A win-win situation

by Lisa

Navigating life in a period of transition comes with its challenges. In just a few weeks I'm packing my bags (more like, my bag) for the Windy City, leaving (at least physically) many dear friends from college (the most growing period of my life) as well as the part of the country in which I've spent most of my life.

When it first sunk in that I was leaving, I wondered about how I should invest in relationships. Did I need to taper off times with old friends, or just the opposite? And I also faced decisions about new acquaintances. Do I ask somebody to lunch and just as soon as they let me into their life wave goodbye? (They'll probably just as soon be thinking, "I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello..." Or maybe only Annie would think that.)

I had the same dilemma two days ago, when I re-found the seed packets some good friends had given me for Christmas. I don't know why I had put off planting them (or making a sourdough starter or writing that thank you card or anything else on The List, for that matter). Ah, procrastination. I guess it took Realizing There Isn't Much Time Left to just go ahead and try planting them. Pretty soon after, this thought flew into my head: "I'm going to be so upset if they actually grow (because I'll kick myself for not having planted them earlier)." Then I (just as) quickly realized the stupidity of that thought - of course I wouldn't be upset! It is almost a truth universally acknowledged that much sadness can be swept away by parsley pesto or a bowl of fresh arugula with goat cheese and vinaigrette.


It was a win-win situation. If I had herbs before I left, I would be joyful. And if I didn't - well, it didn't matter that I hadn't tried earlier!

I labeled the pots with question marks at the end. Who knew if they would contain parsley, chives, or arugula? So I labeled them "parsley?", "chives?", and "arugula?".


Today after getting up from a little nap, I checked the plants to see if they needed water. I couldn't believe my eyes - was I still dreaming? - when I saw tiny little shoots in the arugula pot! It hadn't even been two full day since I had planted them!


So I'm hopeful. Like the arugula, some new friendships of the past few months I'd mentally labeled "friendship?" have similarly started to sprout up. And instead of having regret that we didn't start this earlier, I'm grateful for what they are now.

And so I'm going to water them and care for them for the next 55 days and see what happens.

Surprisingly delicious

by Lisa

Being a food blogger comes with its challenges. (Sometimes it's so much easier to write haiku that doesn't make any sense.) I mean, I feel like I always have to have some sort of theme, where I creatively and analogically tie it into the recipe, or something brilliant like that. And also I almost always feel like it's not okay to cheat on recipes, like calling for spaghetti sauce from the jar or using canned garbanzo beans. And even though I disclosed all in my last post, it's not without at least a little diffidence that I bring today's recipe, which doesn't even pretend to be gourmet.

I was actually quite caught off-guard when I found this recipe online which inspired today's. I wasn't looking for a recipe for instant chai. Even in the past I have had this discussion in my head: Should I make an instant chai? No, it wouldn't be fresh. But it'd be so easy. No, it's not as good as the real thing. But it's so easy. No, no, no. Yes, yes, yes. (Or something like that.)

[For those as neurotic as I and who may want to know how I "accidentally" found myself at this site with this chai recipe which threatened so my mental stability: I was actually looking up recipes for aloo gobi to try to figure out why the one I ordered had been so soupy - maybe it was something regional. One site suggested that there's a wetter version of potato cauliflower curry called aloo phulkopir dalna, but when I googled that, it didn't really seem to explain my soupy curry. But somehow I found the link to the instant chai, and it caught my eye.]

[For the not-so-neurotic, I proceed here:] Long story short, I decided, what the heck? why not try this instant chai? As lovely as it is to be able to boil chai at home with milk and with whole cardamom pods, cloves, cinnamon sticks, etc., when you're at work with only the water "cooler," a good instant chai sounds a lot more attractive and reasonable than walking down the street to the dreaded Starbucks for a too-expensive,-too-sweet,-not-creamy-enough chai latte.

The recipe looked reasonable enough. I used it as a guideline, not really following the proportions, and it was surprisingly delicious. I think I've had three cups every day since.

I'm planning on making more and mailing some to a certain friend in Minnesota once she gives me her new address. (I can even throw in some instant coffee powder, too, if you'd like it dirty. Even more if you want it... um, nevermind. Eww for gross guy at Starbucks. Yay for Molly!])

The stuff is great 'cause you can have it hot or cold, although with the weather here the last few days, it's kind of hard to tell which way you'd want it. It's still good anyway; just be careful when you get to the bottom of your mug/glass, lest you end up with a mouth full of ground spices which have sneakily settled to the bottom.

