Mah New Home

So I think we should start doing occasional themed photo posts. You can write about the picture if you want, or not. I'll start with a photo I like about where I live now. Feel free to post your own photos, of any (random) thing you like about the place you live!


This is HummusBoyfriend deep in thought on Mt. Adams. Cincinnati is pretty.

3 things funny about Cincinnati:

(1) Instead of saying, "I beg your pardon?" when someone doesn't hear you, they all say "Please?". Apparently it stems from what people would say in German, since Cincinnati used to have a huge German population.
(2) They have a holiday that they've dubbed "Sweetest Day", which is basically Valentine's Day in October. When we started hearing all the commercials, Friend1 and I were very confused.
(3) Everyone whips out their winter coats when its 60 degrees out. I am an upstate New York snob, I know. I have been frozen and unfrozen so many times that I am invincible now.

But I like it, because:
(1) Graeter's Ice Cream, which Oprah has declared to be the best ice cream in the country, is a 5 minute walk from my apartment. I have definitely eaten ice cream for dinner on more than one occasion. I should be more ashamed of this, instead of announcing it to the world.
(2) It's pretty. I like being close to a big river, and everything here is very lush and green.
(3) It's big(ger than Ann Arbor), so there is a pretty long list of things to do/places to explore/restaurants to try.

But a few downers...
(1) There aren't very many Asians (which is fine) and as a result, not very much Asian food.
(2) It's almost TOO big (ha ha, now you know I can never be a big city girl)...I hate driving for thirty minutes and still being in the Greater Cincinnati area. Especially when I'm driving to Michigan. It's depressing to realize that after half an hour you're still only by Jungle Jims.
(3) And, related to both points above, I have to drive 20 minutes to go to the nearest and basically only Asian grocery store in the area. Which means I never stock up on Asian food except when I happen to be in Ann Arbor by north campus.

Okay, your turn!

Should Be Studying

It takes me so long to get into a good studying groove that I'm either tired or hungry once I get there.

Anyway, I made a new friend. His name is Ankur. And he is a genius. Or so it seems. In any case, he outscored me on the exam I crammed a week for and he only had a day and a half to study.

But here's the funny story. For some reason, after I met him I was convinced his name was Darshun. I don't even know if that's an actual name. I knew the "a" and "r" existed in his name, but I couldn't remember in what order.

So I've made a decision. Ankur is my friend. Darshun is his evil super genius alter ego that I can curse to eternity for being smarter than I am.

We have an exam on Friday. If he outscores me again...well, it's a pattern. I'll accept it.

Stupid Darshun.

Fun Cake/ Roll

My friend brought me this from the Borneo Island. It's really fun looking. Can someone tell me how I can put pictures below the things I write instead of it being at the top all the time?

Singapore!

I went to Singapore last week, and no Singapore is not part of Malaysia. It used to be back in 1957 up to 1963 but not anymore.

I was there for 2 days and I went with my mom. We took the night train that had beds so that was nice. I feel like I should talk about the food there so here goes.

I had some yummy Unagi Don there at the Food Court in Sentosa Island. I also had some good ramen that was Tom Yum Flavor. Tom Yum is the hot and sour soup you can get from Thai restaurants. I saw a musical that they did on the beach. The waterworks and fireworks were pretty good but I think Singapore was just as corny as Malaysia since they keep talking about how they live in a harmonious multicultural country. This is not always true. There's a lot of racism there as it is here. Look on my facebook for more pictures.

Why, Purple Potato, how did you get there?

This picture symbolizes the lack of Asian people in Cincinnati. I am the purple potato.

(uh, for those of you who are unfamiliar with purple potatoes, they are an actual kind of potato, and not a random mutant spoiled potato among normal potatoes...this is not symbolism about me being a mutant person, though I suppose we could go that route...)

I got a bunch of baby potatoes for free from the place where we had our (12 hour) choir retreat yesterday, which was in the boonies somewhere outside of Cincinnati. I roasted these potatoes with a rosemary garlic mustard dressing, and now they are going in my tummy.

New Nail Polish

Brand: Essie
Color: One of a Kind

You like??!?!?!

Dinner

I served up a dinner on time!! I'm usually 10-30 minutes late, so this is quite the accomplishment for me being half an hour early for once!

Except that when I said "6:30-7," Sir Tubbington (boyfriend) apparently only heard "7." SO I'm more like an hour early :( I hope everything still tastes okay.

I had a funny old balding man help me pick out a wine for tonight. I'm not sure if he actually knows anything about wine or is just really quick at reading labels. He was nice though, and the one I got doesn't seem so bad.

In case your wondering, I made Chicken Scallopine. Got the recipe here (Thanks H for introducing me to the blog!).

Maybe I'll take some pics once the food gets out on plates.

