Dear China, thank you for inventing the pork filled steam bun. What a wonderfully convenient delight. So wonderful that I ate 4 of them for dinner (they were small).
Oh, but China, why must the steam bun expand in my stomach? Why must it upset me so? I spent the night in and out of vividly inexplicable dreams.
China, China, China, you merciless scamp, whatever are we going to do with you?
With love,
h
Monthly Archives: October 2005
bark bark bar
For some reason Herdez has decided to stop selling its Salsa Verde! or something. I don’t know. I can’t find it anywhere. Even Lily, who lives in the land of the good mexican food, cannot find the Herdez Salsa Verde. I can find the Salsa Casera, I can find other brands of salsa verde, but I don’t want those, I want Herdez Salsa Verde in the little green can. Find it for me, send me a case, I will pay you back.
I kept getting these notices at work saying my email box was over the size limit. This perplexed me, I do keep a good number of emails, but certainly not 150mb worth. So I keep deleting things and moving stuff to local folders. Then I find this odd sent items folder. Now a sent items folder is not particularly odd, we all have them, I have 2 (or so I thought) on my work email since I have two accounts running at the same time (mine and the department mail). I found a 3rd, odd sent mail folder and it was chock full of sent mail starting from last November when I got the new computer and switched from POP3 to IMAP.
So I dutifully started reading the mail and deleting it. What a fucking trip that was to see stuff I sent to people a year ago. For the most part, there were no surprises, emails to David and Alan and Alex and Ethan and my mom and whatnot. Just your typical conversations. It was also an interesting topographical map of my relationship with my ex at that time. Pleasantly joking with each other in one email, sniping the next. It was a weird time. Some of the emails hurt my stomach for having so much anger in them, others made me sad, we were trying so hard to be nice.
Still others made me realize that for all the history and the trying, this was the right choice.
But on a brighter note, Alex explained the precession of the equinox to me today. The other day he answered my questions about constitutional law, today it was astronomy. Seriously, he should have one of those columns where you just write to him and ask him anything, he’ll have the answer.
I need to clean the house tonight so that Lily will not think I live in a toxic waste dump!
I can’t wait for lily to get here, we’re going to have a great time and we will never have a moment to rest.
Then 2 weeks and we go to the Goat Farm!!!!!
oh also I had a weekend
It was all about food.
Saturday, Jessi and I went to do our ethnic grocery shopping. First, Bill’s Imported Foods for our Greek and Middle Eastern stuff. I got chick peas and tea and mini eggplants and pistachios and orzo and some spices and zatar. Then Jessi totally turned me on to Egyptian feta. You don’t know feta until you’ve had double cream Egyptian feta. After that we went to United Noodle for all our Asian food needs, including the aforementioned rice crackers, red bean ice cream, green tea mochi, sushi rice, every kind of bizarre ramen I could find and steam buns (veggie for him, pork for me).
Afterwards, David and I went to a fundraiser dinner for a Samoan who needs a kidney. I was all excited about eating Samoan food until I got the food. It’s a lot of very greasy and salty meat. Sigh. But the evening was fun and the cutest little kids were running around.
Sunday, after a movie and chilling at the coffee shop doing the crossword puzzle (I’m better at crosswords than i ever thought I was. Go me) we came home and I made the most delicious stuffed eggplants ever. Ever. What I did not know about eggplant (I’d never cooked them before) is that you lose a lot of volume squeezing out the water and frying them. I pulped the eggplants, salted the pulp and drew out the bitter water. As that was going on I prepped the other ingredients and was suprised at the amounts, I figured there was too much stuff to fit back in the shells. I was way wrong. After you fry the eggplant insides along with the garlic and onion you end up with this very tasty frizzled concoction that is more flavoring than filling. You mix that with tomatoes, the magical egyptian feta and chopped mint and stuff it all back in the shells and back. So good, like crack.
and I discovered that Maddie can eat a bowl of tzatziki in about 3 seconds. Note to self, maddie is taller than ghengis and can get into more things.
People brought me wine during my housewarming, it’s a nice gift. Unfortunately, I don’t know who brought what, but if you were the person who brought me the Yellowtail Shiraz-Grenache, thank you. It was entirely too lovely with the eggplant and pilaf.
Nice/Not Nice
Nice: Spending the afternoon with your dogs and splitting a bag of rice crackers with them.
Not Nice: Whne one dog horks up a blob of rice cracker and the other dog eats it.
They’re monstrous creatures, these dogs of mine, but they are mine and they reflect their owner.
Persephone sinking
It is with a certain amount of dread that I watch the days get shorter, the leaves fall, the cold air seep in.
I know that logically I should face the winter with a positive attitude and hope for the best, but I know better. It’s so hard though. The bitterly cold mornings, the insanely short days where the sun stays firmly entrenched in the southern sky, the day after day after day of solid grey cloud cover.
I have special lamps, whether it is the science or the suggestion, they do help. I keep them on and I sit by them. They make crazy blue-white light.
David and I talked a bit about it. He went through it last winter, but I had other stuff going on at the same time, other things with which to explain my irrational anger or crying jags. He was understanding, willing to be proactive about it. It was good.
I figure that I’ll travel more, flying from place to place, outrunning the demons. I can afford it more now, and I have the vacation time. I’ll put the dogs in the car and go away. I’ll put the dogs and the boy in the car and we’ll go away. I’ll book a flight at the last minute and stand at the ocean and listen.
I’ll probably also be more insular, not talk to as much, not visit as much. My phone was fucked this week and it was nice.
Some day I will move to a warmer place.