fungineering

becca sent me this and it's the kind of thing you feel like sending to everyone you know. it's part of a project vw did where they asked people to find ways to make everyday activities more fun..they call it the fun theory. happy monday!


while we're sharing, mighty girl posted a list of ways you can 'volunteer from your couch'. i bookmarked one, make a child smile, where you send cards or little presents to sick or chronically ill kids, their siblings or parents. there's another, project linus, and you make a blanket to be given to kids (or volunteer in the office, or cut fabric, or all sorts of things). the austin chapter meets every 3rd saturday.

threes

they say bad things come in 3's. today's 3 weren't really "bad," but certainly odd.
1. stacy and i went to williams sonoma for a free cooking class. they're every sunday at 11. exceeeppt this sunday, apparently. we walked in to an empty store and a bunch of salespeople with puzzled looks on their faces as we eyed them questioningly.
salespeople: can we help you with something?
me: we're here for the cooking class..?
sp: there isn't one today. they're every sunday in february at 11 though
me: oh. ..did you have them in january too?
sp: yep, on sunday at 11
me: isn't today sunday at 11?
sp: yep, but there isn't one today.

so we decided to make dinner one night this week instead, and went to sprouts to buy the 2 things we needed: shallots and white wine

2. of course, we get to the cashier with our wine and one little teeny shallot, and the guy says ohhh no sorry you can't buy this yet, it's only 11:46 and we can't sell alcohol until noon. we didn't want to wait, so we bought one shallot for 22 cents. the cashier said that was the most pathetic thing anyone had ever purchased. stacy was impressed he knew what a shallot was.

3. tonight i go to supper club way down south. there were supposed to be 2 shifts, a 7pm and a 9pm. so i show up at 9.. and all of the 7 people are still there, but no one from 9 is. so i sit down and they hand me a bowl of soup. i introduce myself, we chat. people slowly start to filter out.. but no one else came at 9pm. only me! was just a weird coincidence, especially in light of the way the rest of the day had gone.

aside from that though, it was a beautiful perfect day. 78 degrees! and bright and breezy. i finished up the girl who kicked the hornet's nest in a chair on the porch. it was lovely.

one hundred miles

..i wrote a paragraph about yoga, but realized the details are boring and unimportant. the gist is that i had been going to the really easy classes because i hadn't done yoga in a long time, and today i went to what i was considering the hard class, and it wasn't too bad. i've never been able to touch my toes, so yoga is a challenge.

(did you know your heels are ideally supposed to touch the floor during downward dog? the instructor said that the other day and i looked around the room and lots of people's heels were actually touching! mine have no hope. they're a good 6 inches off the ground. today i got down to 3 or 4 which i considered a win)

the best part was that i wore mom's leggings from the '80s to class today with a light pink tank top. (sent her this picture when i was sitting at a stop light in my car realizing how bright they were in the daylight). definitely stood out when everyone else was in various shades of black, gray, blue and burgundy. felt a little odd afterward in line at taco deli too.

and it was beauuutiful in austin today so i took a little walk around the neighborhood, still in the leggings. got a few strange looks, but it felt good to get some exercise. i was just looking at pedometers, but i think i'm getting ahead of myself. maybe i'll see how long i can keep this up. my guess is until wednesday when the cold weather hits. we're going from a high of 76 to 38 in 3 days.

two aunts, one recipe

think i feel a little bit of a cold coming on, so i'm headed to bed early this evening, but i wanted to leave you with the bok choy salad recipe aunt carol andd aunt margy sent me. 

it was very yummy and super easy, but i will say that you might only want to dress half of it at a time unless you're going to sit down and eat it all immediately. jeff and i halved the recipe and used one head of bok choy and it was enough for us for lunch, but the noodles do get soggy pretty quickly. i didn't add the whole 1/4c of sugar either, just a couple teaspoons.

she hid around corners

random topics today.. this afternoon gram and spanky suggested i hang around outside banks and scope out men carrying large envelopes in the hunt for a husband. we were all cracking up. surely there must be an easier way!

lots of fun things coming up in the next few days and weeks. craft project with old friends tomorrow. we're making something on this website.. but i can't tell yet because some are being mailed to blog readin' friends. and i get to see the little kids and the big kids at mandarin school which will be fun.

picked up the help from the library, which i've heard good things about from lots of people. i needed a different before bed book than the girl who kicked the hornet's nest because it occasionally freaks me out.

if anyone has a delicious bok choy recipe, that'd be most welcome. maj bought some and i'm not sure what to do with it other than a stir fry of some kind.

the sky above is clear again

maj thinks she might be gluten intolerant.. so today i made quinoa tabouli. she loves regular tabouli with bulgher wheat, so she wanted to try the gluten free version. not good, friends. the first problem was not ever having tasted or seen quinoa cooked (or uncooked, for that matter) i had no idea what consistency i was going for as the rice cooker bubbled away. this resulted in an emergency gchat session with my friend katherine, who sent me a picture of it cooked.

that part was easy enough once i knew what i was going for.

