I wrote last year about the wonders of my herb garden and the glory of Virginia’s summer produce. I find myself in the heat of another fertile summer where my farmers market is once again bursting at the seams and the lady that sells goats cheese knows me by name. What a glorious position I’ve come to be in.

Still, I wanted more. I’ve come to appreciate ingredients as much as I appreciate the dishes I make, and this year finds me considerably more informed on the subjects of agro-industry than the last. I’ve joined a small circle of gardeners, and on my last trip to London, I found my fellow tourist patrons were not summertime couples or vacationers from Europe, but elderly British garden ladies out to gaze at the lilac. To be honest, I liked it. But more on London later.

Back to Virginia, where the sunshine and rain a’plenty had me believing that this was the year I should try my hand at gardening. So I did. I started a vegetable garden in my mother’s back yard. I had help of course, but I cleared the beds and aerated the soil and pulled the weeds with my own two hands. I planted the seeds and watered the seedlings and soon I will be picking the fruit of my labours. It’s a downright magical experience to see something you planted as a tiny seed pop up and become as tall as you. My sense of wonder regarding the food we eat has been redoubled.

I fear I’ve become a hippie. Maybe it’s the pull of the sustainability-minded sensibility I’ve adopted, but the garden is just the start. I find myself reading labels more critically than ever before, switching to the fabled 18-in-1 castille soap, eschewing paper products and kitchen disposables, traveling by bicycle when it isn’t raining out, and frequenting farmers markets and organic grocer’s exclusively. I’ve learned a lot in this transition, where I’ve discovered that growing up my equally hippie mother had a few good points or two. I’ve realised that what I do really matters. I’ve completely changed how I live my day-to-day life. All because of a single little squarefoot garden.

I’ve got a few pepper plants, a bunch of tomatoe plants, and an assortment of other root vegetables here and there. What’s really come up into the sunlight for me though has not been my okra or my squash, but the deep network of fellow gardeners I had no idea ran so far underground. This garden won’t bear enough food to feed me for a week let alone a summer, but the passion I’ve picked up along the way will sustain me for years to come. Even the one dinner of beetroot I eat will be a reminder of how precious the food I eat really is. It started with a garden today, and maybe a compost heap tomorrow, and hopefully a better future in the days that follow.

AT&T recently announced a new set of data cost plans for smartphone users. Essentially they’ve broken up the old model where customers who wanted wireless internet connectivity had to pay $30 for an unlimited plan and instead created a second bracket for half the price. Understandably, the light-user plan (DataPlus) has a data limit, which AT&T has set at 200MB per month. From a business standpoint this is a great move to cut costs and to lower the barrier to entry for potential customers not willing to pay the old price for a data plan. That’s not the part that’s incited the wrath of the masses. It’s the heavy-user plan, which used to be unlimited, is going to be capped at 2GB per month starting Monday.

Yesterday I caught up on my news and opinions and it seems this pissed off a lot of folks. I cannot understand why. I’ve read the rants and the arguments and the frustrations, but people need to get real. For starters, internet isn’t free anywhere, and while iPhone users may only be 3% of AT&T customers, they command 40% of AT&T’s bandwidth and cellular data service. Not only does this demand fail to scale as more users join, but it just isn’t cost effective either. As a result, AT&T could be throttling smartphone data service to its customers anyway to make sure its mobile network remains usable. There just aren’t enough towers to cover the number of high-bandwidth users on the network. So essentially, yes we get “unlimited data” but at the price of worse coverage and worse service. AT&T isn’t the only telco in this pickle, there isn’t a CDN (content delivery network) out there that can handle the cost of transporting that much data over that far of a distance. If discerning users allows for better, faster internet connectivity for those of use willing to pay the premium, then I’m all for it.

