Latin food and I love Italian football

Buona sera!

My eyes can hardly stay open but I love posting on Wed nights so here I am.

I spent the day with Estylo (i steel' o) magazine, at a beautiful home in Hollywood Hills, prepping and photo-ing 3 of my Latin-style recipes for their July issue, alongside their pretty young resident chef Amanda Nunez. My menu for the summer feature was the-best-fish-tacos-the-Lifestyle-Editor-has-ever-had,  mojito smoothies, and my new Spiced Brownies with Mocha Cream Cheese Icing. I'll be writing a story about Latin baseball players and my recipes are foods that are inspired by them. So I just finished a sample list of interview questions for Orlando Cabrera, who will be my first subject. I love my job.

So my reward to me, for succesfully completing all that, is to catch the second broadcast of the beautiful Juventus football club play their Torino rivals, Torino. The match was played earlier today but as I said, I was with my Estylo friends and actually driving to H'wood at that hour.  Because the Universe is very kind, I can watch the replay tonight. Torino is one of my favorite cities on the planet, where, obviously the match is being played.

So here I am, so happy, swooning over some of my favorite players, and mmm, even the referees in Italy are mmm, well, hot. It's just after the halftime break and it's still no score. But, Juve has Camoranesi, Iaquinta (wearing one of those hair bands I love so much), Del Piero, Palladino, and Buffon all healthy and on the pitch...Torino has the yummy Simone Barone (did I mention, the Universe is so kind) and oh look, another looker whose last name is Diana - who, newsflash - is now being taken out of the game for getting banged up. It's kind of a gory match, actually, two head gashes and more blood than I need to see (they keep showing the bloody head of one guy, ugh). Oh, oooh, another look at Barone. I really need to watch more Torino matches.

OK now they made a makeshift beanie, they call it, for the bloody head guy. Thank you.

On Sunday my favorite Milan played and with a tied score, at the end of the match they put one of my favorites, Pippo Inzaghi in. He scored the winning goal.

I think I probably already mentioned how kind the Universe is. 

OK I'm sure that's enough. I won't keep you for the rest of my girly-girl play-by-play.

Ciao for now and,

thank you for reading all of that.

Making the best of screwing up

Lately I've been practicing "telling myself a different story". For those who are not familiar with this wisdom, check out Byron Katie's work. In general, you look at what you're telling yourself about a situation you feel stuck in, and then make a conscious choice to make up something different and believe something else - that both feels better, and is closer to the truth that you want for yourself.

My case in point:

Thursday. My third time hosting my SportsBites internet radio show found me in the seemingly disastrous circumstance of losing my internet connection. So, I could not communicate with my engineers via my online messenger. My computer all but poofed out which I'm sure was directly related to my adrenaline rushing and my strong desire to scream bloody murder. If I were my macbook, I wouldn't want to stick around for that either.

Therefore, I lost all sense of timing. I did not know that my guest calling in from Chicago had arrived and was waiting patiently for me to begin the discussion I had promised to begin at a certain time. I did not have access to the comforting countdown to the break that normally makes me feel so good. All I had was one heart in my throat and a suddenly-very-nervous stomach.

I did my best, silent, do not freak out Diane that I could. But all I could think of was what an idiot I was, how EVERYONE was going to think I was the new poster child for 'amateur hour', and what a perfect fool I must have sounded like. I tried to recover in an elegant fashion but really, could hardly remember how to form sentences. And when that happens, for me anyway, I just do not come across all that clever, or articulate. All I wanted to do was close my macbook, hang up my phone (which would have ended my show since it's all done by phone), and have the earth just come up and swallow me. That would have just felt so much better.

When I finally did resume a connection with my adorable guys because the internet just popped back on, all went kind of well. I had a great chat with  Grant DePorter of the Harry Caray Restaurant Group and he told the best story of what happened to that fated foul ball several years ago at Wrigley Field. 

