Dining Hall Bento 5 [Flower-themed]

I had a number of thoughts about my writing habits this week. Those are another post, though, when my mind is less scattered (please forgive the lack of a MagPoem this week; the weekend was crazy – and the four days after it even crazier; to give you an idea for how much running around I was doing, tonight’s dinner was the first sit down meal I’ve eaten in the dining hall since Sunday evening…yeah).

I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, but as I got cheated of a snack bento today (no time; I stuffed some fried rice and ketchup in a tupperware and high-tailed it to class), and tomorrow is Friday, I decided to make myself feel good by creating one for tomorrow’s lunch. I’ll be eating “out” with friends at the student union; this way I save a lot of points. ^_^

Here we have a flower-themed lunch:

Top tier: “Water-lily” shaped deviled eggs on a bed of romaine, brown rice with an onion and lettuce flower garnish.
Bottom tier: Cucumber daisies and leftover roasted lamb (roasted with onions and almonds).
Not shown: Pocky and a napkin in the lid. [I’ll likely also buy a grapefruit juice at the eatery].

It’s partly the lighting, but you can also tell that the cucumbers in the salad bar today were a little old…they’re a bit yellowish. I fashioned the eggs after zigzag-cut eggs I saw on the LJ bentolunch community, but because the yolks are deviled and I mounded them back in, they ended up looking like water lilies, especially when I nestled them into the lettuce. The lamb is leftover from dinner – tonight they were serving North African food, and while I don’t know what this dish is called (the label above it just said something like “fire-roasted lamb”), I do know that it’s one of the rare occasions on which Wilbur Dining has served red meat that isn’t tough and tasteless (it was actually really tender and flavorful).

My recipe for quick and dirty deviled eggs:

– 2 hard-boiled eggs
– 2 tablespoons of mustard (any kind – usually I use dijon, but today I used a mix of yellow and honey mustards)
– 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise
– salt and pepper to taste
– [if available: spice – paprika, curry powder, or cumin all work well]

Cut eggs in half (either lengthwise, or in a zig-zag shape). Scoop out the yolks and mash with the condiments until everything is blended and smooth. Spoon yolk mixture back into egg whites. Sprinkle with spice if desired. Takes all of five minutes and is truly delicious 🙂 Note: I like my deviled egg mixture to be a little thicker b/c it’s easier to eat but you could add more mustard or mayo if you want it to be thinner or if you want to do something fancy like piping it back into the whites. Just make sure you keep the proportion of mustard significantly higher than that of the mayo. The mustard gives it a really nice zing. Otherwise it comes out tasting too eggy (mayo is made of eggs, too, don’t forget).

I promise a non-fluff post later this week.

– s.

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Family first…

My great-aunt passed away this week. She had no children, was close to my immediate family. In her last few years of life, she developed dementia. When she passed away she had not been able to recognize me, my brother, or my dad for almost three years. In a sense it was merciful that she died relatively quickly and not over the course of weeks or months — she was put in the hospital with congestive heart failure and severe pneumonia late Sunday/early Monday and passed away on Tuesday morning. I hope she died without much pain. At any rate, I know she’s much better off with her Father in Heaven now than she was on earth these past few years, confused, frustrated, and frail. I received the news on Monday in the middle of the MLK celebration to which my boyfriend had brought me along (the event represented months’ worth of his work). Despite this, my bf was super-compassionate and empathetic, holding me while I cried and insisting that he take me home right away despite my protests. I was deeply touched at his response.

As a result of this week, family is at the top of my mind as I write. I am impressed by the fact that you can do so much to psyche yourself up for an event, all to realize that in the end, none of your preparations really matter when life intervenes. That bento I was so [overly?] proud of? Never got eaten. But who cares? The only things that mattered to me at that time were the fragility of my family (we won’t all be around forever), how much losing someone you love hurts, and gratitude for my boyfriend’s overwhelming kindness. Pretty lunches could be eaten some other day.

Like today, in fact :). I made a snack bento to take with me to class. A char-siu bao, mandarin orange segments, and an apple jelly.

