Autumn in ND

More photo backlog. Fall is the one time of year that is truly breathtaking here.

View from behind Wilson Commons

Outside the laundry room

The Golden Dome in the background

Yellow maple leaves

Carved pumpkins done by M & L

Glowing (mine’s in the middle; I think I cut away too much b/c it rotted early)

Look, I Crafted!

Despite my utterly INSANE schedule, I took some time off last Sunday to craft and recharge.

Front:

Back:

Three Ways to Wear:

Hair

Hat

Lapel

I cut up several layers of red craft felt freehand and sewed them together at the center with a cluster of French knots. I used a felt loop at the back instead of sewing on a pinback so I can switch it out for a bobby pin if I want to. I’m since realizing that felt was not a good choice of material for the loop, as after one day of hat wear the pin is already starting to tear through the thin fibers of the craft felt. Maybe if I have time later this semester (ha! time, what’s that?) I’ll replace it with a ribbon.

I should totally be at the library right now. I have a term paper to write, a reading next week for which need to do major revision, and mounds of tasks to complete before the magazine launch (that unfinished web site code is having a staring contest with me). But here I am, blogging. Oh, well.

On an unrelated note, I have been thinking about Christmas (already!). I am definitely going to do some element of handmade this year, as usual, though less than I did last year, as I just haven’t got the time. Cookies for administrators and people who drive me places. Maybe using these cute boxes in the kraft brown color if I can convince myself to spring for them (alternately, I could be a cheapskate and start saving empty ziplock-box-style ham containers since we go through one every couple of weeks). Jewelry will likely be my route again for my girl friends. I plan to use a lot of deconstructed thrifted elements to save myself money and be a little ecofriendly this year. Am glad that Christmas season stuff is starting to pop up on blogs (I won’t get into my extreme dislike/phobia of Halloween related stuff but suffice it to say I’m relieved when November rolls around every year). Found an AWESOME tutorial for Ramen Wrapper Ribbons on The Gifted Blog today. Am wondering how well it would work with How About Orange’s lovely Magazine Gift Bow Tutorial, which I have also been longing to try out.

Finally, a piece of not-so-fun news: after an unfortunate incident involving the toilet paper spindle earlier this week, our upstairs toilet needs to be replaced (probably the toilet paper spindle, too). Ack. Everything in this apartment is falling apart. At least it’s not the water heater this time. Thank God that we have a second toilet.

Backlog

Hard to tell from the photo, but that’s pink applesauce. Made using a variation of this recipe from Every Little Thing. (Main differences: I add a little sugar and lemon juice, and use an immersion blender after I pick the skins out, since I don’t have a food mill).

It’s fall! And freezing in South Bend already. I’ve heard tell that we’ve already had a little snow (though it was so light that I missed it). Apple and pear season, though. I’ve been taking advantage of that for sure. My roommate M and I have been buying fresh apple cider every week. And lovely ripe pears, when we can get them. A couple of weeks ago I figured out that making applesauce is actually really easy (I did burn one batch, but that was because I became engrossed in the paper I was working on and forgot about it). So it’s become my go-to snack. I love applesauce. Even more so when it is a pretty rosy color.

I know this blog has been really quiet recently. So this post is proof that — yes, I’m still alive. Still writing, and cooking, and — occasionally — baking, though not nearly as much as usual. I haven’t been crafting, though. (Or – it seems, blogging). I’m pretty wrapped up in preparing for the web site and blog launch of my magazine, and with working on my MFA thesis at the moment. But I’m on Fall Break, and reading this beautiful blog, which my friend and collaborator M linked me to (it is her cousin’s blog), made me want to post on mine.

Come to think of it, scratch that statement about not crafting. I did make a felt brooch to send to a friend for her birthday back in September. Unfortunately, I never got pictures of it before I hurried it out to the post office (I was late, as usual).

Meanwhile, my backlog of food photos has been piling up. Here are a few other edibles from recent months:

Exhibit A:

Slices of the (lemon-flavored) birthday cake I made for my roommate C, from September. I used Nigella Lawson’s Baby Bundts recipe, increased by 1.5x and made in a regular sized bundt pan. I love this cake – the first time I made it was for my mom’s birthday in January, and it’s absolutely heavenly. Sticky and springy, but moist, tender, and not too rich.

