MRI-ing fruits and veg

Check out Inside insides, if you were ever curious how fruits and veg looked using MRI. Too cool, too cool. More background on the blog is here. Thanks, NPR!

Welcome to real life!

Hello, hello, from Real Life! I've settled in and am trying to make sense of what this all means. So many exciting firsts (which I'll get to), and food! Let's get started!

First, Number One. Real "House" Living. And it's not with a chef.

I'm paying a monthly rent. I'm paying utilities. I don't have a chef that prepares meals for me at 12 and 6. As spoiled as I was to have the experiences that I did for the past two years, I'm so excited and happy to be doing this. On my own. Worrying about what house things I need to take care of. I'm in a house of 4 people, total, and it has been great so far, for the week that I've been living here. My room is spacious and has a wonderful window that gets sun for about as long as the sun is out. A tree right in front of the window attracts little birdies that chirp and flit about ever so gently. I have an orange and white theme, which makes me happy (both consciously and subconsciously, I think). I bike about 15 minutes to work, which is a fabulously short amount of time. I have yet to experiment with walking and bussing; at some point, I'll report on that soon.

First, Number Two. Real Job. And it's not one where I yell "HOUSE MEETING."

Unfortunately. (Although, we have had a house meeting.) I'm working on campus, and it's a great feeling. The first time I biked onto campus, I felt so detached. I felt like a real person on this incredible campus that I was lucky to call mine for 4 years. Training happened this week, and classes officially start Monday. We've had some long days (9-5), but this won't be nearly as long as what I anticipate for when the school year starts. I come home, fairly exhausted and unwilling to do much of anything else than veg and read the NYTimes, but I get out of my room, cook dinner, catch up on work... that's real life.

First, Number Three. Cooking. And it's not necessarily just for fun.

But, I've managed quite well. A new fun daydreaming activity: what will I make for dinner tonight?

My first dinner!! Soba noodles with fresh cucumber and an egg. I need to get more practice on boiling eggs... the whites had barely set. But, it still tasted delicious. And, so simple!

Dinner, day two. Well, actually today's lunch. Fried brown rice with red bell peppers, spinach, and egg. It was really really yummy. I can make fried rice, woohoo! I put in some of the soba dipping sauce as flavoring, since I don't have plain soy sauce, and it was really good.

I'm also MASSIVELY appreciating free food: today is case in point. I visited my lab, and there were tons of leftover scones/muffins/bananas. So, I helped myself. YAY for no more toast in the morning. Especially when I have an early morning tomorrow: 8 am :(

Hopefully I'll keep up with food pictures, as to keep us all entertained.

Tonight: salad with tuna on top (hello, lunch from day one!), possibly an Indian Fare microwavable meal (YES TRADER JOES), and rice. Noah is exchanging dinner for 2.5 cranberry almond biscotti.

Hasty summary

To give you an idea of what I've been up to:

I've now settled into my new abode. My plant and tea collection make it home.

Made a brief stop into a liquor store. Owner turned up volume to "Everytime we touch" because it was danceparty time.

I helped a random guy pick between two sheet designs at IKEA. Dear sir, I hope you enjoy your sheets.

I have finished the middle panel of a blanket. 41.5" by 36.5" It is a beast. Seed stitch. Thousands of stitches.

I have wined and dined my way through various parts of the Bay Area: Himawari ramen, Kaygetsu, IKEA Swedish meatballs, Whole Foods sandwiches, Bi-Rite ice cream, Beretta pizza, B Star brunch.

I am smitten with IKEA.

REAL LIFE STARTS TOMORROW.

That's right, kitties. Training for my job begins tomorrow. I will be earning my own keep, and figuring out how to manage myself (e.g. curb my trips to Anthropologie starting now). In any case, it's a good time, and I'm looking forward to various changes in my life, like an exercise routine, yoga, trying to feed myself (you mean, there's no chef to make me lunches and dinners at 12 and 6??), etcetc.

Stay tuned for undoubtedly amusing updates as I cave into the cutest sweaters I've ever seen at Anthropologie, being the least flexible person ever in yoga, and discovering little pockets of the neighborhood on runs.

Which I'm now getting tingly for, so I'm going to go run off the energy.

TED MED

TED MED conferences... this has potential, indeed! I'm excited: Frank Gehry! A HumBio professor (Nathan Wolfe)! "What does pet food have to do with human health?"!

Note to self: keep an eye out for it in October!

And... why didn't this happen while I was at IKEA?? I'd like a little kitten to come with my DRÖNA boxes!!!

Busy little bee

Welcome to my new home! Here's a slideshow.

NOT. (/I wish)

Although, that one bedroom with the Ikea bedspread is much closer to the real thing.

My room is close to being completed; everything remains in bags and needs to be unpacked and aired out, but thanks to help from the family, all Ikea items have been built.

That said, I am back in the Bay Area (hooray!), and more or less ready to begin work. A petite update, and a more thorough one will come later.