The other major gripe seems to be the fact that there is a data cap at all, even for users willing to pay more for AT&T’s “DataPro” plan. I download like it’s going out of style and in the years I’ve owned a smartphone, I have never once gone over 2GB in a single 30 day period. Of course there are services you simply not offered over 3G, such as streaming video services, television, or downloading movies, but even when those services become available the amount of transfer speed they require will far outstrip the IMT standards capacity, no matter how much faster 4G promises to be. To watch TV on your phone will mandate a wifi connection, and anything you access via wifi won’t be part of your data usage cap anyway. Moreover, even if we do start watching slingbox on our iPhones via 3G, AT&T says DataPro users can buy more bandwidth at $10 a GB. 3GB of data, almost the entire the capacity of my first gen iPhone, will will cost a DataPro user $35 dollars. That’s what most unlimited users pay now, 65% of whom use under 200MB per month, according to AT&T. That’s a better deal any way you slice it.

Japan has much better mobile internet service in terms of speed, coverage, and standard features and services. They have a smaller net to cast, yet a larger number of fish in the catch, so they have higher prices for all phone plans. What surprised me however, was that the idea of an unlimited data plan in Japan simply does not exist. The SoftBank representative was dumbfounded when I asked how much it would cost for unlimited data coverage. Australia has some of the slowest and shoddiest internet service I’ve experienced. You’d think a country the size of the continental US would have it down, but instead the internet service I purchased for my house only allotted me 200MB per month. Try video chatting with your family on skype and the conversation can only last around 12 minutes before you’ve used your quota. And this is for wifi, not even cellular data coverage. Extra bandwidth was AU$10 a GB (see any striking similarities to the new AT&T plan yet?) and over the course of the six months I lived there, I spent $350 dollars on extra bandwidth, not because I was watching lots of YouTube, but because I was a cinema student that had to submit my completed projects via you guessed it, internet. My point is, there are few countries that have as many smartphone users (or just people) as we do, and there are fewer still that have to provide cellular service over a space as geographically large as the US is. To me, the fact that we offered an unlimited plan to begin with seemed too good to be true, and I’ve seen this change of costs and services headed our way for a long time. So how could so many others feel so blindsided?

When I started to think about the reaction AT&Ts announcement incited, I realised it isn’t a problem of logic. I think AT&T customers feel betrayed. It’s the principle. As Dustin Curtis put it, knowing there’s a cap means we all now have to worry about how much we download every time you open your phone or switch on your iPad. Consumers already feel dicked around by the cellular providers, and the reality that the rules could change again without warning (higher price, lower limit) can sour the service. But there’s more to it than that. The fervor incited by such a simple business change is indicative of something much bigger: the internet has grown up.

Mobile computing has made the internet indispensable. It’s no longer a plaything or a specialised device. It’s become a utility. Flowtown published a laughable info graphic asking “Are we addicted to the internet?” like internet usage is the latest incarnation of pornography or methamphetamine. Saying we’re addicted to the internet is like say we’re addicted to electricity. Just because we use it every day doesn’t mean it’s a leisure activity. It’s a utility, same as water, power, and gas, and it’s about time we started treating it like one. To function in industrialised society, you need internet access. Ever tried to live without it? I have, and even if I wanted to give the internet up for good, it’s not so easy to do anymore. Even basic, vital functions like paying rent or filing your taxes are difficult to do without the web, and it’s getting harder every day.

It may sound like I’m just telling people to pony up, but what I haven’t talked about is the big “if” in this equation. When the iPhone and Blackberry took off, I highly doubt AT&T’s network infrastructure was equipped to deal with the swarm of smartphone users that came along. So (and here’s the if), if AT&T follows through and gives DataPro users better mobile data service at a cheaper price, then the change was in both of our best interests. It’s common practice to sort your customers into a hierarchy and that’s fine. There is, however, a difference between what Comcast got sued for and what airline reward programmes do. Denying or degrading the quality of service to a customer based on the amount of data they consume is not acceptable. It’s a service you pay for, so it damn well be what it says it is. Rewarding frequent, high-paying customers on the other hand, is something else entirely, and I’d strongly encourage AT&T to treat the DataPro plan like a Pro plan. After all, if they get this right, it’s a game changer for American mobile content delivery.

