Breakfast: Mango & raspberries with mint. Coffee with mint & brown sugar & a little cream.
(I’m mostly doing this to remind myself that this is why I go grocery shopping and why living off tacos and banh mi and stuff from my freezer is non-optimal. Oh, grad school.)
Pics from the last coupla months that I’ve finally figured out how to get outta my phone. Behold my cat, my boyfriend, myself, good food, North Beach, Chinatown, The Balboa Theater, some Shark socks, the Dickens Fair, and lamb shank.
All in all, it’s been a good Winter. :)
But I’ve made some good food as of late.
Tonight’s dinner:
- 1 bunch of broccoli rabe, 1 giant mango, 4 avocadoes, 3 scallions, the juice of 1 lime, 1 giant ear of corn, & a few tablespoons of garlic olive oil, all mixed up in a bowl.
- Eat with corn chips & a few slices of cotija.
Now I have enough delicious salad for the rest of the week. YESSSSS.
Also happening this week in the land of food: Homemade lamb bolognese, courtesy of my freezer. I have been making a lot of lamb bolognese sandwiches.
Also, I made an entire chicken’s worth of green curry chicken soup on Friday for a sickly friend, and ended up giving him half & keeping the other half for my freezer. Go hard or go home, right?
HELLO NYC FAT FEMMES and NYC fat femme appreciators: Where should I go for cute plus-size lingerie? I am looking for both cute/sexy/fashion-y bras & function-y bras. I figure if any city has what I am looking for, it’s New York. Are there places other than Orchard Corsets? (I recall their selection not being awesome, but the last time I went there was also 5 years ago).
In other news:
* Portland was awesome.
* Seattle was awesome but all too brief. I will spend more time there next time!
* I am in NYC and have, in the past 24 hrs, enjoyed things like curried goat & callilou bread & patties delivered to my (host’s) door, mascarpone gelato, and FREE LAURIE ANDERSON CONCERTS IN THE PARK with special guest appearances by Lou Reed. Holy wow, NYC. Way to impress a lady.
I am CLEAN(ING) ALL THE THINGS! and I just had a moment of debating whether or not to save or recycle a bunch of old sour cream & margarine tubs my grandmother gave me. She does this a lot. The last time I visited her, she sent me home with gnocchi and chicken and salad in these containers. I proceeded to have a delicious evening picnic with a friend.
CONS:
- they are not see-thru so they are not very practical for storing food
- i live in a shoebox studio and don’t have a lot of storage room for dishes & tupperware
PROS:
- free sorta-kinda tupperware! it doesn’t matter that it’s from, like, 1985 and i have other tupperware. it’s still useful, right?
- i can give people food in these containers!
Uhh. I am officially my grandmother’s granddaughter. In case there was any doubt.
“You don’t say diet, you say TRY IT! Put it in your mouth with WYATT RIOT!”
This just made me laugh so hard I cried. Wyatt, I will put it in my mouth with you any day.
Snapshot #2 from Pacific Northwest Wedding & Porn Vacation.
*Today, I slept the 12 hour sleep of someone who has not had a vacation for 6 months. It was really, really nice.
*Rose & Pidge’s wedding was amazing, gorgeous, left me so touched & so verklempt. Also, they know to serve a meal. Bacon-mole-sweet potato empanadas? Fessenjun? Figs & chevre? Cupcakes? Yes please.
*Fluffy just came home from work and declared that he is making me “a proper breakfast.”
*There are shoots in the works. Seattle on the horizon. More friends to see here. In short, I am feeling extraordinarily well taken care of. Mmm.
Tempeh + sweet potato + scallions + kale + spinach fusilli = AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS. I make variations on this stirfry a bunch, and it’s never been bad. But this batch is like there’s a party in my mouth where everyone’s invited. How is this so delicious?!
I cooked the tempeh, sweet potatoes, and scallions on a high heat, for a long time — I was actually worried I might burn them. But instead the tempeh is crispy and perfect and the sweet potato and scallions are caramelized (but not mushy). I put the kale in last, cooked it with the other stuff on a low heat so that its texture is more like massaged kale than stir-fried kale. Usually I put some kind of pesto or sauce on stirfries like this, but this doesn’t even need it.
In other news:
I’ve been living in Stressytown the past few weeks. School is kicking my ass, and my cat has also been missing since late Monday night. I’m canvassing my whole neighborhood, talking to neighbors, putting up posters, etc. I have faith that she is okay and that I will find her, but I’m pretty bummed about this. Please think good thoughts for Vajra to come home. :(
As for school: I haven’t reached the point in the semester where I watch “I’m On A Boat” 37 times a day (I know that will happen, though). But I’m pretty buried in work/writing; I’ve got a chapter due, uh, tomorrow, and then another one due next Thursday. And I’ve gotten into a pattern of forgetting to eat and/or buying food out because cooking feels stressful/like a time suck. Which is the worst thing ever, esp. for someone who loves cooking as much as I do, and who likes to cook as stress relief. You know that thing where you skip breakfast because you’re so stressed you forget to eat, and then you have half a burrito for lunch, and the other half for dinner? Totally been doing that! :( So not good for me for so many reasons!
So, this morning, instead of forgetting to eat breakfast and jumping straight into homework, I ate an actual breakfast (just hippie corn flakes, but that is better than nothing), and cooked enough of the aforementioned stirfry to last me for a few days. So necessary for my mental health. I’m also looking forward to the long bike ride I have planned for Sunday.
That’s kinda all the news that’s fit to print. School/writing, work, remembering to do things like cook and ride my bike, trying to squeeze in time with friends & sweeties. Life’s mostly very good — it’s just overflowing a little.
Case in point: Today’s lunch (of leftovers!):
Salad: Purple lettuce + persimmon + home-made fig dressing
Sandwich: Sauteed root veggies (beets, sweet potatoes, & carrots) + goat cheese on ciabatta
It helps to live in the land of Abundant Cheap Produce. Even when I can’t make it to the farmer’s market, there are 17 bodegas with good produce within a five block radius of my house. I throw a rock and I hit one.
My last couple weeks have been kinda weaksauce. In short: School has been hella stressful and my heart is a little ouchy. I’ll be fine, and life is mostly pretty awesome, but, you know, weaksauce. It happens.
I realized tonight that I have been sublimating all my feelings of sadness, stress, anxiety, anger, and melancholy into cooking and baking. There are worse ways of dealing. I bought like $40 worth of fancy cheese, bread, and pesto on Wednesday night and made myself what my friend Mandisa referred to as “extravagant grilled cheese.” And now I have a lot of cheese & bread leftovers. Picnic time!
Today I went to the Alemany Farmer’s Market and bought a huge box of white pomegranates for $3. So I came home and made tempeh and rainbow chard in a white pomegranate sauce over spinach fusilli for lunch. I’d never cooked with pomegranates before, let alone white ones, but it was pretty awesome. And I have about a million pomegranates left. Maybe Rose will teach me some of the pomegranate recipes she is always taking about while she’s in town for Mangos with Chili?
And right now, inbetween reading books & writing about them, I took a break to make satsuma brownie cupcakes. As in, brownie batter put into cupcake tins. Flavored with fresh satsuma juice (satsumas also from the Farmer’s Market).
Apparently the solution to weaksauce is to… Make strongsauce? With pomegranates?