Meals from around the world... military style

Military meals, as displayed by the NY Times.

Oh, the French.

William Shatner on regret

This was an addendum to the previous post, but I decided it required its own.

A thought for the day, maybe even for life. Pulled from The Many Iterations of William Shatner in NY Times:

I asked if he regrets anything about his career. “Regret is the worst human emotion,” he said. “If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I’m content.”

The Bay Area and.. food.

Because articles like this one come out, 36 Hours in Silicon Valley. When is one ever published about LA?

Shame on Stanford University’s students for allowing such tame bars along their home turf, University Avenue.

True, but also sad that University Ave is a 40+ minute walk from the closest dorms. BUIs also to be avoided, so that's not an option. Dorm/house life certainly can't be beat. The writer should have stopped by good ol' Mayfield Ave.

And now, time for a veritable eye feast. Lots of delicious food pictures and explanations to post.

Kimpop time!

Kimpop is like Korean-style sushi. No raw fish, but sort of like California rolls, as all the items are cooked, and there are vegetables. But, Kimpop, in my opinion is a hundred times better than California rolls. The first picture on the left is the 'list' of ingredients that went into it: rice studded with beef and some sesame oil; seasoned and blanched spinach; pickled daikon, blanched carrots, egg. The middle picture is my halmoni (or Korean for grandmother) rolling a kimpop, which results in the final picture... How delicious! I could eat tons of those entire rolls... and on that day, oh how I did.

Now, here's my attempt at rolling! The leftmost picture is the start of my kimpop, how it looks when it's ready to be rolled. The middle picture is when I sliced, and then the third is what my slices looked like... Halmoni said it looks like Downtown L.A., with all the buildings. Which is to say that my slicing isn't so perfect.

Now moving on to my favorite Japanese sushi... Dashi ikura!!

Eggs that pop in your mouth. So fun and delicious... This is 'sashimi' style, as it's normally served on rice, surrounded by a strip of seaweed. I put sashimi in quotations, since I'm not sure if people actually order dashi ikura like this? I've got the hookup.

And finally.... Kal guk su!

I wrote about kal guk su in a previous post, about how awesome it is...

In other news, I love kal gooksu. (Kal guksu? Kal gooksoo?) It literally means 'knife noodle' and handmade noodles go in a delicious simple broth, whether chicken, clam, anchovy... I had the chicken one not too long ago, and it's almost creamy: so delicious and satisfying and comforting.

I visited Olympic Noodle in LA, an establishment recommended by Yelp and backed up by Andy. And, I'm happy to say that both of their reputations are intact. Olympic Noodle's performance was stellar. The noodles were incredibly chewy, the chicken was so tender, and the broth was thick and savory. It was such home-style cooking, I wish I knew how to make it. It's the kind of thing that I'm excited to come back to LA for, over winter break, when it's cold (or I have a cold)... Pure yum.

Moving on from food:

I'm currently preparing for my move back up to the Bay Area, more mentally than anything else. The Labor Day weekend will be spent... laboring, no doubt, packing up clothes bags and other essentials I may need (extra toothbrushes? 6 pillows for my non-existent bed?).

And, going back to food, it's breakfast time: waffles and sausage. Hooray!

A member of September

Not a whole lot of words rhyme with September, hence the silly title.

Nevertheless, welcome to September! Fall will arrive before we all know it, as will the cool weather... hooray for corduroys and scarves and fun jackets!!

I've been lacking on the post front, so I'll try to post some interesting stuff.

FIRSTLY-- I had my first Pink's dog. It was monstrously noms, to say the least. I love hot dogs (and prefer not to think about what goes in them), and given Pink's reputation, I hoped that our 40-or-so minute wait was going to be worth it. I got the "Rosie Long Island" dog, which was a 10" stretch dog, with chili, mustard, onions (got mine grilled), and sauerkraut. Sorry for no picture, but as you can imagine, it was a delicious adventure... messy, salty, greasy, and full of pop (what the skin of the dog does when you bite into it). And, I suppose the wait was worth it... although Carney's dogs are still incredible without the wait. Interestingly, Pink's has a pretty mediocre rating on Yelp.

SECONDLY-- I move back up to the Bay Area in less than a week. Packing up yet again is nothing new... except that I need more useful things, not just my electronics, clothes and myself. Any advice for things that I'd need/find useful to live in a shared space and might not have?

THIRDLY-- HOW IS SUMMER ALREADY ALMOST OVER!? What happened to it? For the most part, the weather was so nice... now I have to think about work? Aii. I'm always surprised at how quickly summer passes by. While I'm in it, it seems to pass at such a leisurely pace. I think I get stuck on that idea, as if I'm lounging by a pool, going in and out of sleep, letting my mind wander, and realize that, before I know it, the day is through. Except, it's the whole summer, not the whole day.

I think three tidbits is a good start, for now. Wouldn't want to overindulge on my return to the blogosphere, as it were.

Bizzz à mes amizzz.