Category Archives: blessings

cooking again

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When I moved here, I decided I was going to really commit to observing Sunday as a religious day of rest, per my religion. In New York, I wasn’t super, well, religious about this. But I know I’m a happier person when I actually make Sunday a break from the every day. Plus, I figured it would be good to have one day when I wasn’t eating out. And so, after the first week (I am realistic in my goals…I arrived on Saturday at 5 pm), I have been very committed to this. This meant I was actually going to have to cook again…at least if I was going to eat real food.

The first thing I did was figure out how to use my Japanese rice maker that has no English on it anywhere. And while we’re on the topic of rice, can we just all acknowledge that Japanese rice is better? I know most of you haven’t actually had rice in Japan, but I’m telling you, it’s amazing. So good, in fact, that I’ll be hauling a two-kilo bag home for my sister in November because she likes rice even more than I do. Moving on…

I figured out the rice and just started with something basic. I absolutely love to bake, but cooking is a whole different ball game. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but it’s more about speed than precision and I was made just the opposite. Even when I’m making savory things, everything I’m good at is something you put together and bake (swiss cheese chicken, leg of lamb, lasagna, Thanksgiving turkey…yes, my repertoire is weird) or something that requires people to cook their own food (fondue, raclette, paninis), so actual cooking without a recipe…not my strength.

Well, apparently, basic was a good place to start because it was delicious.  It might also help that I think the Japanese have much less tolerance for mediocrity (yeah, that’s right, I’m calling most Americans mediocre) when it comes to food. They are definitely quality over quantity.

So, this was a good start. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I was at my friend Holly’s house for dinner and she had made tonkatsu (this delicious breaded pork amazingness that I’d had one at a restaurant) using chicken instead of pork and it was so good. As good as the restaurant’s, in fact (you know, if the pork had been chicken…). And Holly also informed me, by showing it to me, that you can purchase tonkatsu sauce in the grocery store. It is available in the US, as well.  
Restaurant version

Well, that inspired me to branch out a little and try a fancier stir fry. It turned out quite nicely (I used squash instead of carrot and overcooked that slightly, but otherwise, it was delicious). That’s what I struggle with the most…getting all of the components of a meal hot, cooked, and ready at the same time. Baking is soooooo much easier.

And then I was at Holly’s again, to babysit while she and her husband went out on a date (maybe their first one sans baby since moving to Japan?), and she had made another delicious meal. This time it was gyudon, this super yummy beef on rice thing (bottom right) along with no-bake cookies (and they had a DDP for me, which is not an easy thing to find in this country, a cute baby, and Hulu Plus–if you want me to babysit for you, it doesn’t require much to make me happy).

Side note – I kind of love Mindy Kaling’s new show.
I know the gyudon may not be much to look at, but let me assure you it was unbelievable. I might have considered licking the frying pan. I didn’t, although I’m sure none of you would have been surprised if I had with only a baby to witness it. In any case, this convinced me to do two things. The first? To attempt making tonkatsu (it seemed easier than gyudon). The second? To buy a Japanese cook book. 

So, on Saturday while out and about with another friend, Erika, we found a bookstore and she, being Japanese, helped me find a really good cookbook. We went to a huge store in this lovely part of town, had dessert (it has a restaurant in it), and then wandered over to the cookbook section and found a few books in English. I’m super excited to try so many of the recipes. Unfortunately, the only recipe not in the book I chose was gyudon (it might have been in another book by the same woman and I might have taken pictures of the recipe…it makes me feel better to know I found almost the same one online when I got home that night).

And on Sunday, I made tonkatsu using pork. I didn’t follow the recipe in the book (here’s one from the Food Network if you want to try it). I just did what Holly did and it was incredible. Hot and crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. The only difference between this and the restaurant in terms of the cooking was that I pan fried, while traditionally it’s deep fried. My Japanese teacher, Sawaki-sensie, also informed me that it is typically served with cabbage. Next time. That said, it was still so delicious and how delectable does it look on a bed of oh-so-delicious sticky?

The best part about this goal to not go out to eat on Sundays (or shop, etc, etc) is that this cooking thing is now spilling over into my weekday life, too. Part of it is that some night’s I’m just so exhausted that the thought of having to use my brain enough to try and order food in Japanese is too much to handle. But the other part is that I’m not so overwhelmed by it anymore. Oh, and knowing that, if I leave my dishes in the sink all week (rinsed, of course), on Friday the cleaning lady will do them. Yeah, my life is pretty awesome. Now, don’t you wish you lived here so I could invite you over for dinner?

injured in the city

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Someday my feet will look like this again…I hope.

Just when everything was perfect…tragedy strikes.

Okay, a little dramatic, but it feels a little dramatic in this city.

Friday night, I had my soccer game. We were getting our trash kicked. Total blowout. There were about two minutes left in the game. I was exhausted because we had no female subs. The team we were playing was just a lot better than us…and had total attitude about it. Nothing like cocky winners to make a frustrating game even more painful. So there we were, two minutes left in the game, the other team had the ball by our goal again and I was not going to let it get past me. So, I charged the ball and the girl dribbling the ball, and we collided. And POP went my ankle. Not like a little ankle roll, but a serious pop.

