90: Lazing Around

It was boiling hot in the apartment today, but the heat and sun and thunder and lightning kinda kept me home (it was alternating between all that, kinda annoying). I changed the curtains in my living room. The green really is perfect. But these new ones are double layered so are much heavier than my old ones. It took me almost an hour to finally keep the little… spring + rod thing to stay where it should be. And it still looks a little sketchily bent… Oh well, we’ll see.

Nothing much other than. It’s a lazy day and after yesterday’s running around, it was good to relax. (Otherwise I know I’ll regret it over next week)

 

91: Running Around

Toda started off all motivated and stuff. Found out when I woke up that I needed to test and sign off on something at work at 2.30; also felt like playing around with some code; and the gym… And wanted to go to Ikea. So figured I’d go into the office, code until 2.30, then head to the gym, then Ikea.

So I got into the office at 1 ish, hot as hell, but, my new little flower fan helped me through it. Played a bit with Spring and BlazeDS, didn’t get very far but, well it was fun. Then at 2.30 I started testing. Just as I was about to sign off, I read the instructions… I was supposed to test through the Internet. Crap. Took subway home, but some subway switch crap decided to break down so were stuck at Queensboro… Finally got on a train but it skipped all the way to Astoria Blvd… So had to take the Manhattan… And of course the first train that arrived was going straight back to Queensboro. What a nightmare. Got home at around 4.15, quickly finished testing and signed off, but it was way too late for gym (since it closes at 5.45 and I wouldn’t be able to get there till 5.15). So decided to go to Ikea directly… But I’m terrible with directions in Brooklyn so missed my stop and etc etc… Finally got to Ikea at almost 7. Geez.

Ikea was on sale. Bought glass jars (for flour and yeast), a set of 6 glasses for 7.99 (I heart glasses!), some little cups for desserts, more plastic food containers, and… After 2 years of searching, long curtains in the perfect green that I was looking for! Blew 90 bucks there (curtains are expensive!) but that was awesome. Also wanted to buy this… Piece of wood + 4 leg platform thingy for my desk so I could put my monitor there when I get around buying it, but… They ran out of the color that matches my desk. Oh well, maybe can check back next time. There were a few kitchen things that I wanted to get too but all the glass were too heavy to carry so I guess I just have to go back again.

When I got home it was almost 10, and I cooked the chicken in my fridge (which was one thing on my to do list). Made another seafood risotto but replaced shrimp with the chicken, and added more veggies (peas and carrots). Unfortunately one of the 2 pieces of calamari I bought wasn’t too fresh and this risotto was more fishy than my previous… It’s a little disappointing but was still pretty good.

Lots done today. Now I’ll just… Laze around and read some fanfics. :p

 

92: And that was it

Another release. Went way past midnight but at least its done. Had to do an emergency fix for someone else’s code, but that was strangely comforting – it’s good to know everyone else screw up once in a while too. :p

For lunch I dragged my team to Restaurant Week at Fig & Olive. Meditarraean food. I had tuna tartare with sesame oil, lamb skewers with couscous, and masarpone ice cream with berriess and 18 year balsamic. Food again… But it’s part of my, less thinking, more doing – I just kinda half decided it should happen and started asking my teammates to go. Haha.

Oh yeah, and got yelled at my mom for being ‘cheap’ to being nice to my very self-centered and childish friend. I know it’s true but that’s really that last thing I need now. Sometimes it’s easier to just put up with people’s bullshit than to live life all by myself.

Meh fuck it.

I miss my real friends at home.

 

93: Fine Dining, Part 2

That came out of no where. Friend suggested dinner at Jojo at 8.30, and since it’s on the east side I could walk there after Japanese class, so it would’ve been perfect. Except I 1) forgot the exact address of the place 2) forgot my cellphone so couldn’t call my friend to ask 3) it was raining. So I walked from 47th/1st to 63rd/3rd and wandered around 2nd, 3rd, Lex and Park, back and forth a few times… Finally found a nice gentlement with an iPhone who looked it up for me – it was on 64th. Gah. Finally got there. It was a cute little place, the food was pretty good, just a tiny bit salty to my taste. Went with 2 guys this time so the conversation was completely different. Although it did end up in ‘nerd’ talk a few times but at least I was relaxed and can truly enjoy the food.

