Roommate Bonding

I barely talked to my roommates last year, just the simple act of walking into the apartment was hard knowing that I'd be walking into oppressive silence. That would not be the case this year, Heather is all about talking and filling silence with chatter about anything, we've covered; prostitution, psychics, dreams, the prison system, the death penalty, crazy people, family, the military, drinking, horses and just a whole bunch of other stuff. It feels very grown up to be discussing politics with someone at breakfast, haha like I should be balancing sipping a nice french roast and flipping the pages of the paper. Both of which are completely ridiculous because coffee gives me massive headaches and the newspaper is dying out.

Anyhow back to my topic of discussion my roommate conversations! The other day I was in the kitchen cleaning up the messy stove top (pet peeve of mine) and Calvin walked in, asked me about my day etc. Then we started talking about his intense dieting habits, this guy is like a food nazi. He doesn't use butter or oils when he cooks just a light mist of PAM which doesn't help sear the food well at all, he's limited to only using the crappy pan because he burns the nicer ones. So yeah no butter or oils, no tortilla when he eats burritos and he has non fat everything; low sugar jelly, non fat yogurt, non fat cream cheese, non fat coffee creamer, etc. It just bothers me how inconsistent he is, because its not as if he doesn't eat carbs so I don't see why he can't a tortilla once in awhile. When I called him out on that he said it was because someone told him that tortillas were worse for you because they use lard as a filler. Ah that's it, the "someone told me" he really believes anything you tell him because he's so clueless about the world. He didn't know that face lotion existed until Friday, when he asked me and Heather about what he should do about his dry face from the cold wind. Someone that clueless at 24 is just a sad sight, I see a lot of take out in his future once he moves away from home since his parents still send him off with precooked meals for the week. Oh well, that's silly sheltered Calvin for you. But Heather came out after awhile to get some water and joined our conversation, pointing out the flaws in his diet regime. And then we got onto the topic of prostitutes and crazy people. I just love how you can be talking about one thing and at the end of the conversation you can be talking about something completely different.

I really need to start sleeping at a regular hour soon. Being up till 4 in the morning sucks when you need to go catch the bus at 9:37.

SIMs and Crosswords

Me and my roommate are probably the coolest people ever. We sit around in our room and play our respective cool games, she plays the SIMs and I fiddle around with crossswords. It's a pretty cool way to pass a Saturday night. We strike up fun and interesting conversations over whatever is going on, like how she created a Sim family to look like the cast of Criminal Minds (which required a lot of time searching up their likeness on google) or how she wanted to make another family with the biggest manslut known to man. That character has about 50 children now and all the children in that generation are basically related, haha. And then I ask for help with certain words like how to say school in French, since she's canadian and grew up speaking the language. Crosswords are a nice way to pick up random phrases and words in different languages, or at least the ones that I do. But a lot of you already know about my obsession with them.

Tostadas!

An open faced taco, super easy and simple. If you don't have any hard taco shells but have some tortillas lying around you can still have your taco night!

Ingredients

corn tortillas

meat (chicken, carne asada, carnitas, etc whatever you have on hand)

beans

salsa/enchilada sauce

cheese

toppings (shredded lettuce, sour cream, tomatoes, etc)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 425

2. spray Pam or pour olive oil on a foil lined pan. Add tortillas then cover in Pam or oil, season with salt. cook for 10 mins or until crispy

3. Heat up beans then add some salsa for added flavor

4. Prepare toppings

5. Assemble!

food gawker

My current obsession would be looking at the food sites food gawker and tastespotting that just have thousands of pictures of tasty looking food with links to the blogs that will tell you how they made that awesome looking meal. It is part of my routine to look through the pages of new photos that come up after I come home from classes, I definitely recommend them if you just want to be inspired to cook something new. I have a whole slew of recipes that I bookmarked from those sites and the few that I have gotten to have been AMAZING, and I've also found some really good food blogs in the process, double plus! I just get so inspired looking at awesome pictures of food, wanting to go out and get the ingredients immediately or finding restaurant favorites in an easy to make home versions (ie mochiko chicken, HORCHATA, and maybe a recipe for spicy crispy chicken from cha! eeee). I look forward to growing older so I can acquire more food prepping supplies so I can attempt some of the more fancy looking recipes. Something positive about being older! haha

Bella, my roommate's cat, is an alien-badger-ninja-president. hahah she cracks me up. Bella has had a hard life, she was used as bait for a pitbull and because of that one of her paws is mangled. But now she lives a life of luxury, getting petted whenever she wants, trying everything from pasta bits to salami, it's a pretty nice life. I'm sure she enjoys it. But the thing is that she can fix you with this deathstare look that makes you think she is one of the V's and plotting your demise. haha another thing you can bet on is that she will cuddle with you and purr whenever you watch criminal minds, another reason why she is an alien kitty trying to get ideas for the eventual takeover and slaughter of earth.

