chef moi

Remember the good old days in Aix when I'd cook for myself every day? It looks like they're back! Mom and Dad have been very busy in Korea working hard on some exciting new developments for their company, leaving Jenn and I at home to take care of ourselves...about time, I guess, considering the fact that I graduated from college last month and am 3 months past 22 years old. I've been having fun cooking things for Jenn and I to eat, sometimes just for myself, and they've turned out to be GRAND successes!

A couple weeks ago, I made tiramisu for the family to enjoy for dessert. I used a recipe that I got from an Italian graduate student named Emanuelo that I met in Geneva while I was abroad. It's still written down (transcribed from a phone conversation) on a sheet of French note paper...and it was quite a hit. The family loved it :)

Then, when Jenn and I went up to Ithaca, we cooked and fixed most of our meals, and tried to help Jin by using up leftover groceries that she wouldn't need once we got her moved out of her apartment. She had soy sauce, buckwheat noodles, some oil, salt, pepper, and tater tots. We left the tater tots. But we bought a little bit of steak and I made a soy sauce/sesame oil marinade for the steak and made the buckwheat noodles and threw it all together for a delicious dinner!

Yesterday night, I made chicken francese/française (depends on whether you're at an Italian or French restaurant). It consists of chicken drenched in a batter made of lemon juice, egg, salt, and pepper, pan-fried, and placed on top of pasta. Drizzled on top? A thickened sauce made of flour, more lemon juice, white wine, chicken broth, and parsley flakes. It's one of my favorite Italian dishes, and Jenn's default order at any Italian restaurant...so I was nervous that it wouldn't be as good...but IT WAS SO FREAKING GOOD.

Tonight, Jenn's boyfriend joined us for dinner, and so Jenn helped me pan-fry some chicken breast dipped in an egg, salt, and pepper batter and I made some homemade macaroni and cheese. It actually ended up being ziti with a mix of cheddar and monterey jack cheese and I used an egg, kosher salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and mustard powder mixture to bind it all together...again, DELICIOUS. And it was a big hit with Jenn and Andrew!

I'm so excited to continue my cooking escapades! Particularly when I'm in D.C. with my new housemates :)

a new song

I finished a song this evening after watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (I love action movies...even not-so-great ones), and eating dinner with Jenn. I made pasta with a sauce made of lemon juice, butter, salt, pepper, white wine, garlic, and capers, and we had a salad with blue cheese and balsamic vinegar dressing. Delicious.

I'd had the chords jotted down for a while now, and I already wrote the melody, but I hadn't yet written lyrics. It's in 4/4 and in D-flat major.

We lay on a blanket, looking up at the sky,

Waiting for stars to shoot by

Sitting in the back seat, as the wheels spin

Smile, take it all in

If I knew, what hurt you

If I knew, could I have made it go away

If I knew, what hurt you

If I knew, would you have thought to stay

You built a castle, that led to the stars

Didn't think you'd run quite so far

Reach out a hand now, you rose up from the ground

And then, you left without a sound

And if I knew, what hurt you

If I knew, could I have made it go away

If I knew, what hurt you

If I knew, would you have thought to stay

so it goes.

"So it goes."

It's a three-word phrase that is repeated endlessly throughout Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which I just finished reading a couple weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and plan on moving onto other works by Vonnegut as the summer continues. So, the phrase. "So it goes." It follows every event involving death and destruction that is described in this novel set in World War II. Almost seems to be a way of dealing with senseless, painful events that one must simply cope with and accept in life.

I also read The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which I finished last week, taking from it lessons of vanity and the price and pain of eternal youth and life, and I'm about halfway through Death with Interruptions by José Saramago (who, by the way, passed away this past weekend). Before you think of me as a morbid person with strange literary tastes, you must first understand how important and how inevitable it is to have to face questions of life, death, and existence. Not all of us do it often, particularly when we are as busy as we Americans are these days, but it's bound to happen...and it's worth doing.

These last couple days have been hard, and I can imagine the rest of this week, and for a while longer, it will be difficult. It is with my deepest regret and in sadness that I have to recognize the parallelism that lies in my summer reading choices and what happens in real life. We read of tragedy in our poetry and our novels, see it on the big screen, hear about it in melodies and songs that dance in the air and in our memories, and often, we can symmpathize, try to understand what it feels like to love, to lose, to hate, to fall apart and feel pain.

Sympathy makes us feel like we understand, like we are closer to those who suffer, it eases our consciences and makes us feel like we are better people. But in the end, nothing is really the same as the real thing.

I found out this weekend that one of my old teammates from high school and summer league, my neighbor, and good friend passed away after having been missing for over a week. He would've been 21 on Sunday. I sent him a birthday e-mail that morning, not knowing what had happened and that he was already gone. I got the phone call 2 hours later from his best friend. He could barely get the words out. And so the past few days have consisted of random outbursts of uncontrollable tears, insomnia, the desire to look at old pictures and lose myself in memories, uncomfortable phone calls with long-lost friends, embarrassed to realize that we have fallen disgracefully out of touch, and the fear of this coming Saturday afternoon when we are going to be forced to confront the reality of the event and dress in black to join others in formally commemorating the beautiful person he was and will continue to be in our memories and our hearts.

He had a strange knack for picking out the tiniest, most easily overlooked detail of a moment and comment on its beauty. He could be quiet and lying on the ground on a blanket looking straight up in the sky and the smile that spread across his face into the corners of his eyes could make you feel as though lying there on the ground were the most joyful thing in the world. He gave great powerful hugs. He never judged a soul, saw the best there was in each person, and protected his friends from mean comments and inappropriate behavior when he saw it necessary. He could make you think of the deepest concepts, the most profound questions without making you feel stressed out. He was the one who made you enjoy the moment and sit back and enjoy the ride when you were tempted to try and be the back-seat driver. He was a beautiful, incredible human being that touched those who knew him and let his quiet voice get close, and his passing is an enormous loss.

summer 2k10

And so here goes my first summer as a college graduate! I've spent the past couple weeks resting, organizing, cleaning, catching up with family, starting to work out, delving further into my apartment search, and setting plans for the rest of the summer. Here's what I have set so far!

6/18 - 6/21 : Trip to Ithaca to help Jin move and go hiking

6/28 : Linear Algebra class begins

7/2 - 7/5 : Trip to Boston for July 4th to stay with Sara and Colette

7/? - 7/? : Trip to D.C. to apartment hunt

8/5 : Linear Algebra class ends

8/? : Move to D.C.!

9/7 : Fellowship at the Institute for Women's Policy Research begins!

The summer has begun well, and I had a chance to see and spend a little time with each one of my beloved siblings (though my time with my little brother was quite short). Plenty of movie nights, cooking, reading, runs and bike rides...and plenty more to come, I'm sure! Jenn, Jin, and I went on a charming outing to Terhune Orchards to go on our annual berry-picking date, and this time, we tried cherry-picking, which we've never done before. It was tons of fun!

Then, today, Jenn, Jenn's lovely boyfriend Andrew, and I went on a trip to the beach for the day, which was also tons of fun! The water was quite cold (~60 F) so we didn't spend too much time in it, but other than that, we enjoyed the sun, a little tanning, and I enjoyed a good book. I've been reading A LOT this summer (finally!). So far, I've read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, both of which I enjoyed thoroughly, and now, I'm reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

This weekend, I'm headed to Ithaca, NY with Jin and Jenn to help Jin move out of her apartment and to do some light hiking in the gorges/mountains! Should be fun!