Anyway, Sir Tubbington and mom should be here within 45 min. What's that you say? Sir Tubbington AND his mom? Yup, they're coming over for dinner. Am I crazy? I hope dinner doesn't suck. And that everybody likes parsley. I mean is it weird to have them over for dinner?

Well, Halloween is fast approaching so look forward to some pics of my beautiful carved pumpkin and the Halloween house in my neighborhood.

Uht oh....

Well... if I wasn't scared enough as it was, that last post managed to freak me out so much that I cannot put this off any longer. I've been working for almost half a year now which sounds ridiculous now that I say it.

On that note, Fall has been by far the busiest I've been since I graduated. Early September I had this wild dinner party with a bunch of really cool people most of whom I never get to see or hang out with, but it was fun.

Later in September "Phantom of the Opera" came to the Detroit Opera House. I think I had already seen it twice now, but both times I was relatively young so I ended up going again with the family. It was a really good time, we ate at this restaurant called Pegasus and I had the best Hummus (no reference intended) I've ever had.

So more recently, as in 2 days ago, I got back from a vacation in Boston. The main point of the trip was to spend time with some good friends who I miss a lot, but we ended up eating tons of food and having some pretty good adventures. Since I know how much the majority of you reading this love food I'll elaborate on this a little. Basically each day sort of fell into a category. Day 1 we went to Chinatown where we basically just ordered a bunch of food for the table... dumplings, seafood and tofu hot pot... yada yada. Pretty delicious. A couple other highlights were North Boston, which had excellent Italian food, but even better pastries. We stopped at this shop known for their Cannoli. It was really cheap and really delicious and I probably could've gone there everyday if I had the opportunity and wasn't worried about exploding.
One interesting restaurant was this place called Parish Cafe. The whole premise behind the place is that their entire menu features specialties off of other menus from around Boston. Seems kind of like cheating, but the place was always packed and it definitely promoted dining all around the area. The final place I'm going to include because I know it'll make certain people jealous is this Indian restaurant we went to called Tantric. The food had tons of taste to it and they didn't hold back on the spice, always a good thing. They had really good Naan too.

As far as activities went... there was a lot of talking, a decent amount of drinking, some other stuff... One highlight was definitely kayaking between Boston and Cambridge. Maneuvering through sailboats wasn't recommended, but it was something we couldn't resist. Near the end it got really windy and the waves started picking up, so I ended getting pretty soaked which... kinda sucked but whatever. Got us thinking of a great idea though. Open this kayak place where they give you a boat, a map, and a bottle of rum, and somewhere out in the middle of somewhere we have this booey with a bunch of coins attached, and if you bring one back, the rum is free. Perfect idea yes?

Enjoy your reading for the day.

PS There's no way I'm grammar checking that.

Attention Please

JOLLY GREEN GIANT,

HURRY UP AND WRITE YOUR POST OR I AM GOING TO STEAL YOUR FIRSTBORN CHILD, WHICH MAY NOT SEEM LIKE A BIG DEAL NOW BUT YOU WILL BE SAD WHEN THAT DAY COMES.

SINCERELY,

HUMMUS

One Mushroom...

...to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. (bahahha lotr)

I want soup, it is definitely soup weather.

I have decided this is soup week

Today:

I made a Greek-style lemon soup with chickpeas and rice. I sauteed onions in olive oil, added broth, fresh lemon juice, chickpeas, and rice, and brought it all to a boil. I ate it with a pretzel baugette. Post-gym discovery today: Whole Foods truffles are delicious. Good thing they are $6 a box and I am too cheap to buy it.

Tomorrow:

Tomato soup from scratch. I'll probably sautee onions and celery in some butter, add canned tomatoes and broth, boil and puree, then mix in some whole milk. We'll see how that works out.

Thursday: Cauliflower soup, which may be the most delicious stuff ever. Lots of whole milk (though the original recipe calls for heavy cream, I think whole milk works just fine), butter, bits of celery and carrots and cauliflower, some sour cream mixed in right before serving.

It's supposed to rain for the rest of the week.

Pumpkin Spice Latte

I love fall because of all the good fall stuff like football and sweaters, but mostly I just like that Starbucks has the Pumpkin Spice Latte again. I missed it :) So I drank too much and now I am up late (10:30...isn't that sad?). I am watching a show about the new hominoid Ardipithicus. I miss college.

I got invited to a party last night at my co-workers house. I want more friends so I went. It sucked. No one was friendly and my co-worker was mean to Matt. Making friends is hard! :(


K, I suck at blogging. Hope all is well with everyone!! Also, are people going to the Purdue game?? Should I look for a ticket?

Bye!

