I got up at 4 AM yesterday morning and went to the airport with Ben to come out to California. It's sort of ridiculous taking a 6 AM flight to the west coast because it means you arrive before lunch here, but it feels really late especially when you get three hours of sleep before leaving.

We met Joao for lunch (cauliflower-pistachio-onion pizza, mmmmmm) and chatted a bunch, and I was surprised to find out that while he and Gersende can come to the wedding, they are moving to Switzerland in December. Then we went up to LBL and I discovered that two of my ex-coworkers are leaving, one retiring and one taking a faculty position in Utah. It took some time but it happened, the people that made Berkeley for me are trickling away. There will still be some, but I wonder if I'll come visit in December again like I did last winter.

After that we found Daria's house, where we're staying, and took a short nap before I had to leave for Laura's bachelorette party. That was a lot of fun, really hilarious, though I feel at this point that I've had the only male stripper experience I ever really want to have. I think it is hilarious that the only person who was not embarrassed by the male stripper was gay. :)

There's too much delicious food in Berkeley. It is hard to be here and not want to eat at all my favorite places, which would consist of like 30 meals and leave me staggering back to the airport come Sunday. It definitely expanded my culinary horizons to live here, and we make a lot of food at home which is similar to stuff I discovered here first.

blackberry flower, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Our garden is doing better this year than last year. We have the two rosebushes established in pots from last year which are now 2' and 3' tall, which aren't blooming just yet. We also have our blackberry plant, which spent last year covering a trellis with canes. These canes turned red and orange over the winter, and I was vaguely afraid they would die, and then they turned green again and now it is blooming! It heartens me to know that every flower will turn into a big juicy berry, to be eaten outside on a hot day in the sun with Ben.

Last year our attempts to grow herbs from seed met with failure: we only managed to get parsley, cilantro, and thyme to sprout. This year we tried cultivating seeds inside first, and they flourished but died before we could get them into the ground. So we bought some from a preschool having a plant sale, and now we have little plants of rosemary, sage, basil, lavender, peppermint, and recao. We also got a habanero plant and two tomato plants. And we were planning to plant peas again, and we had gotten some sugar snap peas which were in the fridge too long and sprouted... so we planted them in the ground, and now they are tiny vines grabbing the fence! We will plant the parsley, cilantro, and thyme from seed again, since that worked fine last year. I can't wait for the peppers and tomatoes and peas, not to mention the blackberries... and I also can't wait for the herbs to get big enough that I can start tearing off leaves and seasoning things with them.

Oh, and we recently did something to make our tiny backyard even more awesome! We got a small charcoal grill. It makes great burgers and also great grilled eggplant and mushroom sandwiches, and later this week we plan to make grilled corn on the cob. I used to think a grill was redundant over our broiler, but it was really cheap and the food really tastes more smoky and delicious. Plus when it is really hot during the summer, we won't have to be making heat inside the house to cook with.

Ben's birthday was Friday, so I made him a special meal today. The recipes are all online so I thought I'd share them with you: Merguez Lamb with Raisin Couscous, prosciutto and melon, and Key Lime Pie with Almond Crumb Crust. The Merguez lamb was delicious and really easy, with harissa we made from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (seriously, there are a lot of delicious things you can do with harissa). The couscous was good, though nothing to get excited about. I did prosciutto and melon because we already had it around, due to the obscenely cheap produce and prosciutto at the Italian Market, and to sort of round out the meal. And the lime pie was excellent; I didn't add the sugar and doubled the filling after reading some of the comments, and the result was very tangy and delicious.

I really ought to cook more on my own, without Ben helping me. I love to cook with him, but doing it on my own makes me feel a lot more proud and accomplished if the result is tasty.

spices, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

When Ben and I first moved in together we cooked a lot. We would make scheduled menus for the week, and plan ridiculously elaborate things for them, so that we'd come home at 6:30 tired and hungry and see that we needed to spend 30 minutes making curry paste and an hour making curry, or something ridiculous like that. We got a little smarter about making stuff with lots of leftovers on the weekend, or making sure that weeknight cooking was low-stress, but it was still kind of a hassle. Over the summer while Ben was gone, I cooked some but not a lot, opting for simple-to-prepare things instead. And during last fall, we cooked a little but nothing hardcore, I think, because we were both very busy.