Please understand that this is an improvement. A couple days ago I didn’t want to look at my blog b/c it had the picture of the lunch I made for Monday as the first entry, and looking at it made me feel silly and stupid, that I got so excited about packing my lunch when my aunt was dying. I’m starting to come out of the emotional woods now, at least temporarily. I think things will probably come back when I go home for the funeral, but for now life is starting to seem real again.

– s.

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Dining Hall Bento 3 [MLK Day Bento]

Lid: square, frosted oatmeal cookie [leftover from Bible study this week — perfectly Bento shaped!]; Starbuck’s napkin [still using the stash of coffee supplies leftover from SMUNC]
Top tier: Heart-shaped onigiri [prefrozen from a night that the dining hall had sticky rice] made with pumpkin furikake [from my dry foods and seasonings stash] and topped with salami hearts [from sandwich bar at brunch today]; edamame, broccoli, olive-and-salami skewers [all from the salad bar]; “makeshift” tea egg [soaked a hardboiled egg from the salad bar in strong tea and soy sauce for about 20 min, mainly for color rather than flavor]
Bottom tier: Orange, grapefruit, and kiwi salad with banana hearts [fruit collected over the course of 2 meals today].
Not shown: Bottle of water, packet of soy sauce picked up from one of the eateries on campus that serves sushi daily.

Comments:

Tomorrow morning my boyfriend is taking me to one of the events for the the San Mateo County MLK Jr. Day Celebration that he’s been working on planning since September (He works for the MLK Papers Project on campus. I told him I wanted to go support him and see the fruits of his labor ^_^). We’re leaving before 8 am to get there on time, and after the ceremony, he’s going into SF for the rest of the day, while I’m returning home on the Caltrain [note to self: remember Caltrain pass]. I’m thus bringing breakfast to eat on the way (half a custard bun and part of a banana — I may also bring some graham crackers and an apple in case the BF wants to eat something too), as well as a lunch to eat on the train home.

I was a little disappointed with the fruit salad. I had hoped to cut out the kiwi and bananas with my new flower cutters, but the banana I chose was too small for the smallest cutter, and the crazy dining hall cut the kiwi LENGTHwise instead of widthwise, which meant that I’d end up with one piece all core and seeds and the rest too small to use the cutters on. Sigh. I also discovered the hard way that citrus fruit does not take kindly to brute force applied by cutters (I just ended up smushing the pulp). This is a somewhat messier bento than my previous ones. In a bit I’ll go over to late night for a nibble (horrors! I actually didn’t bring enough food back after dinner to leave me a snack) and to pick up a plastic fork.

– s.

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Oops.

I just realized that I’ve been posting on EST (probably because when I first set up the blog I was at home).

Oops.  Sorry about that.  The timestamps of my past posts can’t be fixed, but future timestamps will be correct).

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MagPoem 2: “January”

(Written on 1/19 but posted at around 1:30 am on 1/20).

* * *

“January.”

In winter, the forest’s bare fingers
whisper beneath the mist.
Their language is frantic with want:
ach[ing] for spring,
delirious for summer.

Comments:
Too bad magnetic poetry doesn’t come with punctuation [c.f. “forest s” instead of “forest’s”]. And it’s a bit awkward to make “ache” into “ache-ing” (I’ve seen that spelling before — but mainly in Shakespeare…). Also, I would have preferred to use the word “hungry” instead of “aching,” except either the set doesn’t have it, or I couldn’t find it this morning (I need to organize my words better; they’re a mess). I’ve a sneaking suspicion, however, that the set just doesn’t contain the word (How can it not contain the word “hungry”?? I suppose not everyone uses “hungry” on a regular basis; I just happen to be a fan of it. themes of want appear a lot in my poetry, and hungry is an aptly desperate-sounding word, without being overly melodramatic or “poetical.” as it is, I sort of wince at “delirious.”) Oh well, rules are rules. No breaking them for the sake of flaunting the exercise. If I ever want to expand and revise one of these MagPoems I can always do so away from the fridge.

– s.

