Adventures in cooking

Being a poor (not really) college student trying to make and cement healthier eating habits, I've been doing a lot of cooking for myself. Usually this involves mostly just making sandwiches or quesadillas and salads, because I don't have a lot of time.* But occasionally, when I a few free hours,** I try random recipes I find online or even cook by the seat of my pants and do it without a recipe at all!

What I've made so far, and the gustational outcomes:

• hummus (I don't know from which recipe. I didn't drain the canned chickpeas first though, so it was a bit watery but tasty nevertheless and worked really nicely as a spread on sandwiches.)
• falafel (which was delicious, and all my roommates agree)
• lasagna (only replacing the sausage with more ground beef and the cottage cheese with ricotta)
• baked chicken with caramelised onions (which I made for dinner with my friend Bernadette who is still going on about how it was the most delicious meal she's ever had, which I count as a victory)
• lemon bread (which did not come out properly due to the fact that I had to use just baking soda instead of baking powder, but it still tasted pretty good and my roommates liked it as well)
• guacamole (I basically just chopped up some onion and tomato and mashed it in with avocado. But I'm going to count it anyway, dammit!)
  
• meatloaf (which I made tonight, sin una receta, which was approved heartily by Bernadette and Kristy)

So basically, I'm a culinary genius.*** And my mother thought she needed to teach me how to cook!

*a.k.a. I'm lazy
**a.k.a. get up off my lazy ass
***I am not a culinary genius

Anything shiny is a girl's best friend

"If I ever get a boyfriend," Kimberly says to me as we look around the jewelry section at Macy's, "and don't break his heart immediately--"

"--or turn him gay*," I add.

"--or turn him gay," she continues, "you should tell him that I like sparkly jewelry."

"Duly noted."



*This has only happened once and they were both in eighth grade so that doesn't even count, but we like to bring it up from time to time all the freakin' time.

I'm like baby, baby, baby, noooo

I was working in the dish room this evening, and the dish room is always fun because we always have the radio blasting, so all my co-workers get to see my beautiful renditions of "Let's Stay Together" and "You Belong With Me" and "Tik Tok" and "Bad Romance". (Renditions that I'm sure they enjoy hearing as much as I do performing.) And then this fucking Justin Bieber song comes on.

This song really scares me. Well, not the song (which does have just amazingly profound lyrics, you have got to admit), but the video. Because has no one else, like the police or child services, noticed that THIS KID IS, LIKE, ELEVEN?* I mean, I know young people love their pop stars and all, but I thought they waited until puberty was a little bit closer before throwing poor, unsuspecting boys into the spotlight.

Also, stop smiling, Justin Bieber. Your first love just broke your heart for the first time! Don't look so fucking chipper!



*I am aware that he's actually fifteen, not eleven. BUT HE LOOKS LIKE HE'S ELEVEN.

We live in a classy neighborhood, part 2

A few days back I was taking a shower. And I don't say this like it, in and of itself, is a singular or special event. I take showers all the time, obviously. And usually, I have our bathroom window, which is right about eye level in our shower, open quite a bit, because otherwise it's like a freakin' marine layer of hot steam in our bathroom.

So there's nothing inherently unusual about this shower that I'm taking. Until I happen to glance out the window and THERE IS A GUY STANDING THERE, STARING STRAIGHT AT ME.

I freaked the fuck out and quickly slammed the window closed.



When I told Mikko about it on AIM, he joked, "Oh yeah, that was me. Nice tits."

Ugh. He would.

And we'll braid each other's hair

People who live in the Bay Area (or know anything about San Francisco) know that weird shit happens there all the time. And if you're walking down the street with a pillow under your arm, a native will ask you where the pillow fight is. But a tourist, who you can already pick out because they're riding on the ridiculously over-priced (even for San Francisco) and snail-paced cable cars they think are a quintessential part of the SF experience, will ask, "Why do you have a pillow?"

