Day Zero Project #62: Try a new vegetable.

Back in college when everyone goes through a hippie, "Damn the Man!" phase I became vegan, even though the amount of vegetables I ate in my entire life up to that point consisted of corn, potatoes and maybe a little bit of lettuce as long as it was mixed with other stuff so I didn't have to taste it.

Not to be deterred (and generally pig-headed in barreling towards goals that make no sense at all), I purchased the cookbook "Vegan Cooking For One" and set about learning to like vegetables by, naturally, eating only recipes in this book for a whole year.

The book that started it all!

After that year, I said to myself, "That was easy and delicious." and proceeded to be vegan up until just a few years ago when I started working fish and dairy back in my diet.

So, needless to say, trying to find a vegetable that I haven't tried before has proved slightly more difficult that I'd imagined. Every week I would get my vegetable delivery from the awesome Tampa Bay Organics and there would be no veggie I haven't seen before. Stop by Publix, same deal. Stop by the Farmer's Market, same deal. But finally, my box of veggies last week had a new squash I haven't tried before: the Delicata Squash.

It looks like this when raw:

 Then it looks like this:

 
And finally, it looks like this when cooked and stuffed with a quinoa stuffing:

And it's delicious.

And because wasting food is not a good idea, I went ahead and roasted the seeds too. They'll make a good snack and added a nice roasted/smoky flavor to the stuffing.

I also get bonus points for getting confused and thinking I needed to "Try a new fruit," which lead me to eat this weird thing:

And please don't judge the rambutan by it's cover. He's not much to look at, but he's delicious.

Day Zero Project #79: Play a Game of Racquetball

I have a motto that I like to spout off from time to time that is "It's not fun, unless you can die doing it." Do I really believe that? No. I'm having fun typing this right now and I'd like to think that my chance of dying while sitting at my keyboard is minimal. That's just not the way I want to go out.

But this motto does help explain some of the fun (stupid?) things that I do on a regular basis such as cliff diving without knowing how to swim, walking through the darkest parts of the ghetto at 2am, parallel parking or antagonizing my wife after she's repeatedly warned me that she's about to switch from her normal quiet mode into full-on ninja.

And so when I was shipped off to a Corporate Leadership Class I was doubtful that I would have much opportunity to do anything approaching dangerous. Except for public speaking. I'm pretty sure that's been known to cause a few serious health problems.

But on the second day of class I walked deep into the bowels of the Corporate HQ, past the dining hall, down four flights of stairs until I came across a tiny room. And the concept of this room is that people lock themselves in it and proceed to hit a tiny blue rubber ball at what must be about 1,000 miles per hour at each others faces. Now we are talking something a bit more my speed!

I didn't know anyone who plays racquetball? No problem. I just head upstairs and grab a couple of people with promises of the most awesome game of all time.

We don't have any gym clothes? No problem. Racquetball is meant to be played by people in khakis and polos who are running around with just their socks on.

Worried that since we are at a Corporate Class that there should be some sort of business purpose? No problem. I can think of no better way of team building that running around trying to hit co-workers with a ball that will likely leave a welt that will last for weeks.

And so it was that I found myself immersed in an ultra-business complex running around a glass box with two peers all in our business clothes having one of the more fun times that I would have all week.

It was like this...

...except we all were dressed like this.