Trekkychick

Dear Readers,

“Drink your drupe!”

You’ve likely heard of the coconut craze that’s been sweeping the nation since the fall of the brazil nut reign. Not just for candy bars anymore, coconuts have enjoyed increasing popularity and can be found lately in basically every aisle no matter which item you’re looking for: coconut milk, coconut ice cream, coconut oil, or coconut bras.

But you’ve probably been living in a state of confusion as to exactly how to classify the coconut when you bring it up in small talk during social gatherings. Is it a fruit? A nut? A seed? A metal? A fabric? A political candidate?

While I hate to state the obvious, the coconut, according to this website, is a fibrous one-seeded drupe. A drupe, not to be confused with a droop (something that sags) or a drape (a window covering) or a dope (my ex-boyfriend), is a fruit that has a hard covering that surrounds the seed. So as I understand it, a drupe wears a helmet, which you should too, if you’re biking in downtown Portland or riding in the car with me. Or biking in any neighborhood in which I might be driving.

While a coconut has three layers, unless you’re a character on LOST you won’t see all three layers, because unlike an untouched coconut on the island, a coconut at the grocery store typically has had its outer and middle layers removed and what remains is the endocarp, which is the helmet layer that encases the seed. As I understand it, then, the store-bought coconut is basically naked, and therefore it is inappropriate to permit young children to roam free in the produce aisle, where there are naked fruits lying around wearing nothing but helmets.

But if nude produce is your style, and you’ve been wanting to increase your daily intake of members of the drupe family (I know I sure have!), there’s a new coconut beverage in town that might be for you. Created by Gata Foods, a local company in Tigard, this tasty coconut milk beverage comes in vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate, and is sweetened only with agave nectar. I would recommend the chocolate-flavored beverage, which is every bit as rich and thick as your traditional dairy chocolate milk, but with healthier fats.

So look for Gata Foods coconut milk beverage at your nearby Whole Foods or Market of Choice if you’re ready to jump on the coconut bandwagon. Just be sure to wear your helmet.

–Troi out

Dear Loyal Readers,

My deepest apologies for the tardiness of this latest installment of the blog that could [but shouldn't have]. It is most embarrassing that this, my Thanksgiving post, should present itself on this darkest of days, Black Friday, but to have written about Thanksgiving 2010 without first having experienced Thanksgiving 2010 seemed an unfair swindle of sorts to you my thirteen extraordinarily steadfast readers who deserve only the best of bad blog posts.

And so it is with great delight that I introduce you to Thanksgiving with The Troi Family.

The Troi Family enjoys a humble Thanksgiving in the Portland suburb of Tualatin at my Uncle Gym’s condominium (name misspelled to protect the privacy of my Uncle Gym’s name). I prepare our Thanksgiving Dinner by journeying to New Seasons to gather the ingredients* for our meal.

*Gathering the ingredients looks like this:

Troi: Hi, I’d like to order your pre-made Thanksgiving dinner for 4-6, please.
New Seasons Employee: You again, huh? Haven’t you ever considered cooking a Thanksgiving dinner?
Troi: I’d like to order it with an extra pumpkin pie, please.
New Seasons Employee: You know, you could bake a pumpkin pie much cheaper than the price of our pumpkin pie, which is $10.99.
Troi: I’d like the free range turkey, but not the organic free range turkey. I’m of moderate income and I have a hermit crab to feed.
New Seasons Employee: You could go turkey-hunting. Those turkeys are pretty organic.
Troi: Please bill my Uncle Gym for this meal.

After having gathered the ingredients for our homecooked Thanksgiving, I make my way South and eventually come upon the tiny town of Tualatin. Sometimes I bring a significant other to my family’s Thanksgiving festivities, for example on Leap Year and when Republicans take control of the Senate; other years I go stag.

Something is in the air on Thanksgiving 2010, something that smells of insanity, because suddenly my formerly tranquil environment is disrupted by discordant melodies as my entire family breaks into song and begins flailing their extremities convulsively in a fit of what they appear to classify as ‘dancing’ while a screechy voice from the fifties spits out tedious tunes from a turntable. My family seems to think they’re having fun.

When the dinner has been reheated to perfection, The Troi Family ceases its dancing and heads to the kitchen to consume the food, and I take my opportunity to seize the turntable and hide it behind the couch in the living room. (If my family asks you for a Clue, it was Troi, in the living room, with the turntable.)