Exhibit B:

Travel Bento for the plane ride to Toronto in Sept, for my cousin E’s wedding. Ate it before I crossed the border and carefully wiped down the container so as not to run into problems with bringing vegetables (and sesame seeds) in. Cold soba pre-dressed with soy and sesame oil, sprinkled with green onion and sesame seeds. Lunchmeat ham. Carrots. Ginger hard candy. Apple gummies.

Exhibit C:

Inaugural Lock n’ Lock box Bento Lunch. Cooked lettuce and cannellini bean “salad” (sometimes I like to cook my salads – I’m weird like that), leftover Shepherd’s Pie, digestive biscuits split in half, two gummies, frozen raspberries. I’d asked my mom to pick up a slightly smaller divided box for me because they sell these at the H-Mart near my parents’ house (seemed easier than ordering online), but my mom misunderstood and bought me an 800mL box, which is — well, kind of huge. I did successfully pack a sandwich (plastic-wrapped), veggies, and snack in it the second time I used it, and was nice and full. But the lunch pictured here (even with salad – a notorious space hog!) was too much to eat in one sitting. Also, I discovered an annoying quirk to the box. The dividers are not tall enough to lie flush against the inside of the lid, so the liquid from my salad (which was pre-dressed) spilled onto the digestive biscuits during the 5 minute walk to my library carrell and made the cookies really GROSS and soggy. Surprisingly, the raspberry juices didn’t go anywhere because the nut cup I put them in DOES sit flush against the inside of the lid. You’d think that they’d make dividers that sat flush – otherwise, what is the point of dividing foods that will spill into one another anyway? At any rate, I’ve now learned a lesson about how to pack this box, which I’ve narrowed down to two main strategies: 1) protect the dry foods (works best when they are easy to wrap in plastic, like sandwiches or cookies). 2) limit wet foods, or quarantine when possible (use mini-containers with lids or nut cups); or simply use a sidecar. Ultimately, I have to say that I’m kind of disappointed with this box. The whole reason for wanting a Lock-n-Lock was to have a spill-proof container that had modular inner dividers so that I wouldn’t have to use multiple sidecars. But it turns out that the dividers don’t do a whole lot of dividing inside. I think I’m mostly going to be using it for sandwich meals in the future. :-p Guess the old Snapware + sidecar method wasn’t so bad, after all.

Onward! Tomorrow is for thesis writing and cake-baking (I’ve got a chocolate pear cake I want to make).

Twin Bentos

I had a bit of a crazy weekend (spent most of it catching up on class reading, grocery shopping, baking, entertaining birthday party guests, and coding the layout for the LR web site — the latter of which activities has so far been a full bunkered-down, all-consuming kind of experience), on the tail end of an even crazier week. This morning during church I decided I was going to take a partial Sabbath to just resettle myself psychologically and spiritually, but after my guests left I ended up taking a full one — I was just too zonked to do any homework. Instead I napped, did laundry, cleaned the bathroom, put away the dishes from the party, and because I suddenly found myself with a creative itch and no desire to start on any sort of involved, long-term project, making a pair of bento lunches for my roommate M and me to eat tomorrow. It ended up being a very relaxing, absorbing activity — helped me unwind and focus a bit without the stress of a deadline (I was baking scones right up until the minute my first guest arrived earlier today and let me tell you that was not relaxing!) and gave me the chance to chat with another one of my roommates K who came down to watch me cook. I’m lucky that K is familiar with bento (being Japanese American), and is not at all phased by my extreeeme geekiness, and that, having lived with me for a while, M and C are more used to my making them, too. (I think my bento tend to highlight the obsessive side of my personality – something I’m not incredibly fond of discussing in public unless it’s in relation to books – plus the cuteness factor can make me feel self conscious sometimes hence the major reason – aside from the time and nutritional balance/taste factors – that I do not make kyaraben). M’s reaction to the surprise (her voice scaled up and she went, “ooooohhh!”) was awesome. So it was a worthy effort .