All this time with not that much cooking has led me to recently really feel like making things. Which is great, because we have lots of excellent cookbooks! Over the weekend we made spicy yogurt-marinated chicken from an Indian cookbook we recently received, along with saffron rice and baby bok choy, because Ben's step-grandparents came to have dinner with us. I made beef panaeng last week, which is a great dish because if you make the curry paste in advance, it is super-easy. And for some reason we have lots of onions, so I made my mom's recipe for creole onion soup which is delicious, especially with fresh sourdough bread like Ben often makes. We got a pork tenderloin recently and brined it with a recipe from the Achewood cookbook (it would be weird to take a recipe from a webcomic character except that the artist obviously really loves to cook) which was really good. And for some reason we started receiving Bon Appetit, probably as a Christmas gift but we have no idea from whom, so I took a recipe for mustard-coriander potatoes out of it and made that. Oh yeah, and my mom got us a huge amount of Bueno's autumn roast green chile, so we've taken to making sourdough pizzas with mozzarella and goat cheese, corn, green chile, bell pepper, onion, and garlic olive oil. They are so very delicious. Tonight I am making spicy lemongrass chicken soup!

Chih mentioned the idea of us catering our own wedding, which to be honest would be really great. But it would be a big stress at a time of what I am told is already a lot of stress, so we're opting to find a caterer instead. Did you know that about 40% of the cost of the average wedding is catering? Crazy. My mom actually offered to cater as well, and she is an amazing cook, but she is also doing the cake and my dress so we figure that is enough, and she should get to actually enjoy the wedding.

Berkeley was hectic but nice, which is also kind of what getting back to Philadelphia has been like.

Basically, in Berkeley I ate delicious food and saw a lot of people. I had some time with Daria, Hollis, Sherri, Jessica, Rich, Kyle, and all the LBL people I used to work with (I walked up there two days I was there). I also had a lot of time with Joao and Gersende, since I was staying with them, and it isn't an exaggeration to say that I spent most of my time there talking to people. I didn't quite catch everyone I would have liked too, both due to time and availability constraints, though. But I did manage to eat at the Cheeseboard, Cha Am, Gelateria Naia, La Note, Gregoire, and a new place I had never been to before but really liked--Taste of the Himalayas. I miss the quality and price of Berkeley food very much.

It was rainy most of the time I was there, but it was beautiful and quiet, and reminded me of the things I liked about living there. Because it's the rainy season, it was quite green, especially up on the hill where LBL is. And it was warm, at least compared to what I knew I was coming back to. And how nice it is to be somewhere that isn't all flat when you're walking around!

I was so happy to see everybody, and it's nice to still have a single place where I can visit lots of friends. Actually, Los Alamos at Christmas used to be like that, but it occurs to me now that I saw a greater number of friends in Berkeley than I did in Los Alamos.

Two things of particular note: firstly, a friend of Joao's (and indirectly of mine) had extra symphony tickets for Thursday night, so I went with him to see Deborah Voigt in concert. That was amazing, because I am no soprano connoisseur nor do I listen to lots of vocal classical music, but her voice is so lovely and mellow, well-rounded and powerful, and overall very impressive. They picked nice things for her to sing, the four last songs of Richard Strauss and a piece by Samuel Barber called something like Andromache's Farewell. The symphony also played Beethoven's fourth symphony after that, which I had heard a few times before but never listened to so closely. I liked it a lot more when not trying to compare it to other Beethoven symphonies, which are less whimsical and more powerhouse-like. But anyhow, the evening was great and the seats were amazing. The other thing that was fun was having brunch with Hollis, which ended up being a long discussion about WoW. He was in the same place I was a few months ago with his main, wanting to get into raiding but not sure how to do it, and it was fun to talk about. And he agreed to officiate our wedding! :D

Overall, it was a great way to end the vacation.

