Miracle pizza

Today's adventure: gluten and dairy free pizza.  Insane, right? ...Since gluten and dairy are what make pizza so gosh darn delicious.  I was expecting a humongo taste bud explosion-- and not the fun firework kind; more like the Fukushima meltdown kind-- but, surprisingly, it was FANTASTIC.  Let's recap, shall we?

Step 1: Make the dough.
I made the dough from a mix, but it was like no mix I'd ever seen.  For starters, I had to add like 20 separate ingredients (I was expecting the equivalent to a brownie mix-- egg, oil, and water: BOOM, DESSERT).  And then the baking directions were cryptic and it was like one of those "choose your own adventure" books because they kept sending me to the middle of different paragraphs.  Get your shit together, mix-makers!

And then I carried that bucket of dough around with me for an hour, waiting for it to rise.  Looking back, I could've left it on the counter, but it ended up coming with me to the grocery store, a thrift store, and the bank.  Me n' ma bread baby.  D'aww.

Step 2: Roll out the dough.  

Yeah, see, this sounds a lot easier than it actually is.  The dough was so sticky, there was no way I was going to be able to roll it out without the help of flour, which is definitely not gluten free.  Instead, I found some parchment paper and put it between the dough and the rolling pin.  Voila!  It looked like shit!  As you can see in the picture above.

Step 3: Dump some crap on it.

Once the dough looked sufficiently stupid, I poured all my ingredients on top.  The only dairy free cheese I could find at Hannaford was Daiyea brand pepperjack.  Pepperjack cheese is not the greatest pizza cheese, but for a desperate dairy-free gal, it was sufficient.  

Step 4: Leave pizza in the oven for twice as long as the riddle box tells you.

After the suggested 15 minutes of bake time, the middle of the pizza was still as doughy as my stomach after Thanksgiving.  Another 15 minutes in there and then I said fuck it and just ate some.  Life's too short to burn the edges of your pizza just to cook the middle.

Step 5: Go back for seconds.  And then thirds.  And then congratulate you and your food baby with a well-deserved nap.

Overall, the pizza was darn good.  It may have been 2 inches thick with not enough sauce and the wrong kind of cheese, but hey!  It was my first attempt and it wasn't a complete disaster, so that's kind of encouraging.  I'm on an upswing, ladies and gentlemen.  For the first time in Demars household history, I have made food that was edible and delicious and didn't make me want to throw up.  Me and my food baby are gonna go take another nap now.

That one time I tripped an Argentinian baby.

This blog post has nothing to do with the theme of my blog, but I hope it makes you laugh.  It made me laugh.  Holy shit, did I laugh.

WELL.  There I was at work, being all front desk-y and whatnot at the Mountain Road Resort in Stowe.  It was a bit of a slow night, so I was in the middle of the Gossip Girl season 1 finale (I know, the trashiest of trashy shows, sorrynotsorry) when a man walked in looking for a last-minute place to stay for the night with his wife and 2 children.  I gave them a room and the keys and one of those infant playpens for their toddler.   

Here's the room they ended up staying in.
Pretty swanky, eh?

Next thing I know, the guy is back and said they were having trouble getting the room door open, which isn't uncommon.  Some of those locks are finicky, lemme tell ya!  Since it was pouring rain and their room was in the far building, he offered me a ride and I gladly obliged... until I saw the car.  It was a tiny Honda Accord JAMMED to the roof with road-trippy things and the front seat also had the folded-up playpen.  His 2 children were also in the car and they were both sobbing.

I somehow squeezed a butt cheek onto the passenger's seat next to the playpen and the guy HANDED ME his wailing baby and then started speaking to him in Spanish.  He calmly explained that they were Argentinian and were bringing their children up to be bilingual.  And then they were all screaming in foreign languages and I felt a liiiiiittle out of place.  I was just like, petting the baby and cooing all the Spanish words I knew at him (agua, banyo, senorita... that's about it) and he pretty much calmed down immediately.  At the same time, I was small-talking with the parents and willing my butt to stay balanced on the stack of travel books I was perched on.  That 30 second car ride felt like 3 hours.

When we finally made it, and at the sight of the indoor pool, the older child finally stopped sobbing.  Miracle of miracles.  I finagled the key to get the door open and held it open for them.  The baby immediately toddled through the doorway, tripped over my extended foot, and face-planted onto the rug.  The wailing started, my face turned redder than a lobster on Sunday, the Spanish started up again, and I felt terrible.  