I’m not really one to give into physical pain. My tolerance is high and I like to be “tough”. So, I just “walked it off” then hobbled to the bar with my teammates and hung out for a couple of hours. I still had my shin guards and socks on…I was too nervous to take them off. When we got done at the bar, I could barely walk, so I took a cab. What you need to know is that I almost never take cabs. Like, really. Especially not from 23rd Street all the way to my apartment on the upper Upper West Side. And then I got home and took off my shin guards and my socks and this is what I saw.

So, I text my sister (the doctor) this picture and she told me I needed x-rays. And that is where the real adventure began. I realized that since I left home at the ripe young age of 17, I’ve always had either the health center at my university or my sister (the doctor) to take care of me. And when I’ve needed urgent care or some other emergency something, I’ve had a car and I’ve known exactly where to go.

In this city of 8 million people and no car, what once seemed like no big deal was a very big deal. With all of these hospitals and emergency rooms and no car, the whole idea of getting x-rays was just not super exciting. I waited until Saturday morning and headed to the urgent care that looked the least scary from my online search and that took my insurance and that had x-rays onsite. Of course, it was all the way down on 13th Street and the subway was not going to work, so a $20 cab ride later, I was there only to find out their x-ray machine was down.

That said, I stayed (I couldn’t stomach another cab ride or internet search). The doctor came and looked at it. After poking and prodding she concluded that it was just a sprain. Then she wrapped it up and I was on my way. Thank goodness for good insurance and no co-pay because there was another $20 cab ride to get home.

And then I got home, only to realize that I had no food in my house. So, it was order in time. That is the one thing that is easier here than anywhere I’ve ever lived. Every place delivers and it’s amazing. I missed my soccer game on Saturday (I really thought I might have been able to play before I got home Friday night). And since then I’ve basically been on my couch for three days running. There’s no running out to get something because “running out” requires a lot of walking, as opposed to just getting in a car. And I still hate paying for cabs, so I’m stuck.

And the overall swelling has caught up with the ankle – I call it elephant foot.

Thankfully I’ve had some nice visitors come to see me (in all my injured glory) and Felicity has been keeping me company, so it could be worse. I missed my soccer game, the Primary program at church (I was so excited to be up there with my kidlets) and a fun dinner party, but that’s it. Oh, and laundry didn’t happen because there’s no way I could carry my 20 lbs bad of clothes two blocks to the laundromat. So, kind of crappy and it also made me think about just how difficult (and expensive) it would be to be disabled in this city. And just how lucky I am that this is just and injury and not a way of life for me. And maybe it made me miss suburbia just a little bit, and my car, and my family.

perspective

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Once upon a time, when I was still in college, I watched some of my girlfriends from my freshmen year get married from a distance. I would hear about their upcoming nuptials and be slightly (read: seriously) jealous. That’s all I wanted.

As the years have gone on and I have remained single, I have become more comfortable with my single status. Not so comfortable that I don’t want to get married at some point when the right guy comes along (and when I’m the right girl…I maybe have some work to do…maybe). But today was one of those days when I realized just how lucky I am that I didn’t end up married to the wrong guy. My life may not be perfect, and I may have to make all of these decisions on my own, and I may not have a partner in crime and foolishness, but I am happy. And I am the one who is in control of that happiness. And I have marketable skills that allow me to take care of myself.

To those of you stay-at-home-moms out there reading this, please do not mistake what I am saying. I am not saying that I think you should not be stay-at-home-moms. Nor am I saying that the work you are doing in your homes is not the most important work you could be doing right now. What I am saying is that I would rather be single than unhappily married, especially if I felt like I was trapped.

This may seem like a random post, but I recently learned that some of these girls from my freshmen year (lovely, amazing, women) who married rather young and devoted themselves to their husbands and children are now divorced and my heart goes out to them. I can’t imagine what a trial that must be.

It’s not that I think they should have made different choices. I think the best we can do is make good decisions based on the information we have at that moment. I am just very sad for them. And feeling very blessed tonight, as I sit in my itty-bitty-but-oh-so-cute apartment in New York City, thinking about the fact that I love my job and that I can pay my bills and that I’m not worried about 1/100th of the things I would guess these women are worrying about. I would also guess that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for anything because that would mean not having their oh-so-adorable children. At least I hope that’s how they feel.

The bottom-line: I’m thankful that my life is my life and my trials are my trials. And isn’t that the best thing that any of us can hope for?

hope and other things

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On Monday, two days after the PhD emailed me, I was seriously stressed out about the whole thing. Why was he back? What did it mean? What would it be like to see him again? Etc, etc, etc.

So, I called my sister, texted Kelly, emailed Sarah, and talked to Jenna during our morning run. Yes. That’s what girls do.