So, here's to a lukewarm glass of chai! Cheers!

Instant chai tea
inspired by Sandi on RecipeZaar

The original recipe called for instant tea (have you ever seen it in the stores? I haven't); I didn't follow that. In any case, I still liked being able to keep my tea brewing separate from the powder, so my recipe basically makes the creamer/sugar/spices part for the chai. The recipe is really rough, and I really encourage you to modify it according to your liking. I couldn't have it any other way for you.

It's a bit awkward with some ingredients you may not have just lying around the house (like vanilla sugar; odd that I had some), but I did some quick and dirty calculations, and I think that even if you spent the money on it, it might work out to cheaper than instant chai from the store. (It's definitely tastier.)

I'm putting my original proportions, but I'd recommend doubling it; it goes fast. (I did two batches one right after the other.)

1/2 cup dry whole milk powder
1/2 cup non-dairy powdered coffee creamer
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (which Sandi says you can make by putting vanilla extract into the sugar, allowing to dry, and then breaking into clumps; you can also replace this with 1/2 cup regular sugar, plus 1/2 cup French vanilla flavored powdered coffee creamer - in addition to the plain powdered coffee creamer above)
1 heaping teaspoon ground ginger
2 heaping teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 level teaspoon each, ground cloves and cardomom
*adjust spices to your liking, and also consider adding: white pepper, allspice, nutmeg, cayenne
tea bags (black, orange pekoe, darjeeling, etc.)

Pulse ingredients for a few seconds in food processor to blend ingredients.

To serve: Brew black tea in hot water. (Use less water if you're going to ice it.) Any tea (even Lipton) will do; my dad always sends me home with different teas from the Indian market which are in nice bags. (I am not tea snobby enough to say you must brew loose leaf.) Stir in 2-3 heaping teaspoonfuls of your newly blended chai. Enjoy!

Store dry mixture in airtight container.


[P.S. If you were looking for the theme in this post, sorry. I don't think it really got anywhere. I think I was trying to go for something like, how 'bout we give me a break? or Here's a cup of chai to make us all happy!]

a poem

by Lisa

over vanilla milkshakes and smooshed "double" cheeseburgers
after minigolf
around 12 midnight

listening to camila
sitting in the parking lot

under the streetlamps

annie says,
"lis, i love how you can be such a food snob and yet still enjoy
mcdonalds."

Not with a bang but a whimper

by Lisa

Transitions, change, saying goodbye. There's no way to express the emotion with cohesion and clarity.

In a few months, I'll be leaving for Chicago. And I have friends moving on, as well, to other things, and places: China, Guatemala, marriage. I'm not quite sure what it looks like to say goodbye, because what is going and what/who is staying has become so confuddled, diffused like an electron cloud. Because I can say that I'm leaving Berkeley, but I'm also taking parts of it with me. And of course, whenever I return to it in future visits, it won't be the same.

Berkeley, you have been good to me. Rough, too. The city, the classes, the people, the bus lines, the restaurants (oh, the restaurants), the noise, the strangers. I think I will miss you.

I started to make a mental list of things I should do before I leave Berkeley, like Eat At Cheeseboard For A Week Straight So That I Get Too Sick Of It To Miss It, things like that. Or, dine downstairs at Chez Panisse, eat at À Côté, appreciate Berkeley Bowl. All those concrete things are good, they're easy to measure, and to check off a list. But how do you make sure you've spent enough time with your closest friends, and made sure they know that you've appreciated their friendship? That you don't know what you would have done if they hadn't been there to see you through your hardest moments, when there couldn't have been enough Kleenex boxes around, or minutes to sit together in the silence before you both had to get back to the paper that was due the next day? That through the sacrifices of their time, love, and lives, they've challenged you to be the best you could be, that they weren't afraid to tell you that you needed to change - to prune a part of yourself - for the better? That you're going to miss the way they imitate and mock you; or the way they complete your sentences, and you, theirs?

Portland stole my heart

by Stephanie


It is such a beautiful place. 2 weeks later, I'm still in awe. (Let's not focus on the fact that it's taken me 2 weeks to post.) It's so green! So laid back! So many Subarus! (By the way, the last point does not really excite me at all. It was just an observation.) Anyway, enough with the parentheses, I'm sure you want the dirt on Portland.