Didn’t go to the gym today… Shame on me. I did have to walk a lot today to class and then look for the restaurant… Better than nothing I guess? Tomorrow’s gonna be work all night long too… But if I get off at a reasonable time and the weather permits, I should go do some jogging.

Tired… Bed time.

 

94: Fine Dining

Was gonna get off work at 6, hit the gym, stop by work friend’s farewell party, before our 9pm Restaurant Week reservation at the Modern. Ended up debugging stupid non-issue till 8, ran to the farewell party and people were just about to leave… Wandered a bit and headed for the restaurant. So no exercise today. But, the food at the Modern was AMAZING. I had a duck breast appetizer, quail main course, and cheesecake + raspberry sorbet, and they were alllllllll so amazing.

The 3 of us chatted a lot about relationships and work. Well, relationship part really is kinda boring, coz, there’s only that much relationship talk you can listen to when you’re single and with one engaged and one obsessed-with-bf people. Also like how they react to my “I dated in college” with “See I didn’t date in college because I was so focused on school” “Yeah I was just thinking of getting As”. Like I wasn’t focused on school? Like I didn’t aced all my classes (well, except 2) Well, I’m probably overreacting because of how HARD I was actually working at school. But anyway. Work talk really wasn’t all that fun either… We’re all stressed out, aren’t we? But, it was good catching up (and be done with it), and the food was amazing…

Really didn’t achieve much today… But, well, a break is good.

 

95: Less Planning, More Doing

Was what my Dove-chocolate-message-of-the-day taught me. I have to say, probably the best advice I’ve ever gotten out of those almost-fortune-cookie-like random zen-ness.

That is probably my problem. Being the super logical person that I am I always weigh every decision… And I always  can come up with reasons to ‘not-do’ something. If I plan a wee-bit less and just go for it, I’m sure a lot more things would get done.

So anyway, I actually managed to drag my lazy ass to the gym tonight. Wanted to do the jog/walk interval on the treadmill, but after 2 intervals my shins were killing me. I guess 3 consecutive days of pounding on them really doesn’t work, so did elliptical instead for 35 mins. I was so ready to give up in the middle of it since I was soooooooo tired, but I came through. Whew. Now I just need to keep up the streak.

Ate leftover risotto tonight. Still so good. And finally tried my black sesame panna cotta. It was good. Not too sweet, cold, black sesame was really fragrant, and got this melt-in-ur-mouth consistency. That and a sip of super cold milk was the perfect dessert. (And completely cancel out the calories I burned at the gym… :p)

Oh and I did my dishes again. Good job me. Tomorrow’s the long-anticipated Restaurant Week Dinner at the Modern. Can’t wait! Although it also means I’ll have to hang out with someone I don’t really want to hang out with at my… Dream dinner. Ugh, I forsee a lot of whining and fits and hypocricy.

 

96: Smells

Risotto done! My first ever, and I have to say it was pretty amazing…

I started off with Emeril Lagasse’s recipe.
Sauteed onions with a little leftover bacon grease (from yesterday’s brunch), added celery and carrots (it wasn’t called for, but I like bits of veggies in my food)
Added leftover beef broth… And then realized, I only had about 2 cups worth though recipe asked for 6… Hmm.
So added water and salt, and 4 cloves of minced garlic. With the extra veggies it was actually pretty flavorful, so that worked out.
Then I realized… Emeril’s recipe doesn’t use white wine! I spent all that time looking for white wine! (And I was dying to open the bottle to try it.)
So I switched to another recipe. :p

When I moved into this apartment I bought myself a book of recipe as homewarming gift. It’s Mark Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World.
I had never used it… :p Until today!
Although it doesn’t really have a… Seafood risotto recipe… But it has a Black Risotto with Seafood and since 1) it has the word risotto in it, 2) it has squid in it (one of my ingredients today), 3) it calls for white wine. I figured it’d be pretty close.
Only problem is everything is cooked in completely opposite order…
Well I came that far and I wasn’t ready to give up. :p