but the smell of it cooking (it may be more fair to say 'burning' in the bottom of the rice cooker) reminded me of high school when becca and i were doing a science fair project (which we won third place at the state level in the teams division for, might i add) testing the bacteria levels in different kinds of bottled, tap and lake/stream/etc water. we had to dip a loop into the water, rub it on an agar plate, and burn the loop to sanitize it before dipping it again. but you'd always get a little bit of agar stuck on it, and the smell of burnt agar is permanently imprinted on my mind. so needless to say, that started us on the wrong foot.

the second problem was the consistency. bulgher wheat is ricey, kind of toothsome (my favorite top chef vocab). but the quinoa was mushy and had an outer shell that would remind you of the shell of a pea that slides around when you bite into it. but quinoa is the size of cous cous, so the whole experience is a little more larva-y.

anyway i didn't mean to go on such a rant, but it was gross. :)

did you hear me cheering during the president's state of the union speech tonight?

ya chi

today i had the sealant redone on 3 of my teeth and i have never been so happy to go to the dentist. the last time i had health insurance was in 2008 in taiwan. when i went to the dentist i told him a spot was bugging me when i drank hot or cold things.. and he couldn't find it, so he handed me the pokey-tool and asked me to show him. thennn he told me i had no problem, it was just the 'natural morphological differences' in my teeth.

so it had been bothering me for quite a while. and now it's a thing of the past! writing them a thank you note tomorrow. and president obama. love that healthcare bill. are you excited about the state of the union tonight? i'll be cheering when he mentions the 30 million newly insured americans because one of them is me!

xin nian kuai le

today was the FCC (families with children from china) new year's festival at a middle school in austin. the kids from the preschool i've been working at a couple days a week sang two songs.

 i helped with hair and makeup. the girls all learned how to smush their lips together after their lipstick is on.

 teacher terri and i. i was wearing her top from a few years ago.

they were rewarded for their excellent performance with lollipops the size of their heads. could they be any cuter?

ode to a grocery store

(this is my 900th post.. it adds blonde in taiwan + coincidenceless).

david lebovitz is an american chef living in paris who has a wonderful blog full of desserts, recipes and stories about where to find the best bread, or pastries gone awry. he was in texas recently and taught a cooking class at central market, which is my favorite supermarket place in austin. the staff knows their stuff, the produce is seasonal, they have stelline (teeny star pasta), a large Texas wine section, and the butchers are excellent conversationalists. beyond that, it just has good energy. the customers and staff are nice, the lighting is pretty, it smells like real food. so how delighted was i to see that david described CM as "the best supermarket in the world." whenever i find myself with an hour to kill downtown, i just head to central market and walk up and down the aisles. 

beatin' like a hammer

apologies for the recent silence, but i've been busy working my way through the how easy is that cookbook and other culinary adventures. this week was the fresh peach cake.. aka peach cobbler. it's yummy, not overly sweet. 

 it took half an hour longer than the recipe called for because the middle refused to set up.

 we're trying not to eat red meat while faj is gone during the week. but when i'm in charge of menu planning.. we end up with meals like these:
monday: gram's mussels, baked breaded eggplant, peach cake
tuesday: a morsel of shrimp scampi (half a pound of shrimp intended for shrimp cocktail does not quite a meal for 3 make.. although it was delicious), cous cous with toasted pine nuts (minus the currants), tabouli
wednesday: leftovers
thursday: turkey and spinach lasagna

..i guess now that i've typed it out, it doesn't sound quite as random. need to find something with chives so i can use some of the chives from the garden.

as the years go flyin' by

my friend erin, who worked with me in austin for a year at my first job out of college, had a party on friday at her house called cringe night. you were supposed to bring an embarrassing tidbit from your childhood. erin is tons of fun and loves attention, so this party was right up her alley. she began by reading several entries from her diary from when she was 7, 9 and 12 (or so). i remember two lines vividly:

"my cousin is so beautiful. she has long, brown hair. she is a woman."

"i feel like i am jealous of everyone, but no one is jealous of ME."

..so everyone was in pieces laughing at erin's performance, but then when she finished, no one wanted to go next. we decided to spin a bottle. naturally, it landed on me. i had come prepared with my diary from high school, but i passed. of the 20 people at the party, i knew 2 well and had met 2 others a couple of times, and i just plain didn't have enough courage at the moment to be the second to go. so we spun again and it landed on the girl beside me, who read notes her first boyfriend had written her when she was 15 about how much he loved her, especially in her cheerleading uniform. 

thenn we spun it a third time and it landed on me again! so i just gave in and read. mercifully, they laughed at my entry about how i was "kind of like a typical cheerleader, but i'm not one" and how i had a "princess bed, which goes perfectly with my personality." 

it was a hilarious night and a really fun idea for a party.

day is done

the radio faceplate was stolen out of my car a couple of months ago when it was broken into.. so now while i'm driving down the highway i sing songs to myself and my favorite is taps. one of the directors taught us the words to it at camp and we used to sing it around the campfire to close. it's so pretty.