Noodles undoubtedly make for the best late night food. Whether you had an amazing evening filled with romance and poetry or a night of drunken debauchery, the noodle joint is the place to round it all out. Never tried it? Well, when three meals aren’t enough to tide you over for the day’s activities, I find a bowl of some kind of hot noodles — pho in the spring, vermicelli in the summer, udon in the winter, and in this case, ramen all year round — will fill you up without leaving you heavy, satisfy your craving for salt, and comes in a formidably-sized bowl big enough to abate even the largest of grumblies. Simply put, noodles are the best late night snack around.

So when I was feeling peckish after seeing a live show and found myself in Bloosmbury, where did I decide to go but to the original Wagamama. Those familiar with both the UK and Boston will probably nod emphatically here, while the rest of you might be wondering what in the world Wagamama is, let alone how a chain of pan-asian-themed restaurants could win someone as die hard as I over. Surely Wagamama doesn’t live up to its expectations?

大きな地図で見る

Of course it does. Wagamama started in a basement, but the establishment could hardly be described in terms of peeling paint, yellowing light, or faux-anything usually associated with Asian look-alikes here in the states. Westernised Asian in England has a posh edge to it (a la Ping Pong, but more on that later), with minimal polished wood tables, recessed lighting, and exposed architectural elements. It manages to keep from smelling like a mix of floor cleaner and peanut oil as well, confirming my suspicions that Wagamama is using fresh vegetables and homemade stocks in their concoctions.

That’s what I’m really here to write about anyway, the concoctions, which are salty without burning your tongue and manage to offer the unusual on a menu packed with crowd favorites (i.e., I ordered pretty faithful tsukemono, Japanese pickles most patrons haven’t even heard of). In Boston I had the yasai yakisoba and gyoza, which were delectable, though didn’t exactly reek of the street cart variety I had in mind. In London though, the miso ramen met all of my expectations. It was briny like the real deal, chock full of vegetables that came piled on top, requiring a bit of stirring to get you going, and had a healthy portion of wakame, or green seaweed in the proportions most westerners are afraid to dole out to an amateur. In search of a late-night bite, it really was everything I had hoped. Next time I’m in London, I will definitely check out some of the more off-the-beaten-path ramen joints, but with a reputation as big as Wagamama’s, can you blame me for giving the big boys a well-deserved shot?

I spent years thinking learning Japanese was hard. It isn’t. It’s easy. There are no complicated methods or specific benchmarks or forms and orders and grammar points and readings and all that junk. Forget it. This is all you have to do: Read Japanese. Write Japanese. Listen to Japanese. Read, Write, Listen. Done.

This is how I did it and so far it’s working pretty well for me. You, though? You can’t possibly do what I did. I mean, for starters:

“I’m not living in JAPAN.”
Yeah, well neither am I. So you don’t see kana signage every time you go outside, but you know what? There are plenty of Japanese movies at Blockbuster and Barnes & Noble will special order Japanese comics for you and chances are there’s a language group on your city’s meetup.com or at least on facebook and you probably already own a ton of anime (or, if you’re like me, just ate a lot of imported sweets and noodles) since you want to go there in the first place and there are sites like YESAsia and Amazon.co.jp and craigslist and ebay and J-List and there’s at least one Japanese person in your state who would love to tell you about the homeland and most sushi restaurants have native menus if not waitresses and are you getting the idea?

“I don’t have enough MONEY.”
You don’t need money. There’s this really neat thing called the Internet, and word has it people in Japan/Italy/France/Iran/Wherever are on it too. You don’t have to pay for a class or buy Rosetta stone. Use Lang-8 or Smart.fm instead for free. Find a language partner to skype with. Follow @cipher on twitter. Better yet, follow the people that @-reply @cipher on twitter. Watch weird Japanese commercials and music videos on Youtube. Stalk Hikosaemon and Chris Gen and Maggie-sensei on the interwebs. Download game emulators and Japanese versions of cheesy 8-bit games for your computer. Change your operating system to Japanese. Listen to the hundreds of free podcasts from Alex & Beb, Japanesepod101.com, and JEdutainment. In total I’ve spent maybe $50 on Japanese materials for my 9 months of study.