But I was still really glad when the whole thing just ended. Extremely glad, except that it crossed my mind that everyone would be judging me, and not kindly, if they'd heard any of that.

As I got ready to go out to lunch with Doll (my sister with whom I'd be spending the rest of the day with, to prepare the Italian dinner for 100), it occurred to me that maybe I could try telling myself a different story about all this.

And so I have been doing that ever since. 

The first thing I thought of (that felt better) was that surely everyone who is, or ever was, on top of their game in life, had to have screwed up at least once. I always like to think I am on the verge of joining this kind of exclusive club.

Others in my inner circle have suggested that technical difficulties happen all the time! Even on Meet the Press, even on the Melinda Lee show, even during broadcasts of the  most well-seasoned TV and radio veterans.

So in fact, I'm just in good company!! And I got there, wow, at warp speed - just my third show! Now, thanks to the wise suggestion of my adorable engineers, I know to say "we're going to a break now," and they can help me recover, or at least calm down (so that back on the air I can appear to have recovered) while my listeners just hear a few commercials. Perfetto!

Anyway, my point - and I do have one - is that we can in fact, make ourselves feel better just by thinking differently. Did I want to spend any longer than about 10 minutes feeling crappy about this, and prolong my suffering as a supposed loser? I did not. I want a long, successful run as a fabulous radio show host! I have a lot of good work to do. I hardly want to berate myself and stop dead in my tracks because of one glitch.

This telling yourself a different story thing is a really good idea. I highly recommend it. It's also in fact, the fastest and best way, to find the gold in a seemingly crappy situation. The truth for me, is that some gold always comes from everything. 

In my experience, that gold shows up a lot faster if I hopefully expect it...rather than stay wallowing in the murky place even a macbook wants to hide from.

Let's all go have a great weekend, shall we?

Happy Valentines Day - The Real One

I would so really rather be asleep by now. Antoine - my resident French guy - more on him in a minute - is stuck in Silverlake with his keys locked in the car (without a strong battery on his cell phone and without his AAA card handy and without anyone else to call but me, his resident lifeline) and AAA is on its way to rescue him so that I don't have to, which would really put me in a very bad mood at this hour. I just read that Roger Clemens apparently made himself look not real bright (so sorry) in court today and the beautiful Andy Pettitte might not fare too well either but at least his stories were a little straighter than the former. It's like everything and everyone is running amuck. And I just read Mercury doesn't even go direct for a few more days.

All the more reason to hone in on something good like Valentines Day. And this would be the real blog. The other "Valentines Day" was a mistake put out there by my evil twin Alvina. She did this sort of thing on my other blog too and I still wish she'd just get her own blog.

Newsflash - Antoine just called, he is "cool" and was amazed that it only took 2 seconds for the guy to get into his car. Yeah. At least he's fared better than Roger Clemens did today. 

Back to Valentines Day. 

But wait, yet another call from Antoine (with that same low battery on his cell phone) to tell me yet again that everything is cool (can I GET to my blog over here?!?!) and that it took about 2 seconds for the guy to get into his car (etc., with a French accent)....

Now the neighbors are partying and making way more noise than I wish they would on a Wednesday night before I have to get up early in the a.m.

I so need to run away from home.

Back to Valentines Day.

To say that Valentines Day is only for those in love/who have a romantic significant other, etc., 

is like saying that Christmas is only for children. Come on. We can do better than that. I like to think of this day as one to celebrate love in general, and romance as a way to just make people feel special. It doesn't have to imply seduction - not that there isn't a time and place for that because there is, but - we can romance children, grandparents, mama, anyone we want to see happy.

Today, after I made and served (and cleaned up afterwards) lunch for me and Antoine (the whole story on 'resident French guy' promises to be blogged later), I began folding and stickering my very special Jimmy Neutron kiddie valentines for distribution tomorrow morning, when I go out to exercise at the beach. That is, distribution to people I really do not know, as in, strangers. This is something I try to do every year. One year I gave them out to the guys at the car wash, the people in the grocery store, card shop, everywhere. 