Overall though, it was just hilarious.  I felt horrible for tripping their baby, even if it was an accident, but at the same time I almost couldn't help but laugh.  The situation was just so ridiculous.

Welcome to my life, everyone.  It's always an interesting time at work.  Maybe I'll post a few more hilarious hotel stories soon.  They're actually just as funny in print as they are in my head.  Weird.

That time Eliza gooped mayonnaise in my hair...

Let's start with some background information for this blog post:

1) I'm in a play. (Thoroughly Modern Millie, COME SEE IT!)

2) I have to curl my hair every night.  The heat from the steam rollers has fried it beyond belief and I feel like a crispy piece of toast.

3) I like avocados so much I'm willing to mush them all over my head.

And there you have it, all the information you need to know to understand why I'm smearing goop in my hair.  Regular conditioner was just not cutting it, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and concoct a secret potion to give me sleek and shiny and healthy and un-crispy locks.  It consisted of 1 avocado and 1 cup of mayonnaise.  Oops, I guess it's not so secret anymore.  I love both avocado and mayonnaise, so it was a challenge not to forgo the hair conditioner and just eat the stuff.  Eww, just kidding.  I do love mayonnaise, though.

The mixture basically just looked like light
green guacamole.  Break out the chips!

 We set up in the bathroom and my trusty hair stylist, Eliza, volunteered to get her hands goopy.  What a trooper.  As you will see in some of the following photos, deep conditioning your hair is a lot like dumping a bucket of green vomit on your head.  It's chunky, sticky, has a pungent smell, and drips down your neck.  Mmmm.

Wouldja look at that schnozz?  Dang, that's huge!

Eliza's hands post-application.  She licked them clean.  (Just kidding.  (but really))

And then I had to let it sit for 20 minutes.  I found a shower cap I had swiped from a hotel and voila!  I look like a glowing spa patient.  Right?!

After 20 minutes, I hopped in the shower to furiously rinse my hair out and, surprisingly, it didn't take long.  And now, about 2 hours later, I feel.... LIKE A WHOLE NEW GAL!  Well.  Sort of.  The new me smells faintly of mayonnaise, but whatever.  I could get used to that.

Bruce Bogtrotter and the stinkiest breath I've ever had.

Bejeezus, I have not blogged for a solid 2 weeks.  That's a disgrace.  Unfortunately, nothing spectacular happened to me within those two weeks, hence no blogging material.  Actually, that's a lie.  Plenty of junk happened to me and I got plenty of free food, but who has time to write about what's already happened when there's so much other crap happening all the time?!  I can't keep up with myself, guys.  I'm a whirlwind of activity.

So anyway, here I am at 2am.  I should be sleeping because I have to wake up in 3.5 hours, but YOLO I'M BLOGGING INSTEAD.  Tonight was such a great food night.  The majority of the cast went to Frida's in Stowe for dinner before our 8pm show (remember last time I went to Frida's?  Read about it HERE.)  I went with some plain ol' corn tortillas and frijoles-- played it safe and delicious.  And, of course, we ordered chips and guacamole.  4 platters of guac, to be exact.  That's enough avocado to choke a horse, lemme tell ya.  It was vuuuundaful.  The only downside: Mexican breath for the rest of the night.  I chomped on gum and breath mints, but to no avail.  I'm still a stinkmonster at this very moment.  I'm going to keep track of how long it takes to become an unoffensive breather again.

                                   

And THEN, after the show we had a cast party.  Potlucks are always difficult because 1) being gluten, dairy, and meat free makes me an extremely annoying party guest and 2) I always forget to bring something, so I'm the douchebag freeloader all the time.  However, this time was a little bit different.  There's another girl in the cast with a gluten allergy and a few others who are lactose intolerant, so one of our lovely production team members made a gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cake.  With raspberry sauce.  Drool.  As I was leaving, she asked if I wanted to take any home and I was like, "aw, no, but thank you, it was delicious, blah blah" and then she said, "okay, well then it's going in the garbage...."  I bet you all know what that means.  As soon as she said that, I knew I was going to end up taking it home because I'd feel guilty if I didn't.  Ugh.  So now, I have not one, but TWO plates of chocolate cake.  What am I going to do with all this cake, you ask?  Wellllllll.....