“I’m short on TIME.”
You are lying to me. To my face. And I don’t appreciate it. Yes it is true that you totally need a lot of time to learn a new language, but time does not equal time. You don’t need an uninterrupted block of four hours to study. That’s grossly ineffective, actually. You need a lot of exposure hours (10,000 is the recommended) in sum. As in total. As in not all at once. You just need to find out how to integrate Japanese into the cracks in your schedule. While you’re waiting in the supermarket queue, pull out your phrasebook and try to learn some new vocab. When you’re driving/commuting pump up the M-Flo. If you’re waiting for your regularly scheduled programme to resume, practice writing some kanji until the commercial break ends. There are plenty of spare moments, if not minutes, hours, and you know, “time.” But if you are always prepared, there’s plenty of time.

“I’m too big of a NOOB.”
Okay, that’s why you’re doing the whole learning Japanese thing instead of coming out of the birth canal already speaking the language. You’re not going to know enough out of the gate. You’ll be listening to endless amounts of Japanese and you won’t have a clue what any of it means, and guess what? No one’s going to teach you. The point of listening to so much native audio isn’t that you’ll suddenly wake up and know half the words. The point is to expose yourself to certain patterns and phrases enough that you’ll get comfortable hearing them, and then too comfortable, so comfortable you’re curious as to what they mean and you’ll go look them up. You may only know two words when you start — “domo” and “arigato” — but eventually you’ll see/hear a phrase like nanimo or konomama enough that you’ll just have to go figure out what they mean. So yeah, you better like what you’re writing and reading and listening to in the meantime, but on the bright side, there’s a whole country worth of books to read and movies to watch and music to listen to that it won’t feel like work. Stop worrying about how much you don’t know and start worrying about how much you’re doing to fix it.

“I’m too OLD.”
If you can read this right now on then you are not too old. If you can make out letters and noises, you can learn Japanese. If you can say the phrase “Can you pass me two eggrolls please?” you can even speak Japanese (it includes all the proper vowel tones and most of the consonants). Contrary to ’70s linguistic theory, your brain actually never stops learning. So you’re not a toddler. So what? Your neurons travel a lot faster and your brain makes connections a lot more rapidly so you actually don’t need to regenerate brian cells as fast. It’s all mental, folks. If you believe you can learn it, you can learn it. Look up all those Definitely Not the Opera podcasts on self-worth and self-identification’s impact on assessment testing in high schools or that RadioLab podcast on Limits. Right now it may seem surprising what the human body is capable of, but you need to get it in your head that you can do it no matter your age or upbringing.

“It’s too HARD.”
Well it ain’t easy. But you want to do this, right? You’ll stop at nothing, right? Most people say “I want to learn Japanese” but never read, write, or listen to anything in Japanese. They get all nervy when it’s time to speak and refuse to try. They like the idea but not the actuality. That’s fine. If you don’t care enough to put in the work, then you obviously don’t want to learn. You people, just go away. I certainly don’t want to waste my time or yours. On the other hand, if you’ve tried to put in the elbow grease and are still coming up against the wall, then perhaps you’re expecting too much. A case of biting off more than you can chew, perhaps? Are you trying to learn 35 new kanji a day and expecting to be able to understand Spirited Away after watching it twice? Are you trying to write paragraphs when you barely know one hundred words? In other words, if the problem isn’t that it’s hard, but that it’s too hard, that’s fixable. Just lower your expectations and back off your intensity. Make it fun and inconsequential and it becomes infinitely easier.

“I’m not wired like THAT.”
Funny, no one on this site is telling you there’s only one way to learn Japanese. I don’t learn so well in a Japanese classroom, a fact I had to learn the hard way. Take me out of the classroom and give it a whirl, and what’s that? I can still learn? You are together enough to have gotten this far, so clearly you just have to start experimenting with different ways of getting the information in your head until you find one that works for you. There’s no right or wrong way, and in the real world, no one cares about your process. Japanese people don’t care that you logged over 200 hours in a classroom. They care that you can properly pronounce words and that you know when to be polite. Learn however you have to learn, even if it turns conventional wisdom on its ear, and we’ll wind up at the same place anyway.