So, starting over, I sauteed another onion in my big pot, with a tablespoon of butter this time (out of bacon grease), and added calamari.
Then I was gonna stir in my bay scallops and shrimp, but figured they’d taste/look better seared, so I seared them with another tablespoon of butter (heart attack in the making).
Seared shrimp smelled so good…
Then I dumped the shrimp and scallops in the calamari/onion and gave it a few more minutes.
Threw in 2 cups of rice. Yes, I used Japanese brown rice (as all Italians scream in horror and Italian food gods sign me up for Italian food hell)… Sauteed.
Then the moment I’ve been waiting for. White wine…! The 7.99 Savignon Blanc didn’t taste half bad, actually.
It smelled amazing with all the seafood and butter… Oh man! Now I understand why almost every Italian/French recipe calls for wine. It’s smelled so sweet and rich.
As the wine evaporated, I was supposed to add “shrimp shell stock”. Right. I got my half homemade beef + veggie broth. Perfect.
I have to say, as that broth started to simmer in that butter/wine/seafood juice, I was ready to eat the thing. Screw actually cooking the rice. I tasted the liquids, and oh my god, I was gonna cry. I couldn’t stop sniffing it. The beef stock and the sweet veggies and wine. It was heaven.
But then I was gonna, you know, follow the recipe. So as the rice got al dente (I actually managed to do al dente! Hell yeah), I took it off the heat and stirred in half cup of grated parmesan.
And I think I need to cut that down next time. It was a little too salty… I liked it way better before the cheese.
But hey, then I realized maybe some cream would help. Even though this recipe didn’t call for cream, Emeril’s did. So I added a dash.
And it worked soooooo well. Now the flavor was perfect, super creamy (almost paste like, since Japanese rice are so tiny compared to regular Italian rice). But the best part was the smell. Seriously. I think I spent more time smelling it than eating…

So that was my first risotto. It was a little haphazzard, but it was really fun and really quite easy. The oil and cream was a bit scary… But hey, I would rather exercise extra to work it off than be a person who ate 2 more healthier meals but had never made their own risotto.

To work off the guilt of eating a plateful of creamy goodness (besides reminding myself that it was seafood/it was brown rice), I went on another 5 min brisk walk + 5 jog/walk intervals. The website calls for spreading out the days, but, well, it was a nice breezy night and more exercise can never hurt. And I had the decency to come home and did all my dishes. I’d give myself a gold-star sticker for that…!

Speaking of smells, there was something that triggered a memory last night that I forgot to write about. When I was making the panna cotta, I had to cook cream and milk together. That smell… Reminded me, when I was little, I used to get this, fresh, glass bottled milk from a Chinese diner near home. It was back when there were dairies in HK (hard to imagine) and milk didn’t all come industrially packed in paper boxes. That milk always had white deposits in them. Now that I think of it, it must’ve been milk with actual cream still in it. I always loved to drink that cold, but sometimes when I was sick, or if it was a cold day, my parents would heat it up, and the smell was exactly the smell that I got when I was boiling the milk with cream…

They say smell trigger memories, I guess that’s what it is.

 

97: Productiveness!

Don’t remember the last time I did so much on one day.

1.) Did laundry. My arch-nemesis.

2.) Did most of my Japanese homework. There’s a couple questions I’m not sure about and didn’t have my laptop with me to  research on. Will finish it up tomorrow.

3.) Repotted my little pot of mint (Mint-kun, as I call it). 
Woke up this morning and saw its leaves all drying up even though I swear I watered it yesterday. As I grabbed the water bottle I noticed the soil has completely seperated from the pot. I realized it was time. Went out to discount store and got a bigger flower pot and some potting soil and repotted the baby. It’s now happily (maybe) residing in a new pot 3, 4 times the original size and I have to say the leaves are looking a lot better than this morning.

4.) Cleaned my kitchen… Even the fridge.

5.) Went and bought a bottle of 7.99 Savignon Blanc for cooking. Was gonna open it and try a little but never got around to it. Oh well.

6.) Went out and exercised! Did 60 sec run/90 sec brisk walk as suggested here. I’m unforntunately too out of shape to do a full 20 minute, which is 8 run/walk iterations. I did 5. Better than nothing? Will try to keep up with it if I don’t go to the gym.

7.) Pack my lunch. Yes. I’m going to bring lunch tomorrow. It’s probably healthier to eat a salad during lunch, but to be honest, every time I have a salad at lunch, I end up snacking like crazy in the afternoon. Might as well eat real food… Besides the sooner I finish my Bolognese sauce the sooner I can try making risotto.

