Things I want to cook this Fall/Winter

Just a post to collect the recipes I am interested in:

1. Cheese Straws
2. Chocolate covered orange peels
3. Banana Bread : Find a recipe that uses Sour Cream to add to the moistness.
4. Kimchi
5. My mom's coffee (chocolate too?) fruit cake with alcohol
6. Chocolate mousse with olive oil
7. passion fruit parfait when i go home. Passions fruits are ridiculously expensive here.

Also, I want to try southern Texas Ruby Red grapefruit. Maybe from here. Grapefruit is a fruit that in theory I should love, but which I have hated with every Michigan/Indiana grocery bought variety.

As you could tell from the lack of posts, I'd been pretty pre-occupied lately. So what has been going on?

For one thing, Summer announced her departure with finality and a loud slam of the door. Then Fall pouted and refused to come out and play, giving Winter a chance to steal home base. It went from 70+F to 30+F overnight. The fields were frosted over this morning. Boy am I glad that our landlord had the sense to remove the docks last week when the water temperature was still bearable.

Eric moved with his girlfriend T to Chicago. How I miss those 2 kids. I had much fun with them, and they are just really excellent people. I have a new roomate now. She is a high school English teacher, recently divorced, with a boyfriend in tow. I am looking forward to get to know her more and maybe get some new perspective of life from an older woman. Thought her boyfriend weird at first, yet the guy is starting to grow on me. Can't really find fault with a guy who fixes the dock, cooks and turns on the furnace, thereby rescuing the girls from a freezing death.

What else. I am dating again, long distance. As in such cases, travel has increased a fair amount in the past months. It's a long story of how we met, suffice to say I am happy and have been having fun thus far, and I think (hope) that he is too. Just taking it one step at a time, reminding myself to be generous and patient, though in this case it hardly requires trying.

Also, I forgot Chirp chirp's Birthday! Pretty aghast. Happy Birthday Chirp. Hope everything goes well for you, and the present will follow sometime in the next few months....if not then when i see you again. :p

So there. Wanted to start posting again because I am getting less chance to talk to dad nowadays due to timing issues, and because apparently my family is still checking my blog (Mai Jee, Hi!).

What I want right now

Is to run away.
From myself and everyone else.
Spend some time not thinking. just moving. taking it one minute at a time.
Just existing.

This urge

I don't know about other blog writers. But when i re-read my old posts, this intensely strong urge to delete every single one of them, for lack of originality, overt-sentimentalism, wrong grammar or pure bad writing, bubbles up and threatens to spill into action.
Therefore i no longer read my old posts.

There is no title worthy

I have no more distinctness or pointedness in my yearnings than an expanded bud, which does indeed point to flower and fruit, to summer and autumn, but is aware of the warm sun and spring influence only. I feel ripe for something, yet do nothing, can't discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seedtime with me. I have lain fallow long enough.

Notwithstanding a sense of unworthiness which possesses me, not without reason, notwithstanding that I regard myself as a good deal of a scamp, yet for the most part the spirit of the universe is unaccountably kind to me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness."

---Henry David Thoreau, Age 33, Journal Entry for November 16, 1850.

Why I haven't posted in 2 months.

too busy having fun.

Turned 30

Turned 30 in an aerobed lying on the wooden floor of a Sunday school classroom in a beautiful and peaceful southern Baptist church in Texas.
Resolve to continue acting like a 12 year old boy as often and as long as possible.

if i were a book

I know that there are people who really protect their books, wrap em up in covers and treat them with the utmost care. But I don't. Because if i were a book, i would want to be so intriguing that I'd be brought everywhere, including the bath and toilet, because the reader can't put me down, be read and re-read and re-read countless times, and be dropped on the floor as the reader reluctantly gives in to sleep.
I'd rather be dog-eared, stained, wrinkled, having given beyond my price, than to be spick and span and new-as-never-opened.

spring

Spring, air molecules tingling of hope and blooms,
temperamental temperatures and rain.
w00t!
Is that a haiku?
I just need to post something because i don't want that depressing previous post to be on top forever.
I went cycling (or biking as they call it here. Back home, biking means naik mototsikal) today, scouting out a non busy route that will facilitate my ambition to cycle 14 miles to work 3x a week, because petrol (or gas as it's known here, though i could not understand why - it's a liquid, not a gas, nor solid, nor plasma) is $4 per gallon, and while it took only $28 to fill up an empty tank on my little chevvy 3 months ago, now it takes $48.. Plus, I'd been slowly working at that huge 1 gallon tube of cherry + chocolate fudge premium strictly high fat ice cream in my freezer, and replacing badminton with piano concerts for the past 3 weeks.
Thoughts that ran through my head as I was biking:

1. This looks like Anne Shirley's house! (Passing by an absolutely charming house with what could pass as a gurgling brook, and weeping willows by the brook)

2. Hell, yeah brother! (Passing by a house with a huge sign outside that says "Impeach Bush". Though it sure looks like a very Republican house to me, with trucks and butterflies pinned on a board in the living room. Why do I connect red-neckedness to Republicans. Oh wait, that's an oxymoron.)

3. This is a very nice spot to take pictures! (Passing by a little circular clearing beside the road, surrounded by thick trees, covered by fresh baby green grass, the evening sunlight streamin through the trees, gently blanketing the grass, with the coolest stump of a tree at the centre of the clearing. wait, now it sounds like a good spot for some mischievous witches to cook up some magical potions on a night of the full moon too)

and... that was about it. All i could remember from the 30 minute ride. Again, confirmation that nothing much goes on in this brain of mine.

and to end on a graceful note, this picture that I took.


Tulips are everywhere now. I wish my mom and dad could come see them. They are absolutely gorgeous.