I made the bentos mirror images of one another and used different shaped eggs in them, rather than making them identical in layout — just to mix it up a little:

#1

#2

Together:

Contents of each box: 1/2 a tomato-basil cream cheese and ham sandwich on wheat bread (w/ ham heart decoration); salad with lettuce, tomato, stuffed manzanilla olives, carrots, and cannellini beans; shaped hard-boiled egg; tiny container of balsamic vinegar and olive oil; packet of fish and almonds snack; two apple gummy candies.

I hope it’ll be enough food (the volume of the salad greens can be deceiving, I realize). And that the sandwiches will not get too soggy. I tried to dry the lettuce off as well as possible and removed the tomato seeds and most of the juice, but I checked on them a bit after putting them in the fridge and there is already a fair amount of condensation. If I had been wiser I would’ve wrapped each sandwich in plastic wrap before closing the lid. :-/ Oh well. I think M usually brings an apple and crackers with her along with whatever sandwich she takes to eat between classes, so hopefully she will be okay.

K asked me if I could marry her and make her lunches. I told her she’d have to check with my BF. Not sure he’s interested in sharing, heh.

Big News

First, the project that I’ve been secretly working on for months has, as of Tuesday, finally gone public.  Introducing:

Yes, it’s a literary magazine.  An online journal of Asian American poetry.  My collaborator Mia and I are super passionate and excited about this project.  The full site, blog, and submissions/reading period will launch in October, but at the moment we’re celebrating that we have a place to live on the web!  We also have a Facebook Fan Page, and a brand-spanking-new Twitter account.  Please follow us, add us, blog about us — do whatever you can to help spread the word!

Second, I turned 24 today.  In celebration of which, my most-stupendously-wonderful boyfriend bought me the BEST. GIFT. EVER:

Big Sister, Little Sister. (And a very messy desk).

It’s a new netbook computer – and I cannot get over how CUTE it is — so tiny and so light! It’s like carrying a standard sized hardcover book, and it fits perfectly in my bag. Now I can travel and work in cafe’s without having to lug my larger (heavier) laptop out and about.  Or I can tuck it in a tote to reference online readings in class, or use it to multitask: one screen for LR accounts, one screen for personal stuff.  Thank you, D!

I am so freaking excited – new magazine, new twitter account, new facebook fan page, new computer, all in the course of a week.  It’s almost too much to take in.  24 has been awesome so far.  And I can’t wait for it to get even better.

One Reason I Love Chinese Supermarkets:

They carry produce that Americans normally won’t touch unless introduced to it as a “gourmet item.” And for cheap, too.

Case in point: fresh, tender watercress. For soup, or for yummy egg, cress and prosciutto sandwiches.

Case in point: sweet, mellow golden kiwi. (2 for $1). For breakfast, or for a treat in a bento.

The bento, by the way, is an airplane meal from last Thursday, when I traveled to Kentucky for my uncle’s wedding. The sushi is a ready-made “shrimp california” maki roll from the HK Supermarket down the street (there’s actually 8 pieces, but you can only see 4 because I stacked them). Ginger candy lozenges and my favorite fish-and-almonds are in the plastic packets. The rest is pretty self-evident: carrot sticks, golden kiwi. It was too much for me on the plane (didn’t eat the carrot sticks), but by the time we got to the hotel, I was starving again, so I ate dinner a second time.

