm gunna need some of that. Screw no sugar, that's just evil, I do what I want!"

When it comes to diets I am almost whole-heartedly opposed. Of course I believe in eating well, eating fresh fruits and veggies, keeping fried foods to a minimum, blah blah blah. I just don't believe eating cereal two times a day for two weeks will give me lasting results in the waistline category. I was making toast today *gasp* "aren't carbs supposed to be off limits when trying to lose weight??" when I decided to put a small amount of butter and jam on my toast. Probably no more than one teaspoon of each, and I got to thinking. I recently watched the movie Food Inc which has inspired me to be more conscious of where the food I buy is coming from but also to be aware of what my food is made of.

In this diet-crazed world it seems that every product at the grocery store has a "light" version. Fat-Free cream cheese, Sugar-Free fruit juice, butter substitutes, and Non-Fat chocolate pudding. Although I am all for watching our weight and keeping an overall low fat and sugar diet, when does consuming all the chemicals to make such products as sugar-free Hershey bars become more of a hindrance to our bodies than if we just ate the full fat alternative made of ingredients we can actually pronounce? Not to mention who wants to eat sugar free Hersheys? It tastes like cardboard! I am guilty of using non-calorie sweeteners such as Splenda or Equal in my coffee. But that's mostly because I like LOTS of sugar in my coffee and if I used the real stuff it would probably be enough to bake a small cookie or keep a toddler bouncing off the walls for a minimum of 2 hours.

I digress. The question I guess I am posing is this; if used in moderation, is putting one teaspoon of real, organic butter on my toast really worse for me than the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" Spray that boasts only 20 calories per 25 sprays, made of who knows what? I am in no way advocating always using butter, or whole milk (ew!) but rather asking where is the right place to draw the line with all these chemicals. At least with real fats, like the ones found in that damn almond butter I love so much, my body can recognize what it is digesting. The fats from nuts are found naturally in the environment unlike ingredients such as Carrageenan, Potassium Sorbate, and Calcium Propionate all found in Fat Free cream cheese. I recently bought "light" cranberry juice thinking I was being smart in avoiding some of the sugar and calories but I almost immediately regretted the decision. First of all, it tasted like hyper-sweet cough syrup, and secondly because every time I drank it I got a stomach ache. Something in this hybrid juice really didn't get along with my tummy.

So which is the lesser of the two evils? Does having a diet reliant on diet-versions of my favorite foods really help me lose weight? Or can we learn to moderate ourselves. Let's be honest, if I am going to eat a cookie I'd rather it be made from scratch and just deal with the fact that I am choosing to consume some extra calories. Not to mention baked goods made with things like Splenda and margarine really freak me out. Am I right? Am I right?

Early Mornings

Good morning early risers!

It is a beautiful day in Los Angeles and in rare fashion I am wide awake and enjoying the morning calm. While living and working in San Diego I often found myself up extremely early (like, before the sun comes up early) which is no easy task, but not always entirely unpleasant. With the exception of the few days I woke up with massive headaches from one too many glasses of wine the night before...but that's a story for another time.
 
While waking up at the ungodly hours I was never able to really relax and enjoy the morning. As soon as I was able to peel myself out from under the covers it was into the shower and onto my morning routine of vocal warmups (sorry neighbors) and lots of coffee. Generally by 7am we were in the van on our way to which ever school was our destination of the day. And by the time our performances for the day were done it was afternoon. The mornings seemed to fly by without notice while we unloaded our set in an array of locations which by the third week all seemed to blur together.

My reason for being up this morning is a temporary gig as nanny/driver for a family while the mother recovers from surgery. Gotta love that day job eh? Hi, my name is Cami. I'm a professional dancer slash performer slash nanny. Yikes. Lets hope I can drop that last title soon and replace it with something a little more awesome like broadway diva, or rising star, or superhero... I went too far again didn't I? Anyhoozles, I figured after my long two-audition day yesterday that getting up and staying up after dropping the kids would be torture. But I guess the sunshine and fresh air is luring me to stay awake and present for this morning. Or maybe it's the two cups of coffee I drank. My money's on the rays of sunlight pouring into my room. It feels like a frickin Disney movie in here I swear, all I need is some singing birds to come help with my dishes. Wouldn't that be nice.

All in all, real life is progressing as always. I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with my mom to celebrate mother's day and we had all kinds of wonderful chats. Exchanging new discoveries each of us is making on this never ending journey. The constant changes, ebbing and flowing through anything life throws at us even when we think it's all too much. I admire my mom a lot more than I probably let her know, but I gotta brag a bit and say she is one fantastic lady. To think she is still reinventing herself after two kids and a whole lotta living is inspiring. Just reminds me that life is really not about reaching a destination. We often think "once I have this I'll really be happy" or "After I reach this point in my career, work with this person, make this movie I'll be set" But that's just the thing, those sort of destinations, and clean cut milestones don't really exist. Except maybe in retrospect when we can look back and say, "ah yes, that's when I really started believing in myself as an actress" or "That's when I realized this relationship wasn't going to work" that "this school really was the right choice for me". But we can never make these realizations when we are in the middle of it, trudging through the mud of whatever today brings us because we are too busy learning and experiencing to notice or care.