It takes some courage, yeah, but I promise that it is an absolute surefire way to make people laugh, smile, feel happy, and, romanced. 

Antoine seemed to indicate that I'm a fool. Did that stop me from folding and stickering my Jimmy Neutron valentines with any less enthusiasm than a 9-year-old would exhibit? It did not. I told him that if he gave out valentines to strangers, all the girls would swoon all day long because they got a valentine from a cute French guy they didn't even know.

It was then that he asked me if he could have one of my Jimmy Neutron valentines, to give out to 'someone' - he hadn't decided yet. Whatever.

I don't need to be right in life, I only need to be happy. Why, I asked him, would I not take an opportunity to make people happy, for the grand expense of 99 cents (cost of the Jimmy Neutron valentines, and you got stickers too!). Only a fool would pass on that. The best way to BE happy is to make others happy. It's kind of a manipulative ploy, but it works.

Besides, a good way to counterbalance the fear that some people might think you're a complete wacko for giving out valentines to complete strangers, is to think like my sisters and I always do: "I'm never going to see these people again anyway".

Happy Valentines Day.

Happy Valentines Day

Promising a post

I do not read other blogs so much, sorry. So I really do not know if bloggers write posts like this to say how tired they are...This post is just to check in and say 'ciao' and then I really must stop with the computer already tonight, it's 9:37pm and really, so way past my bedtime (at least get-ready-for-bedtime on a Monday anyway)...

There is a lot to do for an internet radio show. I kind of knew that, but now I know it much better. I had an offer by someone, to be my full-time executive assistant; she expects to come work for me a year from now. I think I need her now. Possibly yesterday.

I wasn't on EXTRA! TV by the way, big surprise. One day I'll post a little story about "Mangos and Fake Ice Cubes" to tell the tale of how I kind of sort of almost...got to be on EXTRA! TV.

For now, I'm going to sign off and once again, promise to say more next time.

Allora.....

Buona notte.

Uh-oh, my old blog still exists

Buon giorno,

I just checked. It's still there

grandslamgourmet.blogspot.com

Only read it if you have no other better way to spend your time, pleeeeease....and kindly don't post comments there.

I don't know if I can get in to that blog to blog because personally, I haven't tried.

But I did get a call to possibly be on EXTRA television show this week, I'll keep you posted on that .

SportsBites radio premieres tomorrow, so devo andare - I must go.

Ciao tutti!

Sono qui (I am here)

They say Allora in Italy, as kind of a connector to the next thing they're going to say. If you had any idea what my history with being a blogger is, my signature would be Allora - especially considering that the last time I tried this it was almost exactly two years ago. I have in fact had a lot to say in that lost time, but have actually said nothing, blog-wise.

To cut an otherwise long and probably boring story short, what happened was, my friends Tina and Chris were positive that I needed a blog. So fine, I started one using the computer that eventually died a very slow and painful death - whole separate story...I blogged about dates gone awry, how it was too cold in SoCal that particular winter and I had to wear all my clothes at once to keep warm because it's never that cold in sunny SoCal, Oh! and the World Baseball Classic in San Diego...splendid things of this nature.

When, one morning I woke up and was too tired or too busy to blog - maybe both - and this neglect of the blog went on for about two weeks. And who knew I would not be able to get into my own blog to blog. Surely not me. So that was the end of that. You may still be able to go to 

grandslamgourmet.blogspot.com

But I'm not sure because I personally have not tried it. 

Allora.

Here I am, February 2008, it is, again, very very cold here in sunny SoCal but at least no dates have gone awry lately. I launch my first "SportsBites with Chef Di" internet radio program this Thursday, 7 February, and voila, life is very very good.

Next I promise to enlighten anyone whose interested in how I came to be a radio show host that chats up food and sports. Check out my newly-spruced up website in your vast spare time, and do post a comment any time you are so inclined. I will love hearing from you.

Ciao for now.