The wedding was beautiful. There was a bit of family drama, but fortunately nothing too crazy. I was asked to be a 3rd photographer, which was kind of a neat experience. I always take photos at weddings, but I’ve never actually officially been asked to help cover one before. I really enjoyed the challenge of shooting under changing lighting conditions (for example, the ceremony was outside, and I couldn’t believe how much difference it made in terms of the exposure I needed when the sun was shining directly overhead vs. when the same spot was partly hidden by clouds), and of trying to coordinate my position so that I stayed out of the primary (pro) photographer’s way, didn’t obstruct the other guests’ views, and yet moved around enough that I could shoot from different positions and angles than the other two photographers. I finally sort of found my stride more during the second day (when the big reception was held). I love taking pictures of small things at weddings – candles, flower arrangements, table settings – since I’m a very detail-oriented person and (confession time), having read a lot of wedding-photography related blogs (a secret guilty pleasure of mine), I know that the bride and groom often like it when the details are recorded since they’ve put so much time into preparing them. However, as I was compiling shots for the digital display at this weekend’s Saturday reception, I changed my mind and decided to cut any photos that weren’t of people. (It was late and I had a lot to post-process, my mom recommended against it, and anyway I didn’t think any of the guests would care about what Friday’s escort tags looked like!). But when I showed my uncle what I was doing, he picked up on the photos of candles and desserts and nametags right away, and requested that I put them back in. Apparently the other photographers had focused pretty much exclusively on people! (Something that admittedly surprised me, since if you look at a web site like The Knot, you’ll see that at the very least, photographers will be sure to include pictures of the dress and/or shoes, the rings, and the flowers/decorations). So I put the detail shots back in. And on Saturday, I stopped worrying about trying to get candids of every single guest, and allowed myself time to focus on the details instead. It ended up working out really well for me that way, as I’m still pretty inexperienced with portraits, and it allowed me to do a lot of my shooting under the natural light coming from the windows, since the swing band, the bar, and most of the decorations were ranged around the walls. It also allowed the other photographer (the pro wasn’t there that night, so there were two of us) to focus mainly on the action and the guests, and while I still backed him up, I was able to focus primarily on environmental textures – the curve of the trombone player’s bell, the glow of candles, the colors of the flowers, the twinkle of wine glasses, the varying shapes and opacities of the treats in the candy bar – a task with which I have a lot of practice, thanks to blogging! I’ve no photos that I’m ready to post at the moment, as I still have loads of post-processing to complete. But the experience was really great overall. I was honored to be asked to take part in my uncle’s wedding in such an intimate way, and I think I learned a lot in the bargain.

Recent Eats

Tonight I decided I wanted tuna salad, since it seemed an appropriate dish to make with the celery I had in the fridge. But I didn’t feel like eating normal tuna salad with mayo and apples and such. So I had a weird brain wave and decided to use Chinese seasonings instead. My beloved soy sauce made an appearance. As did sesame oil, ginger, scallions, and a little corn starch for consistency (I stir-fried it a bit because I wanted the celery soft instead of crunchy). And then I topped it all off with a healthy drizzle of (American) brown mustard sauce.

I felt very haute cuisine-y and fusion-y, à la Ming Tsai. Except without the cheesy “East meets West” slogan.

Here’s my Grown-Up Tuna Salad:

Served with some prosciutto, olives, and sharp cheese on the side. With extra mustard for dipping the cold cuts.

Bet it would be even more delicious if you made it with chunks of lightly seared sashimi-grade tuna. Mmmmm . . .

* * *

And in baking news, I made a plum upside-down cake (from the August issue of Real Simple Magazine) for my dad when I went home this weekend, because he turned 58 last week. I used yogurt instead of sour cream, because I had it on hand, and it’s healthier.

Mine didn’t turn out as pretty as the one in the magazine. I think they used red-flesh plums (mine had yellow flesh), and the recipe calls for an 8″ cake pan. I thought mine was 8″ but now I’m thinking I was wrong. The plums all sank into the batter, and the cake came out a little flatter than in the picture. I’m pretty sure I used a 9″ pan by mistake. Oh well. It tasted good, anyway. Very buttery on the bottom layer, with a nice tang from the plums on top. Next time I’d like to try making it with kiwifruit.

100th Post

All right you-all, I know my blog has been imageless, quiet, and boring lately.  And this is my 100th post (yay, milestones!).  So I’ll devote this one solely to photography for a change.  These are poladroids I made from shots I took when my friends and I went down the shore (to the beach, for all you non-NJ people) a couple of weeks ago.  Because my Poladroid obsession has not yet waned. (Will it ever?)  And to show you that I haven’t been cooped up in an office ALL summer.

Seaside Heights, NJ – June 2009

Umbrella (alas, not ours).

Lonesome beach chair.

View of casino pier

Kickin’ it in the surf

Skyriders

Jersey does junk food right.

I think this poor fellow must get dizzy staring at that ride all day, don’t you?