8.) Made black sesame panna cotta with the last of my cream. Was gonna save the cream for risotto, but it’s been opened for a while and I’m not sure if it’ll stay good for much longer. It’s in the fridge being set right now. Will find out how it works out tomorrow.

That was one of the most productive Sunday for a looooong time. Pat on my own back and time for a good long shower. Although I sense I’ll be in vain of muscle pain tomorrow morning. Eek.

 

98: Inspirations

Was out shopping in Soho with my emotionally-abusive friend Princess. (obviously not her real name, but pretty much sums her up. The only thing worse than a princess is one that doesn’t appear so from the surface. She’s all professional and kind and sweet and smart, until she gets comfortable with you and the princess-stink just leaks out.) As usual, it was a TERRIBLE day. I was out -helping- her find gifts for her to bring home to her friends. She had no ideas of her own, but shot down all of mine, threw several small fits along the way, wouldn’t stop talking about her trashy-sounding friends and freakishly immature and controlling boyfriend.

And there came my biggest pet peeve of all. We sat down at a restaurant and she told me what she wanted to eat, then whipped out her cellphone and started texting away. While I sat in silence, waited for our waitress to show up, ordered for both of us (she was so busy texting she didn’t even look up to order), waited in silence for the food. Then the food came, she looked up, ate for about 5 minutes, then started talking on the phone. I just kept eating in silence. Well, at least the seafood risotto was amazing, and it kinda lightened up my mood. So I decided, my next cooking challenge will be making my own risotto.

I was done eating, she was still on the phone, eating at the pace of one spoonful every 2 minutes. I sat in silence waiting for her. Waitress came a couple times asking if we were done, I embarassingly explained a couple of times that we’re still eating (although I obviously wasn’t). I was so pissed at that point I almost just told her I was gonna go home. But I didn’t, of course (I’m lame like that). So I just spent another 30-minutes in silence imagining how to make a risotto.

Growing up in Hong Kong, then being a foodie in New York, I’ve had risotto tons of times. But I’ve never tried making one. I figured I have leftover cream from the chocolate raspberry cake I made last week for a friend and veggies left from my Bolognese sauce (also a first, by the way), so I should be all set. I had enough quiet ‘alone’ time (obviously) during the meal to imagine what I should put in it, when to make it, and couldn’t wait to get home to look up recipes (and get away from Princess, obviously).

So here I am, online. Looks like the only thing I’m missing is dry white wine. Google says a cheap Savignon Blanc would do the trick. I haven’t drank enough wine to know what a Savignon Blanc is like (I’ve only had Chardonnay, I love it, but apparently it’s bad for cooking). Guess I’ll go cheap-wine-hunting tomorrow.

Oh I also managed to get myself a cute purple day dress from Banana Republic in the midst of serving Her Royal Highness. My gut’s sticking out more than ever ever since I stopped going to the gym a few months ago (have been working till 10, 11 pm for the past 2, 3 months). I really should start excercising again. I debated a while whether to get the dress. But, well, I guess I can use that as an inspiration. I’ll wear it once I lose these 6 pounds from where I stopped going to gym.

Not a very productive day, but inspirations always help.

 

99: A New (Not) Revelation

In 99 days, I’m hitting quarter century.

When I was younger, I thought 24 would be a milestone in my life.
(I was born on the 24th of October and so I have a special thing about 24).
And no, nothing really has happened.

I can’t quite say the past 24 years was a disappointment.
I’ve accomplished quite a lot. Completely different from what I thought my life would be… In a way that I could’ve never even imagined. Maybe some girl would imagine growing up to be a computer programmer working at a major financial company in New York City, I surely wasn’t one of them. Even fewer of them would imagine themselves turning into a workaholic, struggling with weight, living in a mess of an apartment, getting stuck with crappy friends, and be in a love-hate relationship with, well, relationships.

Anyways, long story short… In the last days of my 24th year of life, I want to change a few things in my life. No I don’t plan on turning into a high-flying executive or supermodel or find Mr. Right in 100 days. No… I just want to get myself out of this rut. Physically, emotionally. Excersing, taking care of housework, experimenting more with cooking, taking care of myself.

Who knows what I can achieve. But it’s about as good an excuse to start as any, right?