I expected them to all be long gone by now, but yet again when I went running along the Schuylkill River Trail today, I saw a flock of geese. Some of them were drinking from a puddle right by the path, and they are so lovely that close up! Geese are exciting for me to see up close because I never really saw them in the west, either in Berkeley or Los Alamos. I was aware that some birds migrated but I never saw any do it. Or at least, if I saw anything, it was a tiny v in the sky. The wildlife that I miss most from the west is deer. They are so gentle and elegant. I loved seeing them at LBL or in the Berkeley hills late at night, eating people's flower gardens. And in Los Alamos, there was a tennis court my dad and I used to play at (near the Unitarian Church, for those that lived there). Many, many times we'd be playing there around dusk, and five to ten deer would come up out of the canyon and mill around eating. So peaceful.

Earlier today, though, when we were at the Italian Market, we went into a lot of butcher's shops to get various things. At some point while Ben was buying ham, I had to squeeze to the side so that someone could carry a huge bag of frozen chicken wings by me, which was not dropping but fairly flowing liquid out the bottom onto the concrete floor, to be slapped into one of the ice-filled 'chicken parts' bins. This was kind of nauseating for me, and I had a thought I've had before: I should be a vegetarian.

Now, to be clear, I believe pretty solidly that eating meat is morally ok. There is a levels of intelligence/consciousness argument, as well as the immense difficulty of making a vegetarian diet that isn't malnourishing in some way. Protein is really important to keeping alive! I don't have that much meat in my regular diet, but I do have some, and I dislike beans and many other vegetarian protein sources. To be sure, animals intended to be eaten should both live and die humanely. But I know that I would not be able to kill an animal myself, and at some levels I don't think you should eat meat if you couldn't do that. Ben could, and mentions that he would like to go hunting at some point, kill an animal, have a large freezer to store the remains, and slowly eat it. He always says I should come too, and I have to remind him exactly what would happen. Assume that we would be able to find anything to kill at all. I would either have a Deliverance-type moment of being unable to shoot straight, or were we actually to kill something, I would most likely end up cradling it and crying, and weep intermittently for the rest of the trip. My sense of empathy is too strong for an experience like that, even though I am aware that happens for each piece of meat that I eat. But it makes me feel dishonest, for reaping the fruits of an action which I could never actually perform.

Our house is big enough that it's easy to have several guests, and we finally got to test that for Thanksgiving. Four of my friends from high school came out, arrived Tues/Weds, and stayed through the weekend. It was so fun! This was the first year I had done Thanksgiving just with friends, not with either my family or Ben's, but it was a blast. On Wednesday we walked around Chinatown and historical Philly after I came home from work, and on Thursday we all cooked a lot. It was also fun going for a run, and playing Kill Doctor Lucky, and eating until stuffed. And I was happy with how much people helped out chopping things for cooking, cleaning up, putting things away... it was a bit overwhelming for me in terms of mess but everyone kept things flowing and prevented any mouse-friendly situations. Friday we went to campus, had lunch at Bubble House, walked around downtown some more and then had delicious gelato (new beloved flavor: molasses). Steph and Scott left Friday night, and Jeanine and Andrew stuck around Saturday for Italian Market, pho, running, and general hanging out. They helped me make turkey soup, and since they had some work to do I finished reading Freakonomics (I know, I'm really behind the times here).

Jeanine and Andrew left early this morning for the twelve-hour drive back to Indiana, and I spent the day doing some chores, many loads of laundry, and playing a little WoW. I'm very excited for going back to New Mexico in less than a month now, and taking Ben with me to see farolitos and my mom's holiday cooking in full force. (Most of the things I made for Thanksgiving, I got the recipes from her.) I'm glad to have had the break, and guests visiting is both a good excuse to really clean the house, and a good excuse to walk around and see fun parts of the city, eat good food, and try to share good times with people I'm fond of and see entirely too rarely.