Now I can look back on my time at school and pinpoint so many personal shifts within me. But at the time, I was just living. Going parties and classes, trying to survive 8am Tai Chi, and rehearsal every night. I'll be interested to see how the rest of this year plays out as I become more and more of a "real person". I'm sure it will continue to be a wild and bumpy ride!

Happy May

I am taking some time on this delicious day to write to you in the vain of a recent blog post. Here though, I have traded in the crowded Coffee Bean full of awkward first dates for a more serene, outdoor patio at my neighborhood favorite Coral Tree Cafe. Instead of hearing the sounds of stunted date conversations, blenders grinding out frothy coffee treats, and overplayed top 20 radio hits I am surrounded by a sound scape of world music, little chatter, and surprisingly no car horns! Maybe I just jinxed myself, we’ll see if that holds true through the end of this post.

In my first hour of time here I was sharing the patio with only two other women  who seemed to be writing something together. One had out a laptop, the other an ipad, and they were spitting out phrases like “what stanza was that?” “Do you think we’ve left her alone for too long?” “No, the last time we heard from Jenny she was 36, so she can’t be in this part.” Very interesting stuff indeed. I began fantasizing about them needing a young actress to give life to their characters, choosing the cute girl on the patio who eventually stars in their hit movie, wins an Oscar and takes the world by storm...Too far? Too soon? Eh, a girl can dream can’t she?

Most other people at the cafe this gorgeous afternoon are glued to laptops with earbuds in apparently studying or researching for something. As I walked through the seating area I saw many a word document open, sitting idly while the writer searched through pages of notes and textbooks. Ahhh the joys of school. Reinforces for me how happy I am to be done studying for tests I could care less about. Yes I am talking to you Native American Studies, Air Pollution, and Linguistics, don’t act like I forgot how much your exams made me want to kill myself. This past week I had the immense pleasure of seeing so many of my friends and peers in UCLA’s production of Rent. The show was truly wonderful and I couldn’t help but feel like a proud mama seeing all the younger TFT Bruins coming into their own as actors and performers. Especially those who I’ve known since they were itty bitty freshman. Walking away from the show I was struck for the first time by nostalgia for my time in school. It was the first time in the last year since I’ve been graduated (yes, it’s been almost a year, yikes!) that I missed being in school. The camaraderie, being in shows with ALL of your closest friends, working on seven thousand projects, scenes, shows, etc at once, working yourself to the bone just to finish all your theater and GE homework, avoiding getting sick like it’s the plague even though you know your roommate’s already caught the cold and it’s only a matter of time until you start hacking up a lung in voice and speech class...wait come to think of it, maybe I don’t miss that crazy grind.

In all seriousness though, it was such an amazing experience. One that could never be duplicated and will most likely never be matched in my lifetime. Sure I missed it, but when push comes to shove I love my new quasi-adult life I’m living. (I don’t think I’m allowed to call myself a grown up until I stop sleeping with my stuffed pig --What? Another over-share? Damnit.) It’s fun, tiring, silly, and completely unpredictable. What’s next life? I can only guess.

Here we go, Happy May everyone!

Mr. Big Scary Quake

Happy Daylight Savings!

Today I write from the discomfort of my hungover, spring forward, daylight savings daze. My clock says it's almost 11am but my body feels like it's 8am. My sore muscles are yelling at me to get back in bed but my eyes and brain are winning the battle by making it impossible to get back to sleep. It's an overcast day in San Diego at the end of a long eventful few days. In general this weeks shows ran smoothly. The most difficult part of it all was our VERY early call times. Monday started out easy -just one show at 12:45pm- but the rest of the week was not so kind to us. Our first shows were all scheduled somewhere between 8 and 8:30 am. These early showtimes put our van pickup somewhere around 6:30 am and my wake up time somewhere near 5am. Before the sun has even started to rise. Oye. Let me just say that by our second show on Friday we were all very loopy and in need of some happy hour love.

There have been a handful of times in the last few days that I've found myself whining or complaining about some minute thing. Yesterday's hangover, getting home from Trader Joe's to find that some of my Clementine tangerines have gone bad, or realizing there's a button missing on my brand new dress. But then I'm reminded of the insane catastrophe that Japan is experiencing. I cannot even begin to fathom what those people are going through and I immediately just feel humbled and so so so thankful to be where I am. Yesterday afternoon, while they're experiencing threats of nuclear explosions I found myself at the mall shopping for a dress to wear to a special event next weekend. Isn't it weird that myself and so many others can have a carefree afternoon like that when the rest of the world is suffering?

