notes from my friend’s living room couch

Today I drove seven hours with my iPod turned up to full blast and a bag full of snacks before arriving in Outer Sunset, San Francisco. A light drizzle fell in short intervals on my windshield minutes before the last stretch of my trip.

This morning, I skimmed the weekly weather forecast for Orange County one last time before dragging my bags down the stairwell of my home, silently mourning that I would be exchanging mid-70s, sunny skies for perpetually chilly, damp weather. I remembered my friend, a seasoned San Franciscan, recalling how she would wear leggings under her jeans during the mornings and evenings to fend off the cold.

In my usual fashion, I consoled myself with an unusual thought: At least I won’t be exposed to the sun as much up there, which means I’ll be at less risk of getting skin cancer.

I cried waterfalls before leaving for Taiwan; and when my friends ask me what it was like to leave America, I reply with one word: traumatizing. This time, though, the distance isn’t nearly as overwhelming, my heart is a little sturdier, and my eyes merely water when my boyfriend sends me on my way. 

“I’m not even going that far away!” I smirked. “See you soon!”

And with that, I put my key in the ignition and went on my way.

Hi! In case I’ve completely lost you, I’m pre-relocating to San Francisco, crashing on my friend’s couch in Outer Sunset while I search for work and housing in the city. I’m slightly delusional at the moment from sitting in a car alone for a good chunk of the day, but I’m very grateful to be here.

To make matters even better, my friend-turned-temp roommate let me take over her spare closet so that I wouldn’t have to literally live out of my suitcase. Sweet!

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime."

Mark Twain

“It occurred to me then, that perhaps the reason for my growth was I was intended for larger things. After all, a giant man can’t have an ordinary-sized life.”

Big Fish has been one of my favorite films since its first debut on the big screen during my middle school days. Back then, my pubescent self appreciated its quirkiness and cinematic aesthetics—it was different from the usual teenybopper chick flick I enjoyed from time to time. 

Now, however, as I drift through my twenty-somethings, the movie has taken on a fresh meaning altogether: it’s a story of a man with ambitions so huge and overreaching that his small, safe, homey town can’t contain him. His message, loud and clear, tugs on all the right heart strings:

“There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost—the ship has sailed and only a fool would continue. Truth is… I’ve always been a fool.”

Here’s to the fools, the adventurers, and the fighters: may our pursuits give us new life; may all our zealous seeking crescendo in a grand finale; and for all our thirsting, may we never dry out.

two salads this week!: all about kale

In atonement for my failure to blog last week, I’m featuring two salads this week!

Ambitious, I know.

Both of these dishes hold a special place in my heart (and are, incidentally, good for the heart) because they incorporate one of my favorite vegetables on Mother Earth, kale. 

Kale is this leafy, tough vegetable. It’s slightly bitter to the taste and is even described by some as having a citrusy flavor. You can stir-fry it, bake it (I have yet to make kale chips!), steam it, or just eat it raw, which I’m going to do here because 1. I wasn’t in the mood to dirty and wash a pan (so stir-frying was out of the question), and 2. vegetables can lose some nutritional value in the cooking process: I wanted to pack in as much nutrition as possible.

The first salad I’d like to highlight bears a spooky resemblance to my quinoa salad.

Okay, so maybe spooky isn’t the most appropriate word to use here, but I wanted to go for a dramatic effect. Did it work?

For this salad, I dumped some chopped kale into a bowl and piled the cooked quinoa on top while it was still warm. The warm quinoa helped soften the kale a bit, which was nice, because, as I said earlier, kale is a pretty tough and crunchy vegetable. I also chopped up some red onion, tomatoes, parsley, and added olive oil, salt, crushed black pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

Mm…kale and quinoa make a great pair.

The second salad is one that I whipped up on a whim half an hour before dinner… which actually doesn’t set it apart from most of the other salads I make, but that’s beside the point.

For this salad, I chopped up some red and yellow potatoes and turnip and seasoned them with Lawry’s seasoned salt, crushed black pepper, lemon juice, diced fresh garlic, and olive oil. 