And of course, no Thanksgiving would be complete without my grandmother eating three bites and then hovering near the door insisting she needs to return to her assisted living home for their Thanksgiving feast, which is actually just Oscar Meyer turkey bologna and tater tots served on a cafeteria tray with a side of jello. Which is why this Thanksgiving wasn’t quite complete, because this was our first year without her. In honor of my grandma, I made sure to hover near the door, although my reasons were more related to the aforementioned extremity-flailing and bad music than to longing for a cold turkey bologna dinner.

And there you have it, straight from the source: Troi’s Thanksgiving Dinner 2010. Look for my next post: Black Friday: The Day Troi Burned the Leftovers, But Ate Them Anyway.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

Upon returning home from work today, I was delighted to receive a voice mail from an employee of my beloved* state farm agent inquiring as to whether I was interested in receiving a quote on renter’s insurance or life insurance.

*Yes, the very same state farm agent who last year asked me over the phone whether I was a bad driver, or simply a good driver with bad luck—- to which I responded something to the effect of “I’ll take ‘good driver’ for $200, sir, since that’s what I’m paying monthly to keep this insurance plan”—- but that’s a story for another time, when the tickets have fallen off of my record and I can speak more freely.

It was lovely for my state farm agent to think of me for renter’s insurance, although being that he is in charge of my homeowner’s insurance on the condo that I own, I would, perhaps naively, have hoped he would be privy to the fact that I’m not so much in need of renter’s insurance. And as I agonize over this perplexing voice mail I received eight minutes ago, I’m becoming convinced that perhaps he is privy to something I’m not, such as—-for example—-a massive fault line directly straddled by my Portland condominium, and perhaps my insurance agent has a direct line to God, or to an exceptionally gifted meteorologist who offered him a tip on tonight’s downtown Portland earthquake in exchange for $20 off his car insurance. FOR EXAMPLE.

And don’t even get me started on his proposal that I acquire life insurance, because I’ve already decided not to leave my soon-to-be earthquake–ravaged dwelling lest I get hit by a bus or meteor until I’ve gotten this overzealous employee on the phone to find out exactly from whom he’s getting his information on my impending death, and why nobody mentioned it to me.

I haven’t worked it all out yet, but I’m thinking maybe this fictitious earthquake has something to do with my make-believe death.

Either that, or my beloved state farm insurance agency (I picked them for their awesome jingle, which I use to sing myself to sleep at night, which may have something to do with my recent break-up…?) is going under, and calling everybody with a proffer of quotes on life and renter’s insurance to bolster finances whether or not we live on a giant fault line of death. Either way, it’s best I start looking for a back-up agent. Here’s what I’ve found:

GEICO
Pros: 15 minutes could save me 15% or more on my car insurance.
Cons: I think they’re getting kickbacks from PETA, because they employ lizards instead of real humans.

PROGRESSIVE
Pros: They’re “progressive,” which dictionary.com tells me is “characterized by such progress, or by continuous improvement.” I feel warm and fuzzy and like I’m contributing in some important way to humanity when I choose Progressive.
Cons: I don’t think they’re actually progressive. I think they just want you to feel warm and fuzzy and like you’re contributing in some important way to humanity when you choose Progressive.

ALLSTATE
Pros: They’re available in all states. I assume.
Cons: I wonder if they’re available in Oregon.

Having exhausted myself with the laborious process of researching insurance companies online, I will now ruminate on the various options before making my final decision. Which I will need to make tonight, before the earthquake. And meteor.

–Troi out

for a limited time only, more available than your average man

But a good beer is comparatively easy to find, especially if you live in Portland, which boasts more breweries per capita than any other city in the United States. So while you may not find the perfect man, the perfect craft beer may still be within reach.

If you’re wondering what makes a craft beer crafty, let me assure you that it has nothing to do with arts and crafts, which is quite a relief for someone such as myself whose 7th-grade arts & crafts teacher told the class my self-portrait looked like an alien (I thought it was a compliment—-I love science fiction—-until she flunked me), nor is a craft beer the kind of beer you drink to get over the trauma of being called an alien by your 7th grade arts & crafts teacher. Rather, a craft brewer is small (producing less than 2 million barrels of beer annually) and independent. And while 2 million barrels may not sound small to the last person who tried drinking 2 million barrels of beer, it is nonetheless relatively small when compared to a craftless beer corporation such as Anheuser-Busch, whose production well exceeds 100 million barrels annually. Most importantly, craft beers can be absolutely delicious, whereas I bet you’ve never heard someone say, while sipping on an Anheuser-Busch creation, “Oh, this Bud Light is absolutely delicious!” unless he was in a Superbowl commercial.