"Because we're going to have a sleepover in Union Square," I wanted to yell back.

Pillow fight!

Pillow fight!, originally uploaded by sappycoldplaywhore.

"I kept getting into mini one-on-one pillow fights with really cute guys, but I didn't want to lose Kimberly so I stuck with her instead," I said to Bernadette as we walked to dinner after our epic pillowing fighting at Justin Herman plaza.

"Clearly, you don't have your priorities straight," Kimberly replied.

I'll keep that in mind for next Valentine's Day.

Can't read my

I hate the song "Poker Face", but I have to admit that swing dancing to "Poker Face" is a lot of fun.

So is swing dancing to "Single Ladies". But not so much fun is drunk people who can't dance at all trying to dance with you. The perils of being out on Lower Sproul with loud music at 1 a.m., I suppose.

We live in a classy neighborhood, part 1

I was all dressed up, walking back from a formal interview, when some guy wolf-whistled at me. And in that moment, I realised, Hey! That's the first time that's happened since I got back from Mexico!


With a capital K.

Questionable morals?

I'm sitting on a computer at the library, and people keep sitting down at the computer next to me, which is frozen. Instead of telling them this before they sit down, I let them find out for themselves. And I'm kinda making a game in my head of who takes the longest to realise this after they sit down. The girl who unbuttoned her jacket and got all settled in is winning.

I think I'm kinda a bad person.

I chase my tequila with beer

"Aleesha," I say, after I've had a bit but clearly not enough to drink, "Why is it that even when I'm drunk I still have enough inhibitions not to do anything really stupid?"

"I don't know, darling," Aleesha says. "But I'm the same way."


I need to be less inhibited. That would surely not solve all my problems.


Also, you know it's a Berkeley party where people are dancing to crunk while some other people are talking about the influence of philosophy of physics proofs. No, really.

Playing the game

I was watching clips of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on YouTube, and during one of his many deconstructions of reality TV, I remembered one of the reality programs I realised just why one of the reality shows I had seen in Mexico was so weird: because unlike British or American 'reality' TV, they not only acknowledged by embraced the fact that they were playing The Game. What does 'playing The Game' mean? Let me explain.

We all know reality TV is not reality. We all know that if the people on it aren't paid actors, the can still be directed and if not directed, then editing can completely change what happened. We know that no one is actually trying to find love; they just want their overly-made-up, stupid face on TV so they can ignore all their latent trust issues and just be famous for fifteen minutes. People may not acknowledge it, but they know it.

So this show in Mexico, it's called Yo Quiero Enamorarse (I want to fall in love). The format alone is really strange and confusing and the show itself last for about four hours every time that it's on, which I really don't get, but basically it's got a group of people of one sex trying to vie for the attention of someone of the opposite sex.

One episode, the girl who has all these guys competing for her, goes on a boat date with one of the guys. And for each date, the guys are given a secret challenge. This particular challenge was to 'steal a kiss'. And this one dude did it, of course, in the most awkward way possible, and you could tell how awkward it was because the poor girl made no attempts to hide how uncomfortable she was. When the judges later asked her why she was so bothered, she meekly answered that she felt like he was kissing her to win the challenge and not because he wanted to.

I thought, Wow, a genuine, real person on reality television? What is this demonry?

But one of the judges reprimanded her, saying This is a reality show and if you can't handle that then why are you here?

And that's it: this show didn't just have everyone pretend like they were taking it seriously as a competition for a real relationship. They basically were willing to come out and say, Yeah, this is fake. But you knew that when you signed the contract, so deal with it.

Which in the realm of 'reality', might be the 'realest' thing I've ever seen.

If I were an enzyme, I would be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes

"Hana," I said, "you're going to think I'm really dorky for saying this, but I think James Watson is really cute."

"Who's James Wat--wait, like Watson and Crick Watson?"

"Yeah."

"You are such a dork."

Don't I know it.

James Watson pictured on the right.