See more of my Poladroids at Flickr

Everything Tastes Better With Soy Sauce

I made a new dish for dinner today: Italian-style pork chops with peppers and vinegar.  The idea was originally inspired by an article I recently read in an old copy of Cook’s Illustrated magazine, but me being me, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and I had to do it my way.  I always find that Cook’s Illustrated recipes, like Alton Brown’s, are wayyyy too fiddly for me.  I haven’t got the patience to sit around moving skilletfuls of pork chops in and out of the oven (three times for one dish!)  Nor have I got what my favorite chef Nigella would call “the wherewithal in my larder” to make Italian dishes on a daily basis.  So I improvised a little.  The main improvement being: instead of brining my meat, I committed a little culinary faux pas and marinated it in what is probably the farthest thing from Italian seasoning — soy sauce.  Hey, I was getting hungry, and I didn’t want to wait 40 minutes for the meat to brine.  And anyway, in my books, everything tastes better with soy sauce.

And it turned out good.  Really savory, and tender.  I’m telling you, everything tastes better with soy sauce.  Almost any hearty meat dish, that is.  I put soy sauce in lentil stew, in French onion soup, in beef barley stew, in baked chicken, in my sausage-and-apples dish (a twist on sausage and peppers).  I marinate steaks and fish and chicken and lamb in soy sauce, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.  (Yes, sugar — my parents taught me that you should always balance out the salt in soy with a tiny pinch of sugar).  You don’t have to add much — it adds just that little kick of savory that helps the meat come out more earthy and flavorful.  And actually – provided you don’t drown your dish in it – the end result almost never tastes like soy sauce.  It just tastes — better.  I’ve read in some culinary magazines that there’s a Japanese name for that taste (umami) — and that apparently it’s now chic to add umami tastes to fancy dishes, though not necessarily soy sauce per se.  Me, I’m just an ABC (American-born Chinese) girl who can’t imagine life without the stuff.  I grew up with it as part of my daily basic palate (along with rice, ginger, garlic, scallions).  So, with few exceptions (for example, I will not go as far as my brother, who used to dip apple slices in soy sauce – egh), I have no reservations about putting soy sauce in dishes where it is not supposed to appear.

Hence, my utterly heretical take on Italian pork chops.  Maybe I shouldn’t call them that anymore.  How about just pork chops?  ABC-style.  With vinegar and peppers.  And onions.  And soy sauce.

Sorry I have no photos of the food.  I took my camera home a few weeks ago to use on a beach outing and decided to leave it there for a spell because as much as I love my beautiful DSLR, I didn’t want to carry it back (seriously: it’s heavy).

But here’s my recipe:

Italian Food: the ABC Version
Pork Chops with Vinegar and Peppers (and Soy Sauce!)

4 bone-in sirloin pork chops
1 large red onion
1 large green bell pepper
2 fat cloves of garlic
soy sauce (a few tablespoons)
white wine (about 1/2 a cup)
white rice vinegar (a few good glugs’ worth)
dried herbs (I used parsley and “italian seasoning” out of a bottle, since I didn’t have any rosemary, which is what the original recipe called for — but next time I think I’ll try it with the rosemary; I love rosemary)
a good pinch of sugar (1/2 tsp?)
salt and pepper
pat of unsalted butter (1-2 Tbsp)
grapeseed oil (or other oil with a high smoke point)

1. Marinate the meat by drizzling it with soy sauce, salt, and pepper on both sides.  Let it sit on a plate in the fridge while you prepare your vegetables.
2. Peel the onion, split it vertically down the middle, and and slice each half into thin arcs.  Remove the stem, ribs and seeds from the  pepper, and slice it into skinny batons.  Crush the garlic with the flat of your knife, remove the peel, and chop into rough slivers.
3. Heat a large skillet or other large pot/pan, and put in enough oil to lightly coat the bottom.  When the oil is hot, put in the meat in a single layer and fry a few minutes on each side until everything is a nice brown color.  Remove the meat and put aside.  Leave the juices in the pan and heat on for the next step.
4. Slide the onions and garlic into the pan, and add salt, pepper, the pinch of sugar, and your herbs.  Cook the onions until they soften.  Then add in the peppers and stir everything around for a bit until the peppers seem partly cooked.
5. Add wine and vinegar to the pan.  Put the pork chops back in, nestling them on top of the vegetables, and stick the lid back on.  Let it steam for 5-10 minutes.
6. Remove the lid and the meat.  If the sauce is really liquid-y, let some of the liquid evaporate off.  At the last minute, add the pat of butter and swirl it in until it’s all melted.  Taste and adjust the seasonings according to your preferences (aside from adding salt and pepper if necessary, you can also add more vinegar at this step).  Serve each pork chop with some onions and peppers, and a generous helping of the liquid sauce spooned over the top.  I also fried a bit of potato in some oil and a little of the reserved sauce in the skillet, and used that to sop up some of the vinegary goodness.

