Kris: the other bright meat

I'm tired of living the anti-healthy lifestyle. For all intents and purposes, my picture should be on the FDA Web page devoted to How Not to Treat What God Gave Ya, the one that would pair me with some uberradiant Kris antithesis like Ashley Judd or Denise Austin. She'd be demonstrating how to make popsicles with orange juice and an ice cube tray, and I'd be drinking vodka and Crystal Light while making Velveeta nachos with a Baked Lays base. This is really no way to live long term, and I'm sick and tired of all of it. Literally.

The advice I got about the high blood pressure was infuriating - I don't think there was a thing on the checklist that I was doing right. Multivitamin? Minimal alcohol use? Sleeping well and someplace other than your couch? Eating a low sodium diet that isn't 2/3 dependent on meals that can be ordered by number? It doesn't get better. Regular exercise beyond trimming your cats' nails? Maintaining an ideal body weight? Getting a physical more than once before the cicadas hatch? Here's where I started to hear the crickets. When you're doing most everything wrong it's hard to know where to start. It's overwhelming, to say the least, a little like thinking you're getting a new chandelier hung and finding the whole house has to be rewired.

So I began in the kitchen, and with the wine rack, specifically. Like most people, drinking is my stepping stone to more harmful pursuits, in my case, seven 100 calorie packs of orange hexagons, Marlboro Lights, and innumerable wedges of Laughing Cow cheese. When I'm home most everything I eat is packaged and made by trolls in the Kingdom of Low Fat, which would be fine if I ate them in moderation or with a side of anything green or grown outside the Kraft Foods test kitchen.

I should reveal that I'm a food blog lover, if only for the pretty pictures, and dreams that someday I will put to good use all the Calphalon I've amassed. These cooks are amazing. I envy their ability to stroll through farmer's markets, picking and plucking the freshest there is. I imagine them piecing together a novel meal with each item they buy, knowing just how their full spice rack will play into the equation, thinking in exact amounts what they have to work with at home in their pantries. It must be near orgasmic to know how to craft from scratch. To recognize the difference cardamom will make in a dish. To know why racks of lamb long their entire lives to wear little hats on their deathbeds.

So I set out this weekend if not to imitate to improve. I had only two drinks in four days. And it's amazing just how much extra time you have when you aren't out drinking! You can unpack your suitcase from your November trip! And throw out canned goods than expired in 2006! And grocery shop! Armed with a large fountain soda and a commitment to avoid the frozen food aisles, I hit the Safeway. I picked up a beautiful pork tenderloin, bread and cheese, fresh pasta, a foundation well within my comfort zone. Strategically, as in I had no earthly idea what to do with them just as with infants when they cry, I saved the greenstuffs for last. I won't call it panic that I felt while approaching the produce section, as I reserve that emotion for moments when someone first sees me naked, but I was overwhelmed. So I went for the old friends first: cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce. Wow, Kris, I berated myself, you buying for the Roy Rogers Fixins Bar? In my shame, I forced myself to bag a pound of fresh green beans and some red potatoes, and then blamed my beeline to the register not on those frightening artichokes but on running out of fountain soda.

What followed is a clear indication as to just how much a woman of 34 years can miss out on in a lifetime. When I got home, I opened my catch of green beans, and rather than whirring up a joyous flurry of pans and spices and real, live butter, I simply stared at them. What the hell was I supposed to do with them now? Was I supposed to boil them, broil them, stick them in the cavity of a turkey? So I did what any self-respecting blogger would do: I Googled it. And with the help of the genius that is the Interwebs, I found videos on snapping the ends off of beans like your grammy used to on her back porch, on cooking them to perfection. And every moment of the process was joyous. With wild abandon I broke their little green necks and feet. Then I boiled them like bunnies and plucked them out before sogginess set in. I even timed them to be plated with their red potato bed mates! And they were beautiful, and perfectly done, and tasted luscious with a little bit of butter and cracked pepper. And the moment of triumph was all I imagined for those online foodies, a glorious mix of excess serotonin and a pride not felt since my last spelling bee. And not a morsel of it lessened when I realized the pork wouldn't be done for another half hour.