Cereal and Buffalo Chicken

Cereal, every college kid's go to meal; and why not? It's soo easy dump some cereal in a bowl and pour a little milk on it, viola meal done. That reminds me of the F word, every time Gordon Ramsy narrates the recipe he's so serious about the whole thing and ends every recipe with the name and saying done while presenting the plate.

Here is a clip about beef wellington, what used to be the test for the aspiring chefs on Hell's Kitchen.

Perhaps I will attempt this? It doesn't look super hard, just making sure the temperatures are right and the meat won't dry out. But this is a grown up dinner so I'll just bookmark it and save it for the future.

Anyhow back to my cereal talk. My two top favorites would be the Post Banana Nut Crunch, which tastes like banana nut muffin with nice size bites of walnut, and Raisin Bran Crunch super delicious. Growing up my mom would buy my sisters and I those 30 little cereal packs so we would have a ton of variety and it worked it out well because each of us liked our own thing. I would dive straight for the Raisin Bran and my sisters would go for Apple Jacks or some other sugary cereal. I just never liked super suagary cereals, they never did it for me. Every once in awhile I like to have a bowl of fruit loops or some lucky charms but for my go to every day cereal it would definitely be raisin bran or frosted mini wheat.

I was very excited because I stumbled upon a recipe for slow cooker buffalo chicken drumsticks! Slow cooker recipes always require sooo little work and chicken wings are such a bitch to prep so this recipe definitely needed to be tried. And they were delicious! Tasted just like a chicken wing that was really tender and falling apart. Yum, definitely football party or casual party material. They are also relatively low in fat (diet freak Calvin approved of them even)

Ingredients

4 pound chicken drumsticks (I used 3 lbs of chicken quarters because its what I had, still worked out!)

1 bottle hot sauce (16 oz or two cups worth)

2 tbsp vinegar (white or apple will do)

2 tbsp worchester sauce

1/4 cup tomato paste

Method

1. Deskin chicken so you won't have gross pieces of fat floating around.

2. wash and pat dry the chicken

3. Mix all other ingredients in a bowl

4. Place chicken in the crock pot, pour sauce over it.

5. Cook for 6-7 hours at low or 3-4 on high

note on storage. Take the chicken out of the crockpot with a slotted spoon once they are done cooking so they still remain somewhat attached to the bone or else it will just turn into shredded chicken.

Books and Soup

I've established a sort of ritual for getting ready for bed; I turn off my computer, go wash my face and brush my teeth, then grab a book to read for half an hour or until I get sleepy. Its a good system and I like it but, there is a downside. I've read all the books that I have up here at least 2 times each, some of them I've read 5 times over. ( I find myself struggling to come up with the twice/thrice equivalent, fice? haha that's all I can come up with) For some of the books reading them again is like a comforting chat with an old friend but for others I struggle to just start them. I miss having my books so far away from me but it'd be in poor taste to bring up my boxes of books just to have something to read before bed or for a welcome distraction from studying, I find that nothing is more distracting than reading a good well-written book. So I need to remember to bring back books that I can't stand to read again and change them out for old favorite from home or new ones if my sisters have gone to the book store recently. I know that I could just go to the library and check some out but nothing beats owning a book and being able to fold over the pages to hold your place or not panicking when a little bit of hot chocolate runs over one of the pages.

My bedtime reading is currently Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah, just some chick lit to ease into sleep. The trick with bedtime reading is to get something that's a quick read, you don't want thought provoking literature when you can't sleep just keeps your mind all wired up. The book does bring up an interesting question, can modern women have it all, rewarding career AND happy content family life? The book chronicles the friendship of Tully and Kate two women who've been friends since they were 12 and how one chose a successful career while the other chose staying at home and having a family. Can someone have both? I think its a maybe but it boils down to time and managing priorities, because at most jobs you only get so many months of unpaid maternity leave before you have to go back to work and then who's going to raise your child then? This is one of those times where I wish I could move to Sweden where you get 9 months of 75% paid maternity leave, that's amazing! You could just make a career out of popping out babies. Well enough of that.