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Dining Hall Bento 2

Top tier: cucumber, cream cheese and spinach sandwich [cut up]
Bottom tier: jicama and carrot sticks, cucumber flowers.
Not pictured: two graham crackers in the lid and a bottle of water.

Comments: I took this in with me today when I went into one of the high schools that I’ve worked with on MUN for the last 2 years (I’m so proud of these particular kiddos — I helped them get off the ground from scratch almost two years ago, and since then they’ve shown incredible initiative and enthusiasm. This year they have actually created a Model UN intersession class and are teaching themselves and practicing weekly in preparation for their next conference! Today they asked me to observe their class and give them feedback on their speaking [of course I was more than happy to say yes!], and in a few weeks I will probably return to chair the”exposition” type committee session that they’ll be holding as their final project. I think part of it has to do with their school’s teaching style, which is very innovative and hands-on — this is a charter school with a relatively high low-income population, and yet the kids are SO much more full of energy, initiative, trust for one another, and a burning desire to learn than their peers at the much-richer public schools that I’ve worked with). Back to the lunch, though. It was rather low on the protein (though quite high on the vegetables). I ate at almost noon and even though I felt very full afterwards, I was starving by the time I got home at around four. Next time, if I’m going to bring a side of veggie sticks, I should bring a heftier sandwich. Meat would be good, except my dining hall only has sandwich meats on weekends, so I could only feasibly do meat sandwiches on a Monday (I wouldn’t trust the meat to keep in my fridge more than one day after Sunday brunch). In the future I might settle for eggs. Or I’ll cut up some chicken breast and bring it with onigiri (I made and froze a few the other day). Eating the lunch itself was rather a letdown, too, as one of the kids’ moms brought in pizza for them, and here I was eating my unintentionally(!) vegetarian lunch (I’m not vegetarian by a long shot – I just couldn’t find any meat that would keep in the dining hall the other day) while they chowed down on sausage and onion pizza…I felt a bit like I was eating rabbit food. Sigh. Oh well. Several of the girls are into Japanese pop culture, and one of them went into brief raptures over my box (though she didn’t quite know what to call it, hehe…she called it a “box thingie” or something of the sort). Another of them was amused by the cucumber flowers (thank you, L for your Christmas gift of nesting food cutters!). So I guess it looked interesting enough. It’s funny, though, I don’t like people making a fuss over my lunch. It makes me self-conscious. Cute, pretty, and yummy food is a private pleasure for me. It’s sort of a protective gesture, I suppose. As in, I’m so protective of my enjoyment of food that I’ve prepared specifically for me that while I’m actually eating I prefer to keep the pleasure of it to myself.

– s.

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Blue Flower Notebook Set

Yesterday we celebrated the 21st birthday of one of my best friends from college. I’ve been trying to handmake as many gifts as possible since I’m a bit low on funds at the moment (thanks, grad school application fees!), so even though i found out about the celebration late-ish, I still made an effort to put something nice together. This notebook set was put together using materials I had around my dorm room — pages from a half-filled sketchbook that a delegate abandoned at this year’s SMUNC conference, embroidery thread for binding, and a blue tissue box from my “things to be recycled into crafts one day stash.” I’ve been saving pretty cardboard boxes to make notebook sets since last year, when I first got the idea and made a few sets for Christmas presents, but I’ve been so busy since then that I just haven’t gotten around to doing any until now. This time I used an improved binding technique (last year’s books were saddle-stitched and then the binding was taped over — this was problematic because it meant the notebooks didn’t stay closed too well). This time I actually went and learned a more complicated technique from this tutorial. It’s kind of a fun technique (though an awl would’ve been very helpful; I wish I hadn’t left all my jewelry supplies at home but I am trying to reduce the number of things I will have to transport home in June so I left all non-necessities behind after break). I was very proud of the results.
Anyway, here go the pictures…

The full set (the recipient’s name appears curving along the border of the circle with the colored-pencil-and-ink flower, but I’ve blurred it out for privacy purposes)

Close-ups of the art on the circular emblems that appear on each piece (LH: notebook; RH: bookmark)

This shot shows the binding a bit better:

Wrapped up into a set.