On Sunday we had our anniversary observed, which I planned because it's an even year. I took as a loose theme, the theme of pirates, and chartered us a vessel. Well, a canoe. We left before dawn to drive north, to the Delaware water gap, to take an 18-mile canoe trip. The Delaware river is pretty gentle, and the trees were starting to turn gold and crimson and shed their leaves into the water. We saw a lot of geese and ducks, and fish jumping out of the water, and we talked some and listened some, because the water makes things very quiet. And we had a picnic, and a few scenic stops, and at one point I jumped out of the canoe to swim in the cold water. It was very relaxing and idyllic, though also somewhat hard work. By the end of the day my shoulders and back were sore, and my hands a little too, but it was very rewarding.

Afterwards we drove back, which was fun because we were driving past scenery at sundown we had seen at sunup the same day. We had time for a quick shower and then got changed and headed to Buddakan for dinner. The atmosphere inside is beautiful, and the centerpiece of the room is this giant golden buddha, maybe twenty feet tall. We shared everything (I love places that serve food family style), and split a wasabi tuna pizza, lobster egg rolls, crispy duck salad, grilled sea bass, and ponzu chicken. At this point we were too stuffed for dessert, and headed home, where we promptly went to bed because we had gotten up so early. We slept about ten hours last night, and then today was work as usual.

It was really fun. I have to admit that one reason we went canoeing was that I knew that convincing Ben to do it would be hard because of how early we got up, but if I decided for us, it wasn't open for discussion. Heh heh heh. The dinner was great, too, really superb; Philadelphia has this amazing upscale dining scene, but unfortunately we can't afford to go there except on the cheap and for special occasions. I would trade it for the gourmet ghetto in Berkeley, just because I could eat there more frequently, but it is really fun to go have these really inventive dishes at great restaurants. A good example is the wasabi tuna pizza, which was raw tuna, avocado, bitter sprouts, and wasabi on this crispy flatbread with sesame oil and soy dipping sauce. It was delicious, and very interesting. Eating out is a third about the taste, a third about analyzing the cooking, and a third about the experience, or so we were thinking. Though taste is the most important third.

When I see things that are beautiful, or fun, or interesting, I always want strongly to share them with Ben. So it was great to have this wonderful day with him.

This week is Restaurant Week in Philadelphia, a twice-a-year thing where some very nice restaurants offer a three-course prix fixe meal. The upscale dining scene here is huge, which is nice I guess unless you can't afford to pay a lot for dinner very often. But restaurant week is sort of a nice way to visit some great places more cheaply than usual, so last night Ben and I went to Haru.

Haru is a sushi/fusion place, in Old City near Uzu (which, if you'll recall, is the tiny place I think has the best sushi in Philly). The interior of the restaurant was really beautiful, the service was amazing, and the food was really quite good. I had sushi, a really nice spicy roll and then some assorted sushi and sashimi, and interesting bitter green tea ice cream for dessert. I think that the quality of the sushi was about the same as at Uzu (Ben suggested that they might have the same supplier), but Haru is normally much more expensive. Plus the intimate atmosphere of Uzu is really nice. So it was a fun dinner, but I wouldn't go there for normal prices. Afterwards we walked home, along South Street, which was nice. I liked going to dinner group during the summer somewhere across town and then walking back. I know I've said it before, but this is a great walking city.

I have something nice planned out for my anniversary with Ben in a couple weeks. But I can't tell you what it is.

While I agree that it's good for couples to have separate hobbies, I sometimes wish I didn't have so very many hobbies that Ben doesn't do. I've tried to get him to try some of them, but often he doesn't want to because he feels that if we do something together that I'm much better at, neither of us will enjoy it. But this weekend we played tennis together, and that was really nice.