If you’ve yet to try it, my first suggestion is Sierra Nevada’s Summerfest lager. For those of you not familiar with Sierra Nevada’s beers, their most popular standard brew is probably their pale ale, and their winter offering, Celebration Ale, is definitely worth the celebration. Even their stout is far and away the best stout in a bottle I’ve yet to try. Their Summerfest lager is light (5.0 ABV) and hoppy without being overpoweringly so. I’m not typically a huge lager fan (I’ve heard they cut down trees), but this is a lager that appeals even to environmentally-friendly darker beer lovers such as myself.

If clearing forests isn’t your style, another craft beer to write home about (for me, I guess that would be the alien home planet from which my arts & crafts teacher thinks I sprouted) is Deschutes brewery’s 2010 Once a Decade Ale, which is more like Nine Times a Decade Ale for me when I add up the number of bottles I’ve purchased over the last few months. Vaguely reminiscent of a barleywine-style ale but without that sickeningly sweet finish, the Once a Decade Ale (also known as Jubel 2010) is 10% ABV, aged in oak pinot barrels, and is my favorite craft find of the year. And much like finding a good boyfriend, you won’t find another beer quite like it for at least a decade, so stock up on a few before they’re gone for good and break one open every couple of years to temper the dry spell. Speaking of opening your beer, the biggest trick to the Once a Decade Ale is its wax-dipped cap, which can be troublesome to open. I began with more conventional methods such as using a standard bottle opener. But when mainstream methods failed me, I panicked and resorted to biting, clawing, stabbing, and coaxing, while my roommate finally found success melting down the wax with a lighter. However, I’ve since seen effortless cap removals with your tried and true average bottle opener, so perhaps it was just me. It usually is.

So while choosing the right boy may be challenging, choosing the right craft beer is entirely possible—-if you’re fortunate enough to call Portland home.

–Troi out

So, this is how you do it. First, it rings. You don’t really have any part in this. It either rings or it doesn’t. Well, you can force somebody to call you. But then it takes away the whole surprise element of receiving the call in the first place, plus, you will seem pretty uncool. So back to my instructions. The phone rings. You pick up the receiver. My grandparents found this very difficult. They thought phones without a cord had an appearance akin to a walkie-talkie, and they answered it accordingly (HA HA, a-CORD-ingly, as in telephone cords, those things telephones had in my grandparents’ day before the dawn of cell phones). In other words they held the section that should be next to your ear as if it were the mouthpiece and talked into it. Nobody ever talked back. Don’t make this mistake; ensure you answer the phone in such a manner that some section of the phone lies in the vicinity of your ear. This will enhance your communicative success rate by at least 75%. After you place the phone in its proper place on the side of your head so that you can speak and listen, and so that it meets ergonomic requirements for head and neck comfort, you should produce a verbal utterance. “Hello” is commonly accepted. “Goodbye” is funnier. It’s also the standard usage according to Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction universe in “Counter-Clock World.” After saying hello, you may notice you like the sound of your voice and continue to talk. This is not proper phone etiquette. You instead wait for the caller to respond and express his or her justification for his or her call. Listen skeptically and judgmentally. There is usually some fault you can find with his or her answer. For example, if a “friend” is “just calling to say hello,” it is standard to follow with an accusation such as, “Well, you already said that!! Why are you still on the line?!” Then slam the phone down. But remember proper phone etiquette; make sure to say “goodbye” first. (Or “Hello,” if you like Philip K. Dick.) Another phone call excuse that should instantly put you on suspicious guard is a caller who is in any way friendly. A friendly caller is called a “solicitor.” He or she is not your friend. If your caller sounds friendly, slam the phone down as suggested above. Then change your number, change your name, and move to another city, preferably another state, and just to be safe, maybe another country. You might also want to change your haircolor. You may choose a brand that covers gray.

To subscribe to my free* pamphlet, “Answering the Phone Only Looks Easy,” please send your check or money order in the mail. And please send it to me. Not a solicitor. Solicitors are not your friends. But I am.

*Nothing is free in life. Get used to it.

–Troi out