i only knew about it in the context of military funerals.. but while searching for a version with lyrics on youtube, i found out that it's the lights out song. wikipedia says.. "The tune is actually a variation of an earlier bugle call known as the "Scott Tattoo" which was used in the U.S. from 1835 until 1860,^[1][2] and was arranged in its present form by the Union Army Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield, an American Civil War general who commanded the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division in the V Army Corps of the Army of the Potomac while at Harrison's Landing, Virginia, in July 1862 to replace a previous French bugle call used to signal "lights out". Butterfield's bugler, Oliver W. Norton, of Erie, Pennsylvania, was the first to sound the new call. Within months, Taps was used by both Union and Confederate forces."

in the sunshine

"i was so toasty tonight since i was wearing megan's silk underwear." jeff

...i let jeff borrow the long underwear bottoms that aunt carol sent me when i went to england. he's been wearing thai fisherman pants or just any pair of pants underneath his normal pants because he gets cold at concerts. i keep trying to tell him it's important to include the long when he's talking about long underwear. cracks me up. 

the change in my pocket

well, friends. i went to a real yoga class at yoga yoga for the first time in two years, and i aaalmost died. ok, not quite, but it was a lot harder than i was expecting it to be. i think a lot of it had to do with the heated room. i can't decide if it's because it's winter or because ashtanga is always hot? the website didn't mention anything. anyhow, my face turns bright red when i get even a little bit hot, and i saw the instructor glance at me, widen his eyes and click the heat down a couple notches. but! i survived and decided i'm more of a hatha girl. 30 rounds of sequences all ending in 5 breaths of downward dog is a little too much for this girl. weak elbows.

it's cold this week. when you say 'cold' in austin it could mean anywhere from 60 on down. but this week we're going to see a couple days with highs in the 40s. that's cold by any standard. today was the best kind of wintery sunday though because there was continuous drizzle. nothing like being inside a warm house under a quilt, sipping tea or abuelitas mexican hot chocolate on a day like today.

magic in the air

i have a hereditary disorder that involves not being able to keep large, open surfaces free of clutter. my bedside table has a really large top.. it's proobably 2 feet square.. and i cannot stop myself from piling all kinds of stuff on it. the other day i was about to go to bed and i looked over and just had to laugh at how much junk had accumulated. and there's also a bottom shelf that you can't even see and it has even more than the top does. 

 but when your whole life is stored in one little room, that's just part of reality.

this week i tried a couple more recipes out of how easy is that? and we decided the tuscan white beans are our fav so far. delicious. i was a little afraid of cooking with fennel because i know i don't like licorice flavor, and raw fennel smells just like black licorice. but when you cook it down.. it's more like celery but with an earthy taste to it. pretty yum actually.

the recipes from the cookbook aren't online, but i'd be happy to type it out if you want it.

went to a sichuan restaurant with the fam tonight and we had hot pot. it was freaking me out to be smelling taiwanese smells, tasting taiwanese food and then i would look up and maj and faj were sitting across from me. glad they got to experience that though. now if we could only find a ching xin tea shop.

long long long ago

made the french lentil salad in ina garten's new cookbook today. you start with lentils and add an onion, studded with whole cloves, and a turnip cut in half. she saysss that the recipes are tested something like four times each, but i don't know about this one. you're supposed to discard the onion and turnip after you simmer it with the other ingredients, but the onion had separated into a million pieces, and i just don't like the idea of throwing a turnip away after using it to flavor some lentil water. 

after you drained it, you add 4 teaspoons of dijon mustard, 1 T of red wine vinegar and 1/4c of olive oil. it was powerfully mustardy. next time, i would cut that way down. 

i think i'm the only one in our house who has/will eat it. but it's nice to eat something you haven't tasted before, at the very least. 

and this is what i'm counting for the creative every day challenge today. i made these passport pages for the mandarin preschool in indesign. the top two pages were modeled after a template we found online, and i copied some of the stamps on my own passport for the interior pages. wingdings does occasionally come in handy.

gram had an operation to have a little skin cancer taken off her nose today, so if we could all send some healing thoughts her way that would be nice. 

tigers in the wild

mutti got me ina garten's new cookbook, how easy is that?, for christmas (actually maj remembered that i had mentioned it a few months ago and suggested it to mutti) and i am looooving it. so far i've made the turkey meatballs and roasted vegetables. the meatballs were really yummy. i've never use ground turkey in a recipe before, but if you closed your eyes, you wouldn't have any idea it wasn't ground beef. she has you take a sweet italian sausage out of its casing (another first) and mix it in with the turkey. very easy, really delicious.

french lentils tomorrow.

also, if you haven't seen this yet, it will blow. your. mind. youtube isn't cooperating by letting me post a tiny video screen, but you can click on it and watch it there if you want.

2010

i don't want to start 2011 on a negative note, so i'll just say i am ready to very say goodbye to 2010. on to the next!

do you think playing upwords counts as part of the creative every day challenge..? i did have to create words..