So go! Go forth and learn Japanese because there are no more excuses! Write, Read, and Listen to Japanese! Conquer! And feel free to brag about your language conquests in the comments!

I wish there was a hard and fast rule that could tell us when to hold on and when to let go. The “don’t wear white after labour day” of emotional investment, if you will, because while society is great at telling us when we’re dressed pathetically, society isn’t so good at helping us make decisions. We’ve all made hard decisions and we’ve all made disastrous ones, but with a bit of practice at it over the years, I thought decision making would get easier. It hasn’t, and to be honest, I still have trouble deciding when something is worth fighting for and when something is worth scrapping.

For example, I lived in Los Angeles for a few years — just long enough to decide it was an awful void of a place and realise I needed to leave — but even as I despised my residency, I was afraid my hatred wasn’t the city’s fault. So I gave it a bit more time, convinced I could make it into the place everyone kept telling me it was. Of course, I couldn’t because Southern California doesn’t budge for anyone, least of all a meagre university student. While I wasn’t miserable all the time, there was a general vibe of malaise I couldn’t shake, a sort of nag that told me something better lay across great distances, and the moment I gave into that calling, my life changed drastically for the better.

Open and shut case, no? Girl moves to LA. Life is horrid. Girl leaves LA. Life is good. Seems pretty simple, but even now that I’ve been away from LA for a year and have no intentions of returning, it’s still a foggy mess in my book. See, I know the bad, but I feel the good. I’m thinking about Los Angeles, and I’m remembering how I lived for six months on nothing but French bread, manchego cheese, and haas avocados. I’m remembering how many people I conned into taking me to Little Tokyo for noodles. I’m remembering how my Buddhist temple was within walking distance. I’m remembering Saturdays at the beach, Sundays at 7&Grand. Problem is, these memories are not Los Angeles. I spent years fighting to carve out corners of the city that didn’t make me regret moving there and while I sit here recalling the few fleeting rays of hope I spent far too much energy collecting, I also sit here forgetting the intense frustration I felt all the time at the traffic, at my rent, at the turgid restaurants, at the complete inconvenience that was Los Angeles. In short, I’m forgetting that Bicycle Kitchen was always closed and that the beaches weren’t always surfable because there was too much poop in the ocean (this is real thing, by the way). My brain remembers both sides of the coin, but my emotions only remember the gold-plated memories.

I’ve begun to notice this certain phenomenon creeping up in to many different corners of my life. There are blogs I read that only post something worthwhile every 20th article, the hobbies and habits I’ve adopted are completely against conventional wisdom, and I have a tendency to frequent the same beloved restaurants over and over despite collecting a massive list of new places to try. I know I should unsubscribe from that blog, but I feel like I’ll be missing out on that one remarkable article if I do. That’s where I get all confused and, generally, hold on when I should let go. In Los Angeles, society at large (media, movies, magazines) and at small (friends, family, flatmates) told me to hold on, but they were wrong. Sounds like a case of “follow your heart” right? Yet when deciding to move across the country, every instinct I had cautioned me against leaving, but they were wrong. So how is anyone supposed to know when it’s time to move on or time to suit up?

There’s no steadfast rule of thumb because value is an intensely personal thing. And even then, context changes everything. Living and visiting somewhere are very different things. I’m going back to Los Angeles for a weekend of insanity before I head off to Japan and I can already tell it’s going to be both glorious and heinous. First I think of a list of the things I’d like to revisit, next I get terribly sad that I won’t be able to fit them all in, then I grow frustrated that I’m only going to be there 48 hours, after that I remember how I didn’t even want to stopover in LA in the first place, but I interrupt myself saying it’ll be fine and I’ll like it a little bit, which makes me wonder why I didn’t like it more when I lived there if I can think of all this fun stuff to do now, so I’m angry that I didn’t like it the first time, now I don’t want to go again, and so on and so forth. I should be more torn about LA, but on the contrary, I find this is a reassuring argument to have. The mere fact that I’ve been waffling about it for years shows me that Los Angeles still isn’t working for me and it isn’t about to change anytime soon (unlike some places).