All were helpful. All were supportive. But Sarah sent me an email that perfectly described why all of this was causing me so much angst. Here is what she said:

Here are my thoughts:
We date. We date stupid people. We date not-so-stupid people. We date people we like. We date people we’re not sure if we like. We try. We try over and over. And it’s all because we have hope. If we stopped trying, we’d feel hopeless. Or at least I would. So, we keep trying and trying, hoping that one sticks. Because you never know.

And that perfectly captures why I think I was willing to walk down this path. Hope. Hope that he would not be the flake he was before. Hope that I would be better able to show that I liked him (not one of my talents). Hope that he would be just as fun as he was before. Hope that he’d suddenly want to join my church and we’d live happily ever after. (Okay, that last one was a stretch, but you get the point, right?)

Despite what happened, and my normal propensity to find fault with myself, I don’t feel bad about how I responded. I’m not kicking myself for being willing to go to dinner with him. Or being gracious when maybe the safer, less vulnerable, and definitely less hopeful thing to do would have been to not be. I’d rather know that I tried, that I put myself out there even if the result is that I get hurt than end up alone because I wasn’t willing to take a risk.

All of that said, I’m no masochist nor am I some shrinking violet (before I wrote that, I had written “wilting flower” which I knew wasn’t right, but I could not remember the actual phrase). And I definitely (finally) have enough confidence and self-respect to realize that I shouldn’t settle for someone who doesn’t value what I have to offer and treat me well.

And so it is over. And the way I know it’s over is because I did email him and ended it. I would have just copy and pasted the email right here, but I believe in the full purge as soon as the purge can happen. So all emails have been deleted. And if I could figure out how to get my iPhone to not remember his email address, I would do that, too.

I appreciate all of the comments and I do agree that walking away with no response would have been completely justified and appropriate…but I wanted to say what I had to say, what I wish I’d said last November had I had the opportunity. And so I did. Basically, I said that I decided it wasn’t a good idea for us to get together. I told him that back in November, when he disappeared with no warning or explanation, I’d been pretty hurt and confused and that, while I did really like him, given the history, his current behavior wasn’t going to work for me.

I may have failed to mention that not only did he cancel by email three hours before we were supposed to meet, but even before that he hadn’t responded when I’d told him where I wanted to meet (he had asked) and I actually had to send an email to see if we were still on for last night (which I did at 9:30 am) and he still didn’t email me until 3:30.

Sadly, I’m not going to get my answer…but I kind of think Zach might have been right in his comments. And to be honest, now I don’t really care.

So, another one bites the dust. Again. But I still have hope.

ETA: To those of you who wondered if this guy reads my blog, the answer is no. I mean I suppose it’s possible, but we aren’t Facebook friends, the blog doesn’t come up if you google my name. He could possibly have found my twitter account and my blog from that, but…I doubt it. There are lots of other boy stories I have that I would not share on here because either a) they could easily find my blog because we are FB friends or b) someone I know might know them and…well, I try not to be overly dumb about these things.

emergency preparedness (aka i can’t live without technology)

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As mentioned in the previous post…I was in Rhode Island when Hurricane (or Tropical Storm, as she became by the time she actually landed on RI) Irene hit. We knew she was coming and, technically, we were in a mandatory evacuation zone. We chose not to evacuate. The good news is this ended up being fine. Not really the point of my post, though.

Over the past few years (decade? few decades?) my church has been talking about emergency preparedness (ETA: it’s actually been something like 75 years). But when an actual emergency is imminent, suddenly all this stuff that’s just been words and theories becomes very real. Suddenly the crank flashlight/radio my grandma gave me for Christmas (the one that I kind of rolled my eyes at) became the best gift ever known to man. Especially when I realized that I had never purchased batteries for my Maglite and every store was out of D batteries (epic fail on the parts of Energizer and Duracell if you ask me).

And then there’s the case of the iPhone. I had actually been thinking about this the other day, when I pulled up a map on my phone for the 20th time that day. What if the world was really ending? What if I actually needed a real map, you know, the kind on paper that does disappear when the power goes out and I couldn’t recharge my cell phone?

And then, with Hurricane Irene, these what ifs became very real questions and they led to more questions. What am I going to do if I need money and can’t pull it out of the bank because ATMs are no long operational? What if I need to call someone on a non-digital land line (do those even exist anymore?) and I can’t because I don’t know any phone numbers…well, almost. And what if I wasn’t in Rhode Island with all of these people who are much better prepared than I am and I hadn’t realized how much water I needed? Or food? Or realized that when power leaves, so does your water because electricity runs the pumps. And so on and so forth.

The point? I am completely and totally dependent on technology. I mean, I could survive (physically) without it, assuming I had a source of food and water, but that would be it. The world has automated and electrified so much of my life that I don’t really have to “know” a lot of stuff I used to have to know…like how to get from point A to point B without Google Maps.

Now, this is not some sort of post about how I’m going to turn over a new leaf and be less reliant on technology. I’m not a crazy person. But maybe I will go purchase myself an atlas and maybe I’ll write down important phone numbers on a piece of paper and put it in a ziplock back…and perhaps I’ll even start saving putting some cash away for a rainy day (you know, the kind of rain that comes with hurricanes).