It'll probably end up something like Bruce Bogtrotter in that scene in Matilda.  You know the one.  Gross.  But oh-so victorious.

And while I'm here talking about chocolate and gluten free junk, shout out to Judith and Katie for bringing gluten/dairy-free cookies to the cast party!  I may not have been able to eat much of the dinner-ish food, but I was SET on dessert.  I love my cast, I love dessert, I love everything.

And there you have it.  The fastest way to my heart-- provide food that I can actually eat and I'll like you forever.

The most pathetic blog post I've ever written.

My well of word-vomit has run dry for the moment, so here are more pictures than usual to make up for it.

Homemade gluten-free and vegetarian spring rolls!

Gluten-free s'mores.

Bonfire.

Goddamn, this is a pitiful excuse for a blog post.  Whatever.  I'm gonna go take a nap.

Expensive food + me = not BFFs.

I had an awkward amount of time between rehearsal and work today.  My body was like, "TAKE A NAP" and my brain was like "GO DRESS SHOPPING" and then while they were bickering I went out to lunch.  Sneaky move, eh?

I ended up at the Green Goddess because all I wanted was a huge ass sandwich (huge-ass sandwich, not huge ass-sandwich, because those are two completely different things. Wink.) I was positive they'd have gluten-free bread.  They were out (dagnabbitblargheddycrap), so I ended up choosing the make-your-own-salad option.  I don't remember all the junk I told them to dump in there, but can you really go wrong?  No.  Not when there are grapes involved.  Finding grapes in your salad is sort of like walking into a hotel in Chinatown where the floor is cut into little bridges and there are goldfish swimming all over the place.  It's surprising and I never get sick of it.

Look at the SIZE of that thing!  That bowl is literally larger than my head.  You're probably wondering how much it cost.  I know I was when they handed it to me... but I'm not going to tell ya.  I'm kind ashamed to have paid so much for one salad, especially since I was still hungry afterwards.  Ugh.  It looks hearty and wonderful, but 95% of it was just greens.  Not to say it wasn't delicious, I just happen to be a black hole and I demand sufficient feeding.

So.  Lesson learned: don't go out to eat unless a) your mom is paying for you, b) you're prepared to barter your first born child, or c) you were gonna go blow it on more clothing you don't need anyway. 

Living on my death bed.

HEY, EVERYBODY.  I don't suppose you're curious about my current bodily functions, are you?  You are?!  Great, well let's talk about them.

I'm sick as can be.  Well, yesterday I was sick as can be.  Today I'm still pretty darn sick, but at least I can walk.  For the most part.  Anywho, I spent all of yesterday either in a semi-coma or reading trashy romance novels (nothin' keeps me awake like one of those tired ol' forbidden love plot lines!)  So that was that.  Until yesterday, I'd never spent an entire day in bed.  I must say, it was actually quite nice not being able to move.  No one expects you to be anywhere or do anything because you're too sick to function.  It was great.

And then I woke up this morning and was able to ingest solid foods and my fever was relatively under control and I was LOVIN' LIFE.  But then all of a sudden I couldn't swallow and things got really uncomfortable really fast.  This might be TMI, but it got to the point where I couldn't swallow without feeling like I was going to split apart, so I just started spitting in a bucket.  It's disgusting, I know.  But hey, kind of amusing right?  "Hey, there goes Caney with her bucket of spit!"  It's not really very funny to me right now, but if (WHEN) I get better, I'll probably be mortified and a little bit proud of my problem-solving skillz.  Ya gotta do whatcha gotta do.

Me with my bucket.  D'aww.

So.  Turns out I have almost-strep.  I went to the doctor and she couldn't see past my tonsils because they grew to the size of baby elephants.  The swab test came out negative, but she gave me the antibiotics anyway because it looked like strep and because I was so pathetically whiney.  

On a better note, I finally got to use the cute little tissue wallet my play director gave me!  It's been sitting untouched in my bag for a week, so I'm a little bit overly excited to be using them.  Thanks, Amena!  This pack'll be gone in no time.  Literally.  I'm like a faucet.

I was trying to look excited, but it came out as... sickly.

And there you have it.  I'm a disgusting human being.  I hope, for your sake, you haven't come into contact with anything I've touched recently.  I've got the Midas touch... but with germs, not gold.  Hopefully tomorrow will be an even better recovery day... Fingies crossed.