A recipe for chicken noodle soup for those cold wintery nights ahead

Ingredients

2 stalks of celery, diced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

1 small onion, diced

1 lb shredded chicken

one large carton of chicken broth ( 2 small cans)

1/2 a bag of egg noodles, uncooked

Method

1. Heat up a stock pot and add some butter. Throw in the vegetables and cook down until soft but not browned

2. Add remaining ingredients and simmer the soup until the noodles are cooked to your liking. Add salt and pepper to taste. (if there doesn't seem to be as much broth as you like just add some water)

3. I like to have a thicker soup so I add about 2-3 tablespoons of cornstarch

Assassins

Everyone has their own studying soundtrack, for me I really like listening to Broadway soundtrack or opera arias throw in a little Josh Groban from time to time to spice things up. So when midterm season comes up, like it does every so often, I find myself pulling up Into the Woods, Wild Party, Andrea Bocelli, etc. There's this one musical, Assassins, that I find myself drawn to time and time again. Basically its about the successful assassination attempts on US presidents and ends with the previous assassins circling around Harry Lee Osmond as he takes his shot on JFK. But the song before the final scene "Something Just Broke" just stays with me whenever I hear it. It's a song about people remembering what they were doing when they heard that the president was shot.

You can listen/watch it here where its combined with the ending.

grimm's fairy tales

I've been reading the Grimm's fairy tales for awhile now and some of the stories in it confuse the hell out of me and some are just twisted and demented. We all know the Disney version of Cinderella where she's forced to become the servant and is saved by a magical fairy godmother and a doting prince who will search the kingdom to find her. Well the Grimm's version is slightly different in that there is no Fairy Godmother, only a magical tree above her mother's grave and the part where Prince Charming scours the kingdom looking for her with glass slipper in hand? Well chases the Cinderella to her home and asks the Stepmother to bring down one of her daughters so stepsis one comes down and tries on the shoe, its too small so she cuts off her heel since "she won't need a heel when she's ruling the kingdom" so the Prince carries her out and as they pass the magic tree it shouts something about how she's not the real girl and to look at the shoe and he sees the blood. So he goes back to the house and stepsis two comes out and she chops off her pinky toe and the tree tells the Prince that this one is fake as well. And then he goes back finally gets Cinderella and they live happily ever after, once the tree sends out maniac birds to go pick out the step siblings' eyes out. Creeeeepy. But not as creepy as the Rapunzel story, in this version the witch that puts Rapunzel in the tower casts a spell on her blinding and disfiguring Rapunzel and banishing her to the desert once the Prince tries to rescue her. It was a weird story for sure. But not as creepy as the one where the father wants to marry his daughter because she looks like her mother. What twisted stories!

As for the pointless ones there was one about how a matchstick, sausage and cat. And I'm just going to leave it at that because it was so pointless and had no moral.

Food wise I think you all should go out and make this chili, it is so easy and so simple to make.

The recipe can be found here and basically all you do is cook up the meat and onions and then toss cans of beans and tomato sauce into a pot and simmer. Suuuper simple and delicious!

Pokey Little Puppy

Aww my adorable little puppy, we were both so young then. I love how I am sporting the Dalmatian look with that ensemble so its like we are matching! Also look at how Asian I look, haha its as if all my Asian-ness just faded away after that. And my mom looks so young there, and I believe that’s quilted sweater of some sort. Oh the early 90s and their fashion mishaps, at least she isn’t wearing stirrup pants or anything ridiculous like that.