Gift-wrapped (I was so proud of myself; I even made the gift tag match!)

– s.

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Dining Hall Bento 1

This is actually Bento #4 of the year. But it’s the first in a series of dining hall bentos that I’m trying to make. Yesterday I was in a hurry so I grabbed some food from the dining hall and brought it for lunch. I will be bringing a lunch with me to a high school I am helping out at on Friday, as well, and I also plan to bring bento in two weeks, when I have an interview in Redwood City.

Top tier (pictured on the bottom of the photo): Tuna and spinach on buttered sourdough, chocolate treats
Bottom tier (pictured at the top left): Carrot and jicama sticks
An apple on the side, and root beer in a disposable cup (not pictured).

The chocolate’s only in there b/c it holds the sandwich in place (though I ate it eventually anyway; normally I’m not a big fan of chocolate). I used tuna for the sandwich b/c it was the only sandwichy thing Wilbur Dining had that didn’t also happen to be peanut butter (I hate peanut butter sandwiches). In retrospect, it was somewhat of a mistake because it smelled up the classroom when I was eating it. Ugh. I think I will try cucumber and cream cheese for next time. Meaning I will have to go to breakfast tomorrow (the dining hall only puts out cream cheese at breakfast) since I’m leaving early on Friday morning. I guess if that doesn’t work I will do egg salad (hard boiled eggs from the salad bar, mayo and mustard from the grill condiments). I bought some saran wrap, so this weekend I might try making and freezing some onigiri, as well.

Yay for dining hall bento. Requires a great deal of flexing of my creativity to scrounge something up, but it’s bento, nevertheless.

– s.

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Forest Child Birthday Card

It was someone’s birthday yesterday, and, being the eternally-late person that I am, I only went to the store today to buy her a card — it wasn’t until I got there that I remembered why I stopped buying greeting cards two years ago. Cards cost something like an average of $3!!! It’s so much cheaper, and plenty more fun, to make my own.

So I came home and got out my micron pen and prismacolors (I had time to do this, btw, because I actually TURNED IN MY LAST GRAD SCHOOL APP TODAY. (Yayyyy!!!)

Here is what resulted from my creative frenzy…

Front:

Inside :

The very best part, however, is the following:

When you put it in the envelope, he appears to be peeking out!! (You have to put him in sideways to fit properly, but the envelope still reveals one curious eye and part of a pudgy nose).

I’ve outrun my store of creativity for the day. And don’t want to write my 1 page response paper that’s due tomorrow. So it’s to bed now, and up early tomorrow morning.

– s.

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MagPoem 1 – “The Travelers”

My friend’s gift of a magnetic poetry set has inspired me to begin a project that will force me to think imagistically with greater frequency. I’ll try to create a new poem or part of a poem every week, sometimes following rules that I’ve set for myself, sometimes letting whatever is at the front of my mind take the reins. This will be an exercise in control (the poems need to be short, and the “word bank” that I can use is limited by the extent of the set) and in writing “coldly” (I’ve discovered that many of the words in the set are rather “poetical” and to use too many of them in combination would be a recipe for affectation or “preciousness”).

Here is MagPoem number 1:

“The Travelers”

Here we dream of water like bitter honey,
music shot with iron blue shadows,
a dress smeared with light like blood.

* * *

A bit “poetical” for my taste, but as subtle as I could get for the time being. The poem mainly began with the image of the dress; I’ve been studying the concept of melancholy in literature – the endless trap of pain that haunts war refugees, prisoners, families with histories of abuse – and imagined moving through a geographical or psychological place of suffering and being unable to escape it in one’s dreams. I imagined shades passing into the underworld, souls about to enter purgatory, former slaves and prisoners waking with nightmares.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, here’s what the poetry looks like set up on my fridge (I’ve since loosely grouped them by prepositions, pronouns, articles, simile/metaphor words, suffixes, negatives, conjunctions, helping verbs, so this picture doesn’t represent what it actually looks like now, but it gives a general idea):

Off to plan Tuesday’s workshop.

– s.

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