I also seasoned some asparagus in the same fashion and popped it all into the oven at 400 F. 

Similar to my other kale salad, I started with a bed of raw, yummy kale. After the asparagus finished cooking (note: asparagus cooks faster than potatoes and turnips), I chopped them into smaller pieces and piled them atop the kale to soften it a bit. 

Confession: This photograph made me salivate a bit just now.

After the potatoes and turnip finished roasting, I heaped them onto the asparagus and kale. To finish it off, I shredded some cheese on top of it all—because I’m in love with this stuff: its name is rosemary asiago, and it is just divine.

Mix in some olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and crushed black pepper to taste if you wish, and serve warm. 

Know what’s neat about both of these salads aside from the fact that they taste great and are great for you?

They keep well in the fridge. In fact, I’m betting the quinoa salad tastes even better the next day after all the flavors have had some time to marinade and blend. 

Come to think of it, I have a bowl of that stuff sitting in my fridge right now, waiting to be consumed…

I’d better tend to that now ;)

pitter-patter, a vanilla cake!

Rainy days are something of an anomaly in Southern California; so when they do come around, it’s kind of a big deal. Lazy students skip class, unaccustomed locals wear their flip-flops out (for want of proper rain shoes), and all across city borders, everybody and their mothers gripe and grumble about the rain somehow disrupting the sunny, mid-70’s equilibrium that characterizes the southwestern coast of America. 

In spite of my fervent love for Southern California and a belief I hold that God carved out our borders Himself and declared it a little chunk of paradise on earth, living abroad has taught me that occasional rainfall should be the least of our worries. How thankless are we to complain about the four times of the year that rain hits our territories while entire populations grapple with monsoons, hurricanes, and typhoons on the regular?

All arguments aside, the rain is coming down in delicate, measured intervals today; my heart is settling into a drowsy, contemplative state… and for some inexplicable reason a strong urge to bake a two-layer cake has descended upon me and overridden all notions of reason and logic.

So I did what I usually do when such overpowering urges beckon: I heeded its call.

After some searching, I decided on a recipe for a vanilla-matcha tea cake with vanilla-coconut icing, and if you must know, it was the coconut milk that won me over. For reasons beyond my understanding, I’m obsessed with coconut milk. 

I must’ve fibbed somewhere along my baking process because my cake layers came out looking nothing like the original. It could be a glitch in the recipe or the sheer reality that I’m completely impatient when it comes to measuring and sifting ingredients and cut some corners along the way. (I’m betting on the latter.) Seriously, how do I even get away with calling myself a baker?

Thankfully, the frosting saved the cake. It always does. 

I’m too frugal to stock matcha powder at home (does anyone have any idea how expensive that stuff is?!), so to give the cake a unique twist, I made a coconut-cream cheese-vanilla frosting instead. The cream cheese helped offset the sweetness of the coconut-vanilla cake, though it also made it that much denser. 

Let’s just say this cake needs to be consumed in tiny portions. And it made for a fun, rainy day experiment, but I probably won’t be baking it again.

*Note: I decided not to link to the original cake recipe since my version came out nothing like it and I just don’t think I’d do it justice. If you’re curious though, drop me a line and I’ll get back to you!

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In my college days, I was actively involved in a campus ministry that played a pivotal role in shaping the person I am today. In hindsight, “campus ministry involvement” doesn’t quite translate directly into full-time, post-college employment, which could be why I’m still struggling with the latter. Regardless, I still would not have done it any other way: I’m a firm believer that character development is the best measure of personal success. 

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to give back to my ministry by serving as a counselor at their annual retreat. True to my love for arts & crafts and personalized gifts, I spent the couple days prior tearing and cutting a mountain of paper scraps to make these journals for the six adorable students entrusted under my care.

The journals were received with grateful smiles, and I, in all my self-searching and confusion, realized that even in my present state of uncertainty, I still have something to offer.

All is not lost in me, for the wanderers never lose their spirit. They cling onto it for dear life, knowing it is the one thing that will carry them through the journey. 

a salad a week: warm mushroom

One of my favorite ways to make and eat a salad is to mix warm and cold ingredients.