Anyhow back to my main objective in writing this post. My Pokey, my adorable, playful Dalmatian loyal confidant till the end. Technically she isn’t mine but everyone knew that we were inseparable, my Aunt got her one day when I was around 2 or 3. So the two of us grew up together, I ran around chasing her on chubby toddler legs as she stumbled around on her puppy paws. She followed me as I made music with the rice bin, laid under the table as I fed her yucky vegetables, was my pillow when I needed something to cry on and just my constant companion. I miss having a pet in my life that can just be there for me all the time and offer that same level of innocent, constant animal love. We had many adventures that dog and I, she loved to escape so sometimes I would open the side gate and watch her sprint out, then after awhile go after her and we’d run together. She was also a ferocious watch dog, she would snarl at anyone that dared set foot in the house that she wasn’t familiar with. When my uncle first came over for his first date with my aunt he went down to pet Pokey when she bit down on his wrist hard enough to bleed and he still had to go and meet my Grandparents with a bloody wrist. He just tucked his bloody hand behind his back and went to greet everyone, very smooth Uncle Brian, very smooth. That’s how I’ll remember her constantly in motion and her fierce love. Sadly she died in my bed in her sleep in the middle of sophomore year of high school. It was a terrible way to start the day, to find your beloved pet dead by your side.

Hopefully when I move out on my own I will be able to find a pet just as loyal as she was. I am personally quite fond of large breeds like Great Danes and the Irish Wolfhound. The plus of having a Great Dane is that they make good apartment pets because they aren’t high energy and like to cuddle with you on the couch all day, which sounds like my kind of dog.

Aren't they ginormous and awesome? Great Danes used to hunt wild boards.

yesterday was a lazy pasta day. I don't know what else to call this a brown butter garlic sauce? But I am usually way too lazy to actually make a brown butter. But apparently there is a fancier way to make it which also looks good. So maybe when I don't feel so lazy I will try that method out. But in the meantime this is just how I make it

Ingredients

1/2 box of pasta

1 can tomatoes (diced, stewed, whole, just whatever you have on hand)

grated Parmesan cheese

cooked squash, diced (if you have any, I happened to have leftovers from another meal)

garlic powder to taste

basil, to taste

2-3tbsp butter

Preparation

1. Bring a pot of water to boil, be sure to salt the water (no one likes bland pasta)

2. Add the pasta and cook for however long the box says to al dente

3. Drain the pasta

4. Add all remaining ingredients and stir, making sure to heat up the veggies

5. Serve with even more cheese on top. Delicious, fast and easy!

Family Crests and November Nights

I finally remembered to ask for a picture of the family crests and then spent a huge chunk of my Sunday looking for larger images online with nothing more to go on then the pictures. But I found them and I love the simplicity of design. The first one is supposed to be a cross section of some gourd because my grandpa's family were farmers and the second one is a flower with the swords coming out because my grandma's family were samurai. These emblems have always been in my grandparents house in the form of medallians under pictures of their families, and I am looking forward to having them on my side to always be there.

It's November already! I can't believe it. The quarter is more than halfway over and I can see Thanksgiving Break! wooo. I'm excited and sad for this quarter to over because on the one hand it will be winter break and I get to be home for three weeks but that also means that it'll be when Heather leaves and I am stuck with Melinda the weird anime roommate once again. Sigh. That's how life goes though.

Another thing that I do not appreciate about it being November is that it is going to get ridiculously dark very early in the day. I need to be exposed to a certain amount of daylight and the sun setting at 5pm doesn't really help with that. I don't see why we have daylight savings anymore, just doesn't make sense. Let's just do without it and be the same as all the other countries and I mean some states are excluded from it like Hawaii so why can't California join them?

Fried Zucchini! So delicious I was getting lazy so I just copied and pasted the recipe found here and its basically like the one that I use.

• 4 medium zucchini
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil, divided
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs or regular bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. dried basil
• 1/2 tsp. freshly-ground black pepper

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.


2. Wash, trim and slice zucchini into 1/2-inch-thick rounds.


3. Drizzle one tablespoon of the olive oil over a baking sheet to evenly coat. Set aside.


4. Beat egg in a small bowl.


5. Spread bread crumbs out in a shallow dish. Stir Parmesan cheese, salt, basil and pepper into bread crumbs.


6. Dip 5-6 zucchini slices into the beaten egg. Transfer to the bread crumb mixture, pressing on both sides to coat. Shake off excess, and place on prepared baking sheet.


7. Repeat with remaining zucchini slices.


8. Drizzle remaining tablespoon of olive oil over the zucchini.


9. Bake in preheated oven 8 minutes. Using tongs, turn zucchini so the other side gets crispy. Bake another 5-7 minutes until golden brown