LA, I’m breaking up with you. It’s not me, it’s you. See, I wholeheartedly love living in Washington DC. I adored living in Tokyo. Houston never fails to make me wish I was staying longer. I even have some fondness for Brisbane, which at the time was a bit underwhelming. Truth is, I don’t want anything to do with a city that isn’t likable. I don’t need to hold on to a place that makes life so difficult. Your unpredictable rewards aren’t enough for me. It won’t be easy; after all, it’s hard to really know a place intimately and write it off completely (I’ll always miss those Kogi tacos you make), but even my upcoming visit is bringing back the same angst that spurned me to leave it for greener pastures. So Los Angeles, I don’t care what everybody says or how many $2 Scoops and tonktsu ramens you put in front of me, you’re a tease, a tyrant, and a trickster and we’re through. It’s time to let go.

Inspired by Anger Burger’s post last week, I thought it might be fun to talk bout the jobs I’ve held — the brilliant, the miserable, and the utterly ridiculous.

And those are just the jobs I can talk about. What about you? What fields have you dabbled in? What odd jobs have you taken?

Beautiful Friday evenings call for long walks by the Potomac, which is exactly what I did this weekend when I took a stroll along the 18 mile Mt. Vernon bike trail.

I’m radical in many ways (ever met a tech-savvy net-Gen-er that wants to start a commune? Now you have). From polyphasic sleeping to using hippy, aluminium-free deodorant, I routinely flout conventional wisdom, yet even I had trouble believing the plausibility of any diet that lets you eat as much bacon as you want. The paleo diet, the primal diet, the low carb diet, the Atkins diet, all seem to suggest just this. How is it that bacon can be better for you than Oreos? It seems ridiculous to me.

I’m not a dieter, and I enjoy a good laugh at the latest fad diet (”The Hollywood Cookie Diet” comes to mind), mostly because I’m reasonably well-informed when it comes to nutrition. It’s easy to laugh when you understand why weird diets appear to work — the 48hour juice cleanse just makes you poop out all the water in your body, the NutriSystem is plain ol’ portion control, and diet pills are just a boatload of energy supplements that make you too twitchy to eat — but I had a lot of trouble understanding why these meat-heavy diets could possibly work long term (aside from ketosis). It didn’t make logical sense, so I did what every curious millennial does: I went to the interwebs and looked it up.

As a comfortable vegetarian, I’ve now read as many success stories from the raw diet as I have from Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark Sisson is not the first person to suggest that you’re better off with bacon than brownies; I recall Michael Pollan saying something similar on his many diatribes, echoed by countless other bloggers out there into the movement. After weeks of reading, I figured out why it works, and, while I’m not about to start replacing all my canola oil with butter, as Mark suggests, I’ve come to terms with the kernel of the primal diet. It’s the basic idea I’ve always believed: eat real food.

A history lesson, before I get to the punch line. Processed foods are a recent phenomenon unique to America. As the inventors of marketing, it was only natural we’d start breaking down food into components we can use to leverage sales. We’re very good at it, that’s why we’re a rich country. This is great for industry, but terrible for the consumer. You can think they’re pure evil or think they’re probably harmless, but the fact remains that the repercussions of a diet high in processed foods are still being discovered. This is where the paleo/primal/low-carb/Atkins diets etc. all come into play. They say: eat like our ancestors did, before domestic farming and husbandry. They didn’t have supermarkets, or crops to tend to, so they ate what they could find. Fruit was rare, vegetables and nuts were abundant, and meat was gorged on whenever we could bother to kill something. So eat mostly vegetables, some meats, and a few fruits here and there. That’s the primal diet in a nutshell.

