Allergy Scares and Dumpster scores

It was the last Friday in March and lunch had worn off. I began searching the kitchen for something quick and tasty. I had some rice left over from the lunch I made for Nicolas and myself.

It was some Thai style vegitables with coconut milk. I guess the coconut milk is the only thing "Thai" about it. I just used the usual stir fry ingredients from my last post.

Lunch turned out great but now it was dinner time, and my plan was to mix a can of 5 bean soup with the leftover rice. A close friend of mine had gone on a dumpster mission the night before and came home with an epic score. Probably 10 boxes of food. She was generous and let me fill up 3 shopping bags, which has been the majority of my diet since last Thursday. Here is what I got
:

Produce

Roma Tomatoes (8pack)
Bell peppers (3pack)
Fresh green beans
whole mushrooms
Aspagagus
Eggplant
Mango
Garlic
Lemon/Lime

Staples

Cheese
Butter (2 sticks)
Loaf of bread (not dairy)
3 Yogurt Cups
50 DVD-Rs( yeah I know thats not food but its still awesome I cant believe these were thrown out. Its a brand new pack the plastic is just ripped a bit.)
Fish Oil Suppliment. (Also not really food but just what I needed, Ive started taking these to see if they will help with dry skin.)

Dry Goods<

Oranic Lime Tortilia Chips
6 pack of Boisenberry Spritzers (100% Juice Hooray for no Corn Syrup)
and 4 cans of Various organic Bean soups (or so I thought.)

Ok I was telling a story about making beans and rice. I grabbed a can of what I thought was 5 bean soup from my cabnet. You see, the label had come off of the can when I washed it the previous night. After opening the mystery can I found lamb and rice wet dog food. I though I had looked before washing the label off the cans. Horrified I grabbed another can with no label and found the 5 bean soup. Unfortunately one of the 5 beans were garbanzos which I am allergic to. After picking them out one by one I ate my pot of beans and rice. I dont know if there is a lesson here other than carefully read the label.
I had another allergy mishap this week when I eagerly dove into a package of eggrolls that were made with ground peanuts instead of pork.

I drank a shot of vinegar and took a benadryl which helped with the irritation of my throat. Lucky for me I'm not deathly allergic to peanuts, and had only eaten 1/2 of an eggroll before realizing it was made with peanuts.
All of that happened in a 24 hour period last Friday. Other than that slight misfortune It has been a great week of food and eating.
Saturday:
Nicolas and Megan asked me to go to breakfast at Jeff's Country Cafe this morning. Being tired and broke i opted for making my own breakfast.

Hashbrowns with bell peppers tomatoes and garlic and toast with almond butter.

The next meal was in the evening I made a pasta sauce with eggplant, 3 roma tomatoes, spinach, fresh garlic, and one can of tomato paste. This sauce was enough to feed my room mate and I.

Saturday evening I played Trivial Prisuit-drinking game style with my room mates. The rules are simple go in a circle and ask the person across from you each question on a card. For each question they get right you take a drink for each question they miss you take a drink. It gets more fun as the game goes on. After a couple hours of this we all agreed it was time for a pie from Pizza palace.

Nicolas and I ate pizza palace around 2:30am. Its the best pizza place open all night that ive found in OKC.

Sunday 3-29-09
Toast with almond butter and molassas

Sonic Food: Sonic burger with tots, Rt 44 Dr Pepper, Jalepeno poppers, french fries, oninon rings.

Thank you to my grandmother Nan for all the free Sonic food. My father and I visited her this day to watch the OU v. NC game, quite depressing loss for OU.

Pastrami Sandwich with tomato pepper jack mozerella, and an egg.

thanks David for the awesome free dinner.

Late night:
Megans Delicious white bean and garlic soup.

Monday morning

8:00 am
Hashbrowns and almond butter toast with yogurt.

Lunch Turkey sandwiches with soy cheese red bell peppers and organic corn chips

dinner:

Pork chops asparagus kim chi, rice, and fresh salad. Thank you Shannon and Shana for making this awesome dinner. Chris the steak you made was delicious also.