Obama’s Motorcade

Today I came out of work unusually exhausted and very much ready to go straight home (it’s been a long week).  But as I started walking towards 53rd street, where I catch the subway back to Queens, I noticed that a lot of people ahead of me seemed to be doing an about-face and walking back in the other direction.

“That’s funny,” I thought.  And then I arrived at the corner of Lexington and 50th, and discovered that I had to turn around, too.  The police had erected a barricade and were waving people and cars away.  A large bottleneck had formed as confused pedestrians gathered around the emptied street.  Too annoyed to stick around and figure out what was going on, I decided to backtrack a block and walk up 3rd ave instead.  But 3rd ave. was blocked off at 50th, too.  And so was 2nd.  By this point, I was utterly exasperated.  My feet hurt (and the bug bite just beneath the edge of my sneaker was itching like crazy), I was hot, and tired.  And now, it seemed, I wouldn’t be able to get home, unless I backtracked to an earlier station.  Exasperated, I stopped a police officer and grumpily asked him how far the barricade went, the implication being, how on earth did he expect me to be able to get home with the whole street blocked off?

“Well, as soon as he passes by, which should be any minute now, we’ll open the street to traffic again.”

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”  I demanded irritably.

“The President’s passing by,” he replied.

Oh.

Suddenly I didn’t mind being stuck so much anymore.  I edged my way as close to the barricade as I could, and sure enough, about 10 minutes later, a cadre of motorcycles came whizzing by, followed by several black sedans, and a series of limos with flags, one of which had the President in it. I caught a fleeting glimpse of someone in sunglasses peeking out of one of the windows, whom another woman standing nearby said was Obama himself.

“He waved!” she cried, jumping up and down.  A few people clapped and cheered.  Unfortunately, I was either too slow, or too short, to see, because I missed it.  But judging from the grin I’d seen (or perhaps imagined) on the sunglasses’d face that went zooming by, I’m sure he must have given at least a little wave.   More cars with tinted windows barrelled past, and then more motorcycles, and then it was all over, and we were back to grumbling, as it took them a long time to finally open up the street to traffic (I guess they were waiting until he’d gone all the way down 50th), and in the meantime they kept yelling at people to get back on the sidewalk (even though it became increasingly obvious that not all of us would FIT on the sidewalk anymore).  But all around, the griping seemed less vehement than before.  I think all of us were trying to balance out the inconvenience of being crammed together on the sidewalk, unable to go home, with the awe of seeing the Presidential motorcade.  And somehow, the fact that it was Obama who was passing seemed to tip the scale in the motorcade’s favor.  I’ve seen a Presidential motorcade before — Bush’s, when he visited Stanford — and in fact, had a front row seat, as my dad’s car was the first one they stopped when they shut down the highway.  And even though that had been just as, if not even more, dramatic (imagine motorcycled cops squealing, Hollywood-chase-style, into the middle of the intersection, to block off the incoming cars, and much huffy gesturing and self-important arm-waving, and guards dressed in full war gear and armed to the teeth riding in an SUV behind the Presidential limo, trunk open, ready to jump out at a moment’s notice), that moment seemed more like a charade to me.  Bush, as it turned out, wasn’t even in his motorcade that day (they flew him out in a chopper because they were afraid something might happen after all the student protests), and definitely nobody peeped out of the Presidential limo and waved to a crowd full of hot, tired, crammed-up-against-one-another commuters.  As Obama went by, nobody shouted epithets or giggled (at least no one that I heard).  We all kind of stood there — curious, if not awed — essentially just caught up in the moment.

Later, as swung through the Subway turnstile, it occurred to me that the moment had felt a bit like the one in To Kill a Mockingbird when someone in the balcony nudges Scout during the trial.  “Stand up, Miss Jean Louise.  Your father’s passing.”  Stand up and watch, I thought as I replayed the memory of those limos going by, plates gleaming and crisp flags aflutter, a great man’s passing.