This one is simple enough: slice up some mushrooms (I used crimini mushrooms, which is basically a fancy name for “mini portobellos”), saute them with butter or extra virgin olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, and a wee bit of salt and crushed black pepper to taste.

Feeling mischievous? Consider adding a splash of red wine, which I did here. I honestly don’t know if mushrooms are supposed to be sauteed in red wine, but I have this twisted theory that you can cook virtually anything in wine and there happened to be a half-finished bottle of it conveniently left over from the previous night’s dinner on hand… so I did it anyway.

It tasted divine, if you’re wondering.

Where’s the dressing? After the mushrooms are sauteed in balsamic vinegar and oil or butter, they’re so flavorful that I don’t even feel like this salad needs dressing. However, if you feel differently, I suggest a simple, light EVOO + balsamic vinegar dressing.

I piled the browned mushrooms on a bed of lettuce and added feta cheese for a nice pop of flavor. I’ll bet freshly shredded parmesan, diced red onions, and/or diced tomatoes would go well with this salad, too.

Advice from Julie & Julia: Because yeah, I take culinary advice from Hollywood. In the film, an excerpt from one of Ms. Child’s letters reads something like this:

“[In Meryl Streep’s best Julia Child imitation] Don’t crowd the mushrooms; otherwise they won’t brown!” 

Now you know. Be mindful of the mushrooms—they need their space. 

Haven’t we all used that line at least once in our lives?

a salad a week: quinoa

In case you missed the memo, I really, really love salad. 

My fondness for salad is so far-reaching, in fact, that it spans entire continents. 

Back in Taiwan, even my raging In-N-Out cravings paled in comparison to the longing I felt to wolf down a plate of fresh, raw dark green veggies.

People never understand me when I assert that it’s impossible to find a decent salad in Asia. So now, the salad snob in me speaks: here is Asia’s attempt at salad, straight from the shelves of your local 7-11…

It’s no wonder the Asians aren’t big on salads. They really don’t have much to work with!

To recompense for those ten full months of mediocre salad consumption—and convince the world that salads are diverse, beautiful, and by and large the best meals on earth—I’m showcasing a new salad each week for the next ten months. 

To kick it off, this week is quinoa salad!

Did you know? Quinoa isn’t technically a grain, though it sort of looks like it could be one. It’s high in protein and fiber, gluten-free, and has a texture similar to couscous. 

To make: Cook the quinoa and let it cool. I’m Chinese, so I busted out my rice cooker and dumped two cups of quinoa seeds in there along with two cups of water. (Sidenote: two cups makes about 6-7 generous servings—it’s a lot!) You can also cook quinoa in a pot over the stove.

Awesome fact: the beauty of salad is that it’s incredibly versatile. I whipped this together using ingredients I already had on hand:

• acorn squash, roasted
• corn, roasted
• purple onion
• tomatoes
• basil
• feta cheese
• dressing: balsamic vinegar, extra virgin Spanish olive oil, a dash of rice vinegar
• light seasoning: paprika, dried Italian herbs, crushed black pepper

Know what else this salad would taste great with?

• grilled chicken or shrimp
• grilled vegetables of all sorts: asparagus, zucchini, bell peppers
• avocado 
• mint
• lime or lemon juice
• butternut squash, roasted
• black beans
• cilantro
• kale
• fruit: strawberries, apples, peaches
• everything?!

You get the drift. 

Got leftovers? You’re in luck—quinoa keeps well in the fridge.

+ one more thing: This particular salad pairs splendidly with fish—though I may be biased, because I love fish almost as much as I love salad.

The verdict? Quinoa is just a really intimidating, pretentious name for protein. I don’t know the identity of the nut job who came up with the spelling for it, but the pronounciation may surprise you.

Heed my words: do not fear the quinoa (keen-wah). Why do they spell it that way anyway?

Pick up a bag at the grocery store… and watch your salad possibilities unravel before you.

Thank me later ;)

The Future has an Ancient Heart →

You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.

You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.

But that’s all.

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Put this together today just for fun.

(Source: reminderstoself)