Here’s where I compare my food philosophy to Mark Sisson, Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Ellie Krieiger, Jamie Oliver, Naomi Moriyama, and all the others that have shaped my idea of what food really is. I think the less steps there are to eating a food, the better off you are. Nutritionally, an apple is better for you than concentrated apple juice. Foods like wheat are actually toxic to humans in their raw form. In order to make wheat edible, you have to shuck it (twice, might I add), grind it, bleach it, mix it with other stuff, and roast the hell out of it to seem remotely palatable. Then there’s butter. It’s okay that it’s calorie-rich because it’s a lot of work to make. You have to churn it for ages, so you’re not about to dip into it every day. You savour it. Except nowadays we aren’t churning our own butter, and it’s easy to eat it by the stick. I’m not against apple juice, wheat four, or butter at all, but there’s something to be said for eating foods in proportion to how difficult they are to get into that form. Things you can eat any which way, like carrots, tomatoes, peaches, bananas, green beans, cashews, and so on, I eat a lot of. Stuff with extra steps involved, like beans, yoghurt, fish, pickles, eggs, wine, coffee/tea, corn, and so on I eat in smaller quantities. What I would never bother to make from plant to product myself, like cheese, butter, bread, pop, and so on, I only eat occasionally.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. I don’t count calories. I don’t keep a food diary. I don’t make all my meals at home. I don’t take supplements. I don’t add protein powder to my smoothies or flax seeds to my yoghurt, because I don’t know that you can break down your needs into components. If you need more of Omega-3s, eating fortified cereal ain’t gonna do it. Think about iron. Your body needs calcium and vitamin C to absorb iron properly. Taking an iron supplement is not enough. Instead I eat food with iron in it, such as spinach which, not surprisingly, has all those things in it already, plus some fiber and antioxidants to boot. This part of the primal diets I agree with. But I also think the human body is incredible versatile and adaptable. We can eat ridiculous quantities of processed food and survive because we’re adaptors. That’s what we do. Natural selection would theoretically kill off those of us that can’t handle the diet and leave those that can to procreate, but that’s a pretty unnecessary fate, if you ask me. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to eat a space-age, reconstituted meal in pill-form. I like food. Real, whole food.

This is where I agree with the crazies on another front (though, admittedly, not all accounts). We have a choice. We have more fruits and vegetables and dips and chips and cuts and pastes available to us than any ancestor before us. There are aboriginals in the Torres Straight islands that subsist off of nothing but wild goose eggs and yams grown in rocky soil. There are tribes in Africa that kill antelopes by outrunning them long-distance. There are societies that eat mostly bugs, people that would rather make soup from raw kale than eat a french fry, large populations of pacific islanders that no longer have the option to eat what their ancestors ate, and vast numbers of consumers that will never give up their Oreos. The point is that humans can survive eating whatever. You, though, you have a choice. Look at your own diet, your waistline, your own ancestors. Do your own research, make your own decisions, be well-informed so you can make a good decision when I ask, “What’ll it be? Bacon or brownies?”

Metrocurean DC is a local foodblog with a regular feature called “Five Bites on Friday,” a weekly roundup of one local chef or reader’s five favourite places to grab a bite to eat.  It’s great for finding new spots to hit up, reaffirming your love of old standbys, and for unearthing the latest incarnations of long-standing restaurant groups so abundant here.  Even better, Metrocurean regularly posts the occasional unpublished or speakeasy deal to save you a dime for other dinners out.  It’s worth checking out if you’re in the area.

Two DC chronicles the explorations of a couple new to the DC area, complete with in-depth looks on DC standbys (think Julia’s Empanadas and Ben’s Chili Bowl), hopeful visits to the newest in the neighbourhood, and a number of take out places I’m itching to try. This is the best blog in the area to be perusing if you’re trying to get your bearings.

And of course, what Washingtonian would be legitimate without a gander at the DCist’s food & drink section, which mostly regales restaurant openings and publicity frenzies.  Still, it’s worthwhile to hear from the perspective at the top: which chains are opening new spaces, which yoghurt reigns supreme, who the current contenders for best burger are, which chefs won awards, and of course, which restaurants you’ll need a months-before reservation for.