This was a great week of eating. I still have a lot of dumpstered food from my friends. Today I stopped at a grocery store on the way to pick up a friend and holy shit what did i find........

Cabbage and Potatoes and Big Budget Shows

Ive been home from SXSW for 4 days now. I had a photo shoot with Evangelicals, recorded some tracks for Brother Gruesome, got to see Lil Wayne up close, and worked a Broadway show, and told "The Skunking Story" to a lot of people.
A lot of the food I have right now is stuff left over from my last dumpster trip before going to Austin. Mostly tomatoes, red/yellow potatoes, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, garlic and rice. For three days I've been experimenting with various recipes using these ingredients. After trial and error i think i have a combination worth sharing. Its definately time to get some more food. Although cabbage and potatoes are delicious, it has lost its luster after 3 days.
Potato and Cabbage Meal or (Todds Irish Stir fry-thanks for the name Levi)

A plus to this dish is that its delicious and the ingredients are extremely cheap.

Serves 1 very hungry person

1 small red potato sliced thin
3 Roma tomatoes quartered or 15 cherry toms cut in half
1/4 head of cabbage
1/2 zucchini sliced thin
3 carrots sliced thin
1/2 cup of rice
2-3 cloves of garlic minced
(You should however, have a solid stock of these spices,you may have to borrow or purchase from a store.)
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
soy sauce 1 tablespoon maybe more
dark molasses
4-5 cap fulls apple cider vinegar
Cayenne pepper to taste

Preparation:
start cooking the rice. while its cooking cut up all the vegetables. Heat up oil in a pan, cast iron if you have it. I love cooking in cast iron my new room mates have one and its seriously the only pan I like to cook in. When its hot throw in vegetables stir while adding the spices and garlic. I like to add the garlic last so its flavor is still strong. Cook it all together on med heat for about 15 min.

I ate three variations on this dish so far this week and found this combination of spices to taste the best.

On Wednesday my totally awesome roommate Megan made an awesome stew with carrots, tomatoes, green, beans, corn, and tiny little star shaped noodles. The spices seemed to have an Italian flare.

I had two helpings of this dish, one Wednesday night and one Thursday morning for breakfast. I started to feel guilty when I realized I ate more of it than both of my roommates.

Wednesday morning my friend David invited me over to make and eat breakfast at his place. He has a well stocked fridge and pantry. I made bagel sandwiches for us both.

cowboy coffee made from some crappy, but free, 1/2 the caff Folgers.

The fix ins.

The finished product.

Monday: Lil Wayne show.

Breakfast 6:30am - One apple, a corn Pancake, two-three cups of coffee and two packaged
raisin danishes at the Cox Center.

I hung lights for the lil Wayne show. The highlight was during the load out when I was picked to follow lil Weezay from the stage to his tour bus carrying some of his bags. His dreads are awesome and he is shorter than me, but incredibly buff.

Lunch 12:00pm - Catered food from the stage hand job. This was the best meal I had eaten in the week since leaving for SXSW.

Dinner 8:30pm - Irish stir fry. (See Above)

Here are some of the Delicious snacks I ate this week:

Sardines in tomato sauce Tue 2:30am:(thanks Levi)

Bagel and creme cheese with orange, banana, and green apple:(Thursday on my work break at the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Broadway show with Levi)

What I have listened to this week.
Early Beat (live at the Hilo)
Lil Wayne
New Secretly Canadian releases

SXSW Recap (or how I learned to make a noodle sandwich)

Where do I start. Taking stock of the past week is quite difficult. I saw more bands than I can remember, was given more free booze than I could drink, and had the most erratic and unhealthy diet in recent memory. That said however, I managed to survive for 6 days at SXSW without paying for a single meal, with a couple exceptions. Evangelicals played seven shows over six days in Austin. We had a much needed day off on Tuesday to recover from the skunk attack that happened in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Our busy schedule affected what and how I ate this week. With all that said, I give you SXWS 2009 as experienced by Toddy J.

After a sleepless Sunday night in Norman, fueled by an early morning Waffle House breakfast we set off to Mohawk in Austin to play what would be our biggest show of the week. Eating nothing on the 7 hour drive Josh and I began wondering the streets in search of free stuff.
We soon found some free Wild cherry Dr. Pepper on 6th street.