I've played tennis since I was really little, but only seriously for three years or so in high school. I haven't played much recently since before I hurt my knee, because of those sudden starts and stops, but my doctor gave me a hinged knee brace and said to go for it. Ben had never really played before, so we got him a cheap racket from Target and took my bag of mostly-flat balls to the Penn courts. What we ended up doing was having me at the net feeding, and Ben at the baseline learning forehand and backhand. This was very familiar to me, because when I practiced ground strokes with my dad, it was the same thing, but with him feeding to me. It was actually a lot of fun for me, for three major reasons: firstly, that feeding is hard and consistency is a very useful thing to practice; secondly, it was neat watching someone improve so obviously in a short time; and thirdly, it was a beautiful day and I was outside spending time with Ben. I would really like to keep doing this with him, at least until it gets too cold for it. I also played tennis with Jen on Friday, with more running and less feeding, and that was nice too. The courts are right by my building, as you may remember.

We also went out to Uzu on Saturday night, which I was worried I had built up in my mind as the best sushi in Philly. I did not build them up; they are so great! Some of the best sushi I've ever had, really, and the interior design is great. Afterwards we walked around Old City, Market and Chestnut between 1st and 4th. It is a really hip dining area, with a lot of the best, most obscenely expensive places in town. Uzu has nice design, but it is designed with the idea that you are enjoying a cozy, delicious dinner there. Some of the places we walked by were dark, with colored lights in the floor, sleek metal furniture, edgy music... infinitely cool-looking, yeah, but it seems like eating there would be bizarre.

Me: Are we hip young people?
Ben: Well, we're young people.

Things that weren't so great about this weekend:

1. Our water got turned off Sunday evening, because of a leak somewhere in the pipes along our block. It was right before we needed to run the dishwasher, having few dishes, and before Ben had taken a shower, so he was still sandy from the beach. At least there was water in our Brita pitcher, so we could brush our teeth. The water is on now, but there is jackhammering on our street and it may go off again.

2. I found Saturday morning that I had yet another UTI. I get these chronically, and I really hate it. I had an extra antibiotic series from the one I got right before going to Europe last summer, so now I am fine. And the way that I get them is... unfortunate.

Things that were so great about this weekend:

1. Calabacitas Sunday night! It is really easy to make, and really delicious. Plus, Ben recently insisted we get a tortilla press, so we had it with fresh corn tortillas. Yum.

2. Fresh ground beef Saturday night. I love eating raw hamburger, assuming it is low fat content and recently ground enough to ensure safety. We got a steak of some kind from the grocery store, ground it with the meat grinder attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer, and I ate mine just with salt. Ben did the more traditional thing with raw onions and egg yolks, but I prefer just to taste the meat. I love this dish so much.

3. I finished reading Flow. It was a somewhat similar experience to the first time I read Atlas Shrugged ages ago, where it had lots of ideas that already guide how I am trying to live my life, but better articulated than I had managed thus far. Great read.

And a random story from this morning: shortly after waking up, Ben asked me why I was pouncing his feet last night. I had no recollection of anything like that, and he explained that he was suddenly awakened by something hitting his feet in the middle of the night. I was apparently sitting up in bed, prodding the covers at the foot of the bed with my hands shaped into claws. When he asked what I was doing, I responded that I was "looking for where the feet are". I completely do not remember this.

Returning to weekends with Ben is easy, comfortable, delightful. We went to the Italian Market to get stuff for cold vegetable soups on Saturday, then took a picnic of blue cheese, bread, and wine to Fitler Square where we played cribbage and read things, he the New Yorker, me Flow. We had a lot of moving kind of things to do around the house, to move our computer stuff back into the office, and to move things back into the office closet that are taking up the space Ben's clothes are supposed to be in. Sunday was a day around the house, partly because it rained nonstop all day, and partly because there were things around the house to do. We made Cold Avocado Soup, which was very tasty though it needed more lemon or lime juice. Time with Ben is bliss: silly comments, eating lime wedges with cayenne, pinching, constant physical affection. Talking about the future.