Fall and Not Back At School

Things I'm Loving:
My haircut.
HummusBoyfriend is here right now.
I threw my first successful dinner party with 7 people, serving:
Roasted squash risotto, warm roasted asparagus and mushroom salad in lemon mustard vinaigrette, baked brie in puff pastry, flourless mocha cake (which was delicious, if I do say so myself) with whipped cream, lemon tart. Nobody knew each other but everyone seemed to have a really good time. I think 7 people is a good sized dinner party.
Lack of homework.
Pumpkin desserts.
Eating leftover dessert so that I can make a mocha tart. I am going to get so fat.
A quarter will buy me an hour of time at a parking meter in Kentucky.


Things I'm Not Loving:
I'm cold. No more wearing skirts to work.
How early it gets dark now.
Work. Is stressful. And might remain so until my business trip, which is right before thanksgiving.
HummusBoyfriend is leaving tomorrow. Oh.
Getting up when it's dark.
Not being in college. I miss college. Even though Cincinnati is pretty nice.
my boyfriend is ugly :( <--HummusBoyfriend wanted to add that. Yes, that is something I don't love.

HummusBoyfriend and I went to Jo An, a Japanese restaurant hidden in an office building in Kentucky by the big Toyota plant there. If we hadn't been specifically looking for the restaurant, we never would've found it-it's in such a random location, in a big complex of office buildings. I had heard really good things about it from numerous people, and apparently that is where all the Japanese businessmen go when they come to Kentucky for Toyota business. It was kind of ridiculously expensive, maybe even more so than Beluga, the trendy sushi place/nightspot by my apartment. HummusBoyfriend thought the fish was of excellent quality, but I was kind of appalled at being charged $5.50 for salad. He ordered a marinated baby squid salad, which looked kind of horrifying in a gooey sort of way. HummusBoyfriend said that might have been the weirdest thing he has ever eaten, and mentioned something about exploding eyeballs in his mouth. I thought the food was okay, nothing too memorable. I don't know if I'd venture into Kentucky to go there again. Beluga is better.

I think I've pretty much concluded that I don't want to go to law school. Question is, what should I do? Just go get my phD in finance? That's something to think about another day. I am going to go eat dessert.

Fall

Things I'm looking forward to in October:
-Apple Picking
Let's face it, I really just want the cider and donuts. I went apple picking with my bro and his friends last year and it was a lot of fun. And we made apple ravioli after baking 2 pies, apple chips, and apple disaster.

-Sweaters
I like sweaters. They are warm and fuzzy. I passed first grade sentence writing. I could add scarves in here too, but I was never much of an indoor scarf wearer. Tried it once, couldn't get used to it. My neck likes to be free!

-Pumpkin Carving
Bro's girlfriend even offered to scoop out all the gooey stuff for me because I don't like that part.

-Halloween
Okay, a little less excited for this because I'm not sure what to be. I'm thinking Optimus Prime. Or Dorothy.

Happy Weekend!

Food, what else?

I am having my first dinner party of all Cincinnati people this Thursday. Wow, I know some people! What should I make? I was thinking roasted squash risotto for the main dish, but I'd probably want some kind of salad, and definitely dessert. A vegetable side? Soup? Ideas?

Also, one of the people coming doesn't like chocolate (I know, what?!). So I might have to make two desserts. Which is always okay.

Dessert ideas:
Mocha Tart
The Lemon Tart I Made at Josh's (except one of the people coming has already had it before, not that that's a bad thing) (also I have one of those plastic lemon-shaped things of lemon juice that I should probably use soon, so that'd be convenient)
Coffee flavored cake with coffee buttercream (I made a variation of this for Jahan's birthday, which was also at Josh's)
Strawberry rhubarb pie
Apple cake
Peach raspberry pie (but neither are on sale...yes, I'm a cheap person)
Banana cake with cream cheese frosting

I need to teach my baby niece to do this

Watch this baby swears in his sleep. Turn up your volume coz it's a little hard to hear what he's saying.

Which is Worse?

Okay, would you rather have a soul-sucking job, or a mind-bogglingly boring one?

Because currently I'm sitting in my dark closet doing microscope for hour 3 of 5 (maybe 6) and I've run out of ways to entertain myself.

(giggle, snort, awkward)

Being a Responsible Adult

Yesterday, I received my government credit card in the mail. I looked at the envelope, decided it was junk mail, and threw it into the trash without looking at it.

Today, I came home from work and dug through my trash can. Good thing I didn't take the trash out last night.

I want to quit choir, but I can't. It's not that fun and I don't really like the music. I hate going on choir retreats, and this upcoming one is on a bad weekend. I can't skip because I'm already missing the concerts. My boyfriend wants to come visit for six days during his fall break, and between this retreat and work, I'll be free for exactly one entire day in those six days. I'm also missing a baby shower that I was looking forward to. Man, if my 17-year-old-idealistic-musical-self could hear me now, she'd cry.