If you’re trying to get away from all the ribbon cuttings and tasting menus, might I suggest you check out Tyler Cowen’s Ethinc Dining Guide to the greater DC Metro area.  Like his beloved hole in the wall establishments, Tyler’s blog is no-frills and to the point.  You’ve come to find the best noodles.  Or tofu.  Or Korean BBQ.  Or family-friendly Ethiopian vegetarian restaurant.  You want serious Himalayan food and Filipino bread and you want it now.  Tyler Cowen will turn nameless strip mall facades into a street map of finding your way around the ethnic spots worth hitting up in DC.

If home cooking is more your speed, there’s always Ed Brske’s blog about gardening, cooking, and eating in the DC area. Ed writes about everything from squash cassaroles to nearby school lunches to legislation that affects family meal time, all from his backyard in Columbia Heights. As a former reporter, Ed’s posts are always timely, high quality, and deeply relevant.

I’m a planner. I like to make maps and lists and collections of everything from bookmarks to brochures. I like schedules and I even enjoy research on some topics, so you can bet I always have something on the drawing board: the next trip to take, the newest redesign of my website, the ever-evolving to-dos I’m readying myself to tackle next, you know, the usual. For someone who spends a lot of time looking ahead, I find there’s one way of looking at it in particular that really grinds my gears. I disagree with the phrase, “what’s next.”

Two seemingly innocent words have robbed me of more good times than I’d like to believe, and hearing it one time too many is off putting, not because of the phrase itself, but because of the kind of people who are fond of asking it. I don’t like the spirit of the phrase, “what’s next.” Say it any other way; “up next” implies something to look forward to, á la Saturday morning cartoon announcers while “where to?” implies a willingness to accommodate others. But “what’s next” is the worst because it inevitably becomes a demand, an unwritten expectation that all things must be exciting, and the mere suggestion that what we are doing right now is not enough is quick to infuriate me.

My first reckless weekend trip across the country landed me in the heart of the midwest, not the most glamorous of destinations which, save for the Twin Cities and Chicago, don’t have much to offer urbanites spoilt by the likes of global cities and European icons, but then again I wasn’t there to see the cornfields and cow pastures, I was there to see the person who invited me. Of course the midwest and middle America have their own charms, and I had set my expectations accordingly when I stepped off the tarmac and made the commute to your average suburban homeset. There, amongst a seemingly endless landscape of open roads and strip malls, I certainly didn’t expect a flurry of activity, but there it was, a full day’s itinerary of ideas followed by a laundry list of must-sees.

No thank you. Even if I did come to your fair city for the many goings on it portends, I am not the sort of gal that likes to dash about from place to place at a clip. I’m the sort of lady that likes to amble a long and winding road, who likes to take many breathers and is happy just to be somewhere else. I’m the observing type, not the breed that likes to go get ‘em right out of the gate. Perhaps it is not so surprising that I detest the “what’s next” mentality.

Things I enjoy while travelling:

people watching in a local park

browsing a bookshop

drinking beverages in cafes, pubs, and lounges

wandering a neighbourhood

sitting somewhere purely to admire the view

reading public transit maps

chatting with the elderly, preferably in a piazza

walking off a delicious meal

I am often criticised when I reveal my favourite travel activities. Sure I wouldn’t mind laying eyes on the sights worth seeing, but I much prefer to stroll around a residential area until I find a place that smells of good coffee. The truth is, museum going is about the most touristy I get and the only timetable I’ll agree to is the one the bus runs on. While it may seem contradictory to travel all the way to Paris to ride the subway to you, it seems totally absurd to go to France without checking out at least one bookshop to me. I don’t travel to see le Tour Eiffel, I travel to be somewhere different.

When you travel to be rather than to do, you find there are no boxes to check off. The interesting bits to me aren’t the monuments that are one off, but the routine ones. I take great interest in the bits of daily life that are totally normal to the residents, the portions that differ from my own life ever so slightly. I like to watch the families in the afternoon and I like to note the school hours and I like to buy my groceries with the locals, spending ages reading labels and admiring the options. Perhaps its a testament to a larger belief that societies, even seemingly wildly different ones, are more alike then they aren’t, perhaps I simply take comfort in routine, even routine of someone else’s devising. It’s life, just somewhere else, and it isn’t what’s next, it’s what’s now.