We bought plane tickets for the holidays already, to get them cheaper and to make it easy for us to visit all of our parents. This means a tour of four households, which is a little long and silly, but it'll be nice to spend winter break together for the first time. After Ojai, I'll head up to Berkeley for a couple of days, since the extra cost isn't too bad. I asked Joao if that was an okay time to come, and he mentioned that he and Gersende might be moving back to Europe early next year, though they'll definitely not have moved yet in January. But already a lot of BFCers are leaving Berkeley, since most of them were postdocs, and Ron will be traveling, and lots of the people who made the last part of my time in Berkeley so great will be gone. It's sad to watch that happen to a place you've left, and it makes me a little nervous because that's how I came to be less emotionally tied to Los Alamos. Though, of course, the emotional ties that remain between me and New Mexico are permanent. I was happy this weekend, at Trader Joe's, to taste New Mexico Pinon Coffee, really enjoy it, and see the NM flag on the label.

We watched Une Femme Est Une Femme this weekend, at the end of my summer glut of foreign films, and I really liked it. I especially liked the note the movie ends on, though I assure you I don't intend to make a habit of closing out entries with French movie quotes.

E: Angela, tu es infâme!
A: Moi, je ne suis pas infâme. Je suis UNE femme.

I like cooking a lot, the art of matching textures and flavors and pairing dishes. It feels aesthetic and creative, and there's the technical expertise required to understand recipes and improve on them. But certainly there are some things I don't enjoy about cooking. For example, a hot oven on a hot day, or the tedium of chopping vegetables, or guessing if meat is done to avoid defacing it by cutting it open to check. Though, I like sifting, whipping, folding, sauteeing... it is fun to see ingredients turn in to something entirely different.

At the top of my kill list, though, is the double-boiler. If you aren't familiar with this, the idea is that you are making something that must be heated, but can't go above the temperature of boiling water. Since your stove can't handle that, you put a pot of water on the burner, and put whatever you're cooking in a bowl atop the boiling water. Maybe if I just bought a real double-boiler, with pieces engineered for easy use, I wouldn't mind so much. But I don't have one, I just have pots and glass bowls, so I put one inside the other and prepare to have a hard time separating them, or to spill water all over the stovetop and put out the pilot lights. Grrr.

And I've been wanting to make ice cream, and most ice creams have a custard base, and unfortunately, a custard without a double-boiler turns into scrambled eggs in cream. Last night I finally persevered long enough to make cardamom ice cream, from a great recipe that used both ground cardamom and infused, crushed cardamom pods. I love the flavor of cardamom so much, and have wanted to make ice cream from it ever since I had the cardamom gelato at Naia in Berkeley. If I had matcha, I'd make green tea ice cream next.

I've gone to a lot more restaurants in Philly over the summer, what with having time to go out, and it not being freezing cold. There's an interdisciplinary grad student dinner every Thursday, which I go to when I feel I can afford it for the week (that eliminates tonight because of last weekend). But the food has been great at El Azteca, Panang, Joy Tsin Lau, and Pietro's Pizza. It's also a lot of fun meeting students in other departments; the makeup is pretty different every time I go. And then Patou on Tuesday with Ben's grandparents, who were visiting from Queens.

One of my favorite things, though, about eating out is walking to and from the restaurant. See, Philadelphia is just the right size for a walking city; walking to the far end of Center City takes about 40 minutes, and walking to the far end of University City takes 30 minutes. And there are a lot of interesting things you find just by walking a different way. For example, last night I happened to walk home from 4th street along Lombard, and I came across this beautiful old colonial building, which turned out to be the first hospital in the United States. Living in a city with history is so weird. Then, I love almost all the murals in Philly, but one of the most breathtaking I've seen is the one at Broad and Lombard, called 'Theatre of Life'. The only image I found was this one, which is all small and doesn't do it justice. But it was really amazing. There's also just the houses, the brick and the old styles, which are lovely to walk along under the trees. I was somewhere, maybe around Spruce and 6th, and found a historical plaque for this row of houses, about how they were Greek revivals from 1800-1810. Philadelphia is such a perfect walking city, which is good because the parking here is terrible.