Then we met up with Our friends from Dead Oceans for a delicious meal at the Iron Cactus. I had a ton of chips and guacamole and a bowl of tortillia Soup. (picture lost in the madness) Thanks again Phil for the awesome meal. It would be my last dinner out for the remainder of SX. What follows is a photographic record of the weeks food. I would take the time to create a detailed time line outlining each day of the festival and each show, but im not trying to write a novel, and honestly I cant remember when or where I was when eating some of this stuff. The photos are however mostly in chronological order.

4 Packages of instant oatmeal (assorted flavors)Juice and coffee and coffee Tuesday Mar 17th after de-skunking. I suplimented this with snacks from the van. until Wednesday.
Below is a picture from outside the Super 8 hours after the Skunking

Dickies lounge snacks fresh fruit chips salsa, and pigs in the blanket.

I also made off with all the free Dickies clothing I could carry. We made two visits to the Dickies lounge last week where we enjoyed free beer and cocktails free food and clothes.

Thank you Matt Fowler and Ninelle for the Delicious late night drunk slice of pizza.

This was the scene at the After The Jump Pizza party when we showed up. Believe me I was sad too. After I saw there was no more pizza I went to the van to drown my sorrow in an over sized jar of pickles and a noodle sandwich.

Noodle Sandwich- Ingredients: slice of white bread, one can of condensed chicken noodle soup. Preparation: remove slice of bread from bag being careful to avoid the heel, unless you like eating the heel of the loaf in which case go for it! Remove lid from chicken noodle soup (this part is important) drink off about half the juice before dumping noodles on the bread. dump about 1/3 to 1/2 half of the noodles on to the bread at a time depending on the size of your mouth. Repeat this procedure until your hunger pains are satisfied. Tip- try adding some tabasco sauce if you have a spicy personality.

I ate this toaster pastry after our show with Women and Arizona. Two bands worth checking out.

Two family sized boxes of macaroni and cheese mixed with a can of tuna is more than enough to feed a four piece band. The Previous four pictures represent the corner stone of my diet while at SXSW this year. Thank you Josh for getting this stuff before we left. Without I would have no doubt spent a lot of cash needlessly on expensive food vendors.

Aside from the Dickies lounge and our semi skunked snack box in the E-van There was one other sanctuary from the madness of SXSW. It was Blakes Parents house. A place known and loved by many Oklahoma travelers over the years. Blakes Stepmother Beverly and his dad Joe are always welcoming us with food, blankets and pillows, showers and whatever else we may need. This year I found out that Beverly has her own Karioke Catalog with over 3000 songs.

Here are some of the things I ate there.

A delicious turkey sandwich with coffee and Frito's with bean dip and salsa.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

I cant tell what this is, but I ate it and I'm sure it was delicious.

That's about it for eating SXSW. Overall food was at times scarce and rarely wholesome. There was enough though to propel me to 6am most nights. I snuck into some exclusive party's got a lot of free drinks and mooched off my friends enough to where I only spent 25 dollars. Josh and I made a 4am trip to Whataburger and I paid for us both to repay him for all the coffee he has bought me at The Earth and Cafe Plad the last couple months. If you'd like to see more pictures of the shows we played check out my Facebook or search Evangelicals on Flikr. This link has a lot of our pictures from SXSW on it mixed in with a few pictures of random churches.

Here are some Links to bands I saw this Year, all worth checking out in my opinion.

Hurray for the Riff Raff

Prince Rama of Ahodhya

Headlights

Parenthetical Girls

These Are Powers

Women

Arizona

What Listened to while creating this post.

Swan Lake, Mt. St Helen's Vietnam Band, These are Powers

Thank you Tom, Dawn, Phil, Chris, Jon, Matt, Beverly, Joe, Blake, Kyle, Josh, and Austin for an awesome week.

Until next time.

-Toddy J

SXSW Recap (Monday Skunk night)

Click here to read about what happened Monday night in KylesTourBlog. This was the result. Yes that is me standing in my underware in a Starbucks parking lot at 4am.