The thing is, there is no dirt. Well, none that I saw. Locals were so nice to my roommate and me when we looked lost; the coffee was bordering on Blue Bottle status, and Powell's is a 4 story bookstore that takes up an entire city block. Why did I leave you Portland, why.

My World Cup Coffee cafe au lait...delightful.

Flowers at the Portland Farmer's Market, located at Portland State University on Saturdays. There was a hyper-abundance of tulips and poppies, which made me oh so happy. The roommate and I made a lunch out of chive pesto, a demi-baguette, Bosc pears, and a huge cookie for dessert.

Next up was Reed College, where I hung around in hopes of running into Donald Miller. (Mark my words; next time we meet for sure.)

There is this gorgeous lake behind the campus that provides the perfect backdrop for quiet contemplation and the like. I had a really hard time capturing with my camera how lovely the atmosphere is here. My soul felt quiet and at rest.



You can wikipedia Renn Fayre if you're curious...just another crazy differentiating feature that separates Reed from pretty much every other college campus in the world.

"Hi, our name is adorable Portland doggie chocolates! Take us home with you!"

This is the last picture I took before my camera battery pooped out on me. I consider Saint Cupcake amazing because I actually loved the cupcake frosting. I really don't like frosting, so this was huge.

Oh Portland, thank you for a lovely time. I will be back; a gem of a city like you is too good to ignore for long.

Speaking of food disasters...

by Lisa

Well, I wasn't really planning to write about my chocolate pudding disaster, because, for one, I'm not even supposed to write about it (I'm leaving that for Stephie), even though I've already written about it here and there. But I realized tonight when eating my fifth serving, I don't think I've had a disaster as delicious as this one. And since I didn't actually follow the recipe (do I ever?) I don't feel so bad writing about it. I can still let Steph take credit for the real recipe.

So a few weeks ago I made the pudding for the first time in a long time when I got these new dessert glasses (I think they're these ones; they look like the ones at Bittersweet and I looove them!). And that turned out well; see pictures in previous post. We stood around eating it. "Boozy," one person noted. "Yeah," the others agreed. "It is?" I chirped. But really, I didn't think it tasted boozy, per se - the alcohol only worked to cut the sweet a tad, which there was little to begin with, which I like. But to be honest, I felt embarrassed for not having noticed how boozy it was because one, I should have a discerning palate - I'm a food blogger! - and two, I've been trying to defend myself against the outrageous and unfounded claims that I'm an alky.

My friends call me The Alky, but I know that deep down inside they really actually appreciate it. In fact, these inklings were confirmed when Anna asked if, for her 23rd birthday, I would make "the boozy pudding." (Wait, did she ask, or did I just offer? Can't remember. I was sober then - really, I was.)

Anyway, I was all ambitious about making a huge batch of it, so there I was, pouring loads of milk into the saucepan, thinking, I want to make lots of pudding, and that requires lots of milk. (Was I trying to make it so that the rum could not claim to comprise most of the pudding as regards the liquids? No, not at all, not at all.) And then of course I didn't really have enough of the other ingredients to match the proportion. It didn't take long to figure out that it wasn't going to set, so I ended up throwing the bowl of liquidy goop in the freezer. I remember thinking it looked (and tasted) like melted ice cream (which foreshadows what was to come). Not exactly what I would expect of any pudding.

I was devastated, but instead of drowning all my sorrows in alcohol - after all, it had all gone into that pudding, anyway - I gave it one last chance to redeem itself. After giving it time to harden up, we popped it into the microwave and defrosted it slightly. Two minutes later it was as scoopable as ice cream, and twice as delicious. Redeemed, I thought. I almost wasn't sure I'd ever make the pudding the right way anymore. Spooned into a stemless martini glass with a dollop of whipped cream, it was enough to make up for a lifetime of cooking disasters. Ice-y, chocolatey rich, creamy, and most of all, boozy.

So, yeah, in true Lisa form, in order to make what I made, you can't really follow a recipe. But if you, too, want to enjoy an adult fudgsicle made from a pudding recipe gone wrong, you can try doing what I did, which is this: boiled three cups (i.e., way too much) milk, to which I added about 10 ounces chopped 70% cacao chocolate after turning off the heat. Threw this into the blender with only two eggs, poured half of it into a bowl, and added an additional egg to the blender, and poured the remainder in a separate bowl. Added generous