I love the greatpoets community, I love Philip Glass, and I love gardening.

A SUPERMARKET IN CALIFORNIA
by Allen Ginsberg

       What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
       In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumera-
tions!
       What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --and you, Garcia Lorca,
what were you doing down by the watermelons?


       I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eying the
grocery boys.
       I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
       I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
       We strode down the open corridors togethe in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

       Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
       (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
       Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees
add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.
       Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past
blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
       Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry
and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the
boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
                                                        Berkeley 1955

Until yesterday, I was still saying things like, "I'm sure there could be good sushi somewhere in Philadelphia, I just haven't found it yet", but I wasn't really meaning them. And this really marks the first time in my life I've been openly snobby about food being 'inauthentic'; until I moved here, I hadn't had cheap sushi that was so lackluster, and similarly I hadn't had 'Mexican' food that was so far from the real thing.

But while my quest for real Mexican continues, I actually ate at a very nice sushi restaurant last night. 'Cheap' sushi here unfortunately means something different than in California, but it was possible to get a lot of sushi for under $20 a person, and the quality was great! The place was incredibly small, only six two-person tables and a four-person sushi bar, but had really nice decoration, obviously a lot of thought put into it, and was in a cool part of Old City. I only had some rolls, but they were all excellent, and they had a nice nigiri-for-two deal that I'll try sometime with Ben. I owe the knowledge of this place to my housemate Jen, who is an entertaining dinner buddy. And on the way back she asked if I felt like Rita's, and I said, 'what's Rita's'? And she made her horrified you-did-not-just-ask-that face and made me try it. The answer to my question is, Rita's is delicious.

I love sourdough bread, I love fresh bread, and I love crusty, artisanal bread. Living with Ben involves compromise and working together to make sure we are both happy, but it also involves me taking advantage of things that he does which I am too lazy for, like homemade sourdough bread. The laziness factor dropped considerably, though, when my mom (and Ben's mom) gave us a Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas, which does all the kneading for you. Nevertheless, I have been happy to let Ben make us fantastic bread while I don't lift a finger. But Ben's leaving soon, and leaving the sourdough starter here, so today we are making bread together so I can see how he does it. There are lots of recipes out there, but the way he does it works really well. So I want to write it down for my use over the summer, and if any of you are interested in making tasty bread once you have a starter going, here's a way that works.

( Read more... )

PS. Something else we made that was really delicious is honey orange pistachio ice cream, using the ice cream attachment to the same mixer. It is very delicious.

I had a midterm yesterday! In quantum, and maybe the last midterm I'll ever have. It went pretty well... one problem I know I didn't do well on, two I did, and from talking to other people everybody screwed up something. So as always, I have to wait to see the curve, but there's hope at least. Afterwards I did something purgative, which was going to the Pottruck center and running for half an hour, then lifting weights, then swimming until I felt like I wasn't moving. Then I played piano! I have been consistently inconsistent about exercise and piano this semester. I set some goals at the beginning of the year, which I'm not even close to meeting, but at least I get something in each week. I'm hoping that when I'm working, I'll be less likely to have weeks where there's just too much work to do anything else.

Then there was a party in the zoo, with all the first-years and some other grad students too. Colossal amounts of beer present, and pizza and candy. Much fun! Ben and I left for a while to go to a Ukrainian food party that one of Ben's colleagues was having, which was fun and gave us some time to drink tea instead of beer. Good pierogis and chocolates. Then back to the zoo for my first ever drinking game, which was actually really funny. Then some guitar hero in Ben's office, then home!