There are so many disasters that are preventable or predictable. When there's a raging fire we can often see it coming and know what materials we need to put it out. When there's a tornado in the midwest once we can often see it coming and most homes have basements built in for just such occasions. Sure, in these natural disasters there is massive damage, but we are prepared for them. We know how they work. Earthquakes can happen at any moment. Without any warning. And then suddenly a home is split in half in a matter of seconds. I've lived in California my whole life and felt my share of earthquakes but as I got older I never was afraid of them, I had never seen them do major damage to my home or anyone else's that I knew. But now we look at Japan who was hit with a massive quake which caused a massive tsunami and very large aftershocks. It's like a scene from one of these end of the world, Day After Tomorrow, movies. But it's real life. These are real people who cannot find loved ones, who have been forced into homelessness with very little food and water left to sustain the now crippled country.

Just a few weeks ago I was talking to my castmates about earthquakes and which ones we had all experienced growing up. But the conversation was light, filled with laughter. Sure, we shared fears about "the big quake" that California is supposedly overdue for. But it still seemed so far away. The threat of "the big one" for me always felt like those rules imposed by someone that everyone knew didn't really matter. It's that small worry that hangs over your head, that tells you to be prepared for something like this, but you shrug it off because it couldn't happen here, to me, to my friends and family. Maybe we sweep those precautions under the rug because if we give into them it makes it all real. Like being somehow being prepared and scared means the big quake, wherever he is, has won. And maybe we're all just too stubborn to forfeit our pride for the sake of Mr. Big Scary Quake.

This may seem fatalistic but this whole situation in Japan has been a very scary lesson in how quickly an entire life can be turned up side down and inside out. I'm writing from the comfort of my one bedroom apartment, using my fairly new laptop, drinking coffee and listening to music. And there are people in Japan, and elsewhere, that before this whole ordeal were probably doing something very similar. An entire country has been disrupted. A concept I can only barely imagine. Talk about putting things in perspective...

More soon

My Two Left Feet

So it has been a while since I've updated.

After my last post I unfortunately got insanely sick, woke up Saturday morning with almost no voice and spent the entire weekend on my couch. Thankfully it was Valentine's weekend and I was able to take advantage of all the cheesy chick flicks being shown all weekend. Not-so-thankfully, my Valentine this year was a studly man by the name of Nyquil. Although he and I hadn't seen each other for a while I was happy to have him back for this year's holiday. The nights were just getting so rough without him! The only time I left my apartment that whole weekend was to hit up Whole Foods for some delicious vegetable soup and orange juice. Like I said, it was a really raucous weekend.
The weekend after that was much more enjoyable despite the rain. I went back to LA and managed to have some good girl time with friends. Saturday night we went out in downtown Culver City which was a relatively good time. I think he highlight of that night was having a very drunk man, attempting to hit on us, tell me that "at first when I saw you I was like, this girl can get down. But now I'm thinking you probably can't dance at all." Yes, my drunk friend you are right. The booze you've consumed has given you extra powers at deciphering a woman's ability to break it down on the dance floor. Thank goodness I don't dance and perform for a living. And thank you for putting your hand on my waist when I have no idea what your name is and I am pretty sure you will be falling over somewhere near a toilet within the next hour. A word to my male friends out there, try not to grope uninterested girls while mildly offending them. For some reason it just doesn't quite work.
This past week of shows have been oddly difficult. Having Monday off we all thought we would breeze through the week. We had been mentally prepared for the week prior because we had known that we had to switch schools almost everyday AND had an added show bringing the week's total to 10 performances. All of this was no easy task, but we knew that. We had a game plan, I went to sleep even earlier than usual (if that's possible) and we all survived. This week we were not so lucky. Tuesday marked our earliest show yet. 8:30 am. Oye. Luckily that day we were at one location and since the second show was at 10am I was home and through with work by noon. Later in the week we had a day of changing locations. The first school was way South in San Diego County and the second was a private school WAAAAY in the hills of La Jolla. Not only was I a little scared for my life as our van was winding up the narrow road, but our un-loading spot was no where near where the performance room was set to be. Apparently private schools don't have loading docks. This being the case we were forced to take smaller things down to the space via the smallest elevator ever and the larger things had to be wheeled down hill on the sidewalk of a busy street and then up a zig-zag ramp into the performance room. Like I said, not easy.
After that load, and the quietest audience we had ever had, we were sure Friday would be a breeze. Although the shows were early, we were in one location all day which usually makes us very happy. Until we got to the space. Our show, best case scenario functions in a 20 ft wide playspace. The smallest we generally allow is a depth of 15ft. This school's stage was 13.5 ft deep. Man oh man. We managed to make it work, but the set up and tear down took much longer and some of the actors had to completely change their placement onstage and their traffic backstage because the space was so tight. It made for quite a tense morning and not the greatest way to close out the week. But then again we just try to smile and say "Ahhh the joys of touring." I cannot express how much this is teaching me about being a flexible actor and keeping a role and show alive for an extended period of time. Yesterday we hit our 35th performance. That's more than I have ever done before. Look ma, I'm a workin gal! It's pretty astonishing, and thankfully, for the most part, I am still having a blast.

Here's to more fun road stories to come.