I just walked in the door to my house and got to my laptop. I took a ton of photos. I will post a detailed recap of my demented eat and sleep schedule, as well as the bands and people I encountered at SXSW. Right now I can barely form a sentence.

Last Meals before SXSW

Here it is, Monday morning. Evangelicals are about to embark on a one week journey into the madness of South By Southwest. I have had 4 hours of sleep in the past 48 so im already in the right state of mind. I have made the decision to leave my computer in a safe place here in Oklahoma. I had a premonition that our van might get broken into, or I would be drunk and drop my computer in a gutter or something this week. Expect a SXSW recap post upon my return next week. Here are the final two meals and this weekends urban foraging:

I couldnt sleep sunday night so I hit up the usual places and found:
20 pounds of new potatoes
brussl sprouts
asiago cheeze bread.

Thats one happy sunday morning breakfast.

A few hours ago Josh and I after not sleeping all night went to Waffle house for a fatty 3 egg breakfast. This is my first picture with blue hair. I recomend the locaton on Robinson. They have good service and clean tables.

Happy foraging.

-Toddyj

March Madness

Thanks Cameron, Diana, and Jim for your comments and suggestions on ways to eat free, and free food culture. I am always open to new ideas and alternate ways to get food or what people think I need more or less of in my diet. Lately I've had a bit too much of this:

I woke up early today and began work on my room. My friend BC, who works at the Omniplex science museum, gave me these panels that have the periodic table of elements painted on them. My room now resembles some kind of an insane asylum.

I ate some more Visailia Grapes and a Sobe Immunity water while working. The work kept me too busy to eat a meal so I had to go to my sound gig hungry.

My job was running sound for a shadow puppet show I helped BC record last week titled "Big Swamp Mermaid." Lucky for me the Plaza District art walk has plenty of good free food and wine.

The plaza district art walk gets my endorsement as the best art walk in OKC. It typically happens the Friday following the Paseo Art Walk, or should I say Stingy Hoity-toity Yuppie walk. The Plaza District is located on NW 16th Street Between McKinley and Indiana. I hope to see you there next month. If you go there be sure to pay a visit to the "Bad Grannys" shop They sell all sorts of granny's attic style clothing, crafts, art, and other cool junk. I got a big jar of old 2" pins/buttons, and a musical instrument for my good friend Peninsula, all for 5 bucks.
Later my roommate Nicolas and I went to the Hilo Club to see some friends and have a drink. The night ended as every Friday should with a Jalapeno Garlic Tomato and Pineapple pizza from my new favorite late nite grub Pizza Palace.

Saturday March 14.
"The Big 12 Ultimate Fan Experience!"

My pizza and beer coma left me only minutes to be at work today. I drank 2 jars of water and left for the Cox convention center to take apart "The Ultimate Fan Experience." Yes the Big 12 college basketball championchip took place in Oklahoma City this year. I work as a stage hand for various concerts, Broadway shows, and conventions that happen downtown. Bricktown was so packed due to he big 12 that I was forced to park at Toby Kieths "I Love This Bar and Grill!" Thats the stupidest fucking name for a restaurant. While running the half mile from there to the convention center I picked up a free beverage from a Big 12 sponsor.

My thirst for sugar and caffeine satisfied it was time to look as busy and do as little as possible. (its a union gig)

On my break we were allowed to help ourselves to some wholesome snacks that were left by our generous sponsors.

Thanks to Kraft foods, Frito Lay, Nestlie, Quaker oats, and Deer Creek water for providing me with the days first meal.

When I got home from work Nicolas had prepared a delicious tomato soup from the excess of tomatoes I dumpsterd from the Aldi in Moore.
I ate 2 cups of soup while boiling some noodles.
The tomato soup ingredients were: fresh tomatoes, fresh garlic, basil, oil, and soy sauce. I mixed it with 1/2 a can of tomato paste to make a sauce for my noodles. It was delicious.

Thanks aunt Suzanne for the noodles you gave me for Christmas. I have found them very useful.

SXSW is 2 days away!!

What I'm listening to:
Final Fantasy- "He poos clouds"
Jeff Buckley- "Sketches for my sweetheart the drunk"