I have a bad habit of making a to-do list and then saving the least pleasant tasks for last. The result is that I procrastinate on really important stuff, like getting back to professors who intimidate me or writing my talk for the SLAC seminar in April. This weekend will be different!

I am in high spirits!

Yesterday was pretty interesting; I had my E&M midterm (blech, but everyone felt that way... I just need >50% for my exam average to pass the class, and I'm sure I did at least that well), and then later in the day I went to a group meeting for Charlie's students. It was very interesting, because they were giving practice talks for an APS meeting next week and critiquing each other, so it was a good opportunity for me to learn a lot about what his students are doing. On the other hand, it was incredibly long; the meeting was 3.5 hours from start to finish. But interesting. I still need to sit down and talk to Charlie himself. Afterwards I went out to get margaritas with his students and learned a great many things... about graduate analog design, about the group members, about picking up girls... it was very fun. They kept saying they really want me to join, but I can't make up my mind between this and Marija's group. I want Marija as an advisor, but I want a group that is more fun and social like Charlie's.

Then this morning, Jeanine and I bought tickets to London! We actually managed to be on the same flight despite leaving from different parts of the country; we both connect through DC so our transatlantic flights are the same. Hopefully we'll be able to switch around so that we're sitting together too. The next phase is finding a place to stay, preferably free.

And now I have to leave for spring break! We have prosciutto-basil-goat cheese sandwiches and cherry limeade for the road, and I am wearing Ben's cozy fleece. The weather is great today, though it's supposed to get colder again... but right now it's nearly warm out, low 50s, sunny and breezy. A nice day for driving somewhere, and driving somewhere with Ben is always fun.

...only somewhat different. I made this recipe from the New York Times this week and really liked it, despite the olives. It made our house smell like saffron for a day, and it was the first time I bought saffron threads, which are a beautiful dark red and leave powder on your hands so that they turn bright yellow when you try to wash them.

Recipe: Lamb Tagine With Apricots, Olives and Buttered Almonds
Time: 2 hours

4 pounds bone-in lamb shoulder or neck, or 21/4 pounds boneless lamb
stew meat, cut into 2-inch chunks
4garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2 large Spanish onions, peeled and quartered
2 cinnamon sticks, each 2 inches long
Large pinch crumbled saffron
1 1/4 cups dried apricots, sliced
1 cup cracked green olives, pitted and sliced if desired
2 to 4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup sliced almonds
Cooked couscous, for serving
Chopped parsley or cilantro, for garnish.

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Trim excess fat off lamb. Put meat in
a deep Dutch oven or cast-iron pot with the garlic, salt, black
pepper, paprika, ginger and cumin. Rub spices and garlic evenly all
over meat.

2. Thinly slice onions, then mince enough of them to yield 1/2 cup.
Add minced onion to pot with lamb; reserve onion slices.

3. Place pot over high heat and let cook, turning meat on all sides,
until spices release their scent, about 3 minutes. You need not brown
meat. Add 3 cups water to pot (it should come 3/4 of the way up lamb),
along with cinnamon and saffron. Bring to a simmer, then cover pot and
transfer to oven. Let braise for 45 minutes.

4. Turn meat, then top with onion slices. Cover pot and braise for
another 45 minutes to an hour, or until lamb is very tender. Use a
slotted spoon to transfer meat to a bowl, leaving broth and onions in
pot.

5. Place pot on stove over high heat and add 3/4 cup apricots and the
olives. Simmer broth until it reduces by a third and thickens
slightly, about 10 minutes. Return lamb to pot and keep warm until
serving. (Tagine can be prepared 4 days ahead; chill, then remove fat
and reheat before serving.)

6. To serve, chop remaining 1/2 cup apricot slices. In a small
skillet, melt butter. Add almonds and cook until well browned and
toasted, about 2 minutes. Put couscous in a serving bowl and top with
almonds and butter and chopped apricots. Pile tagine in center of
couscous and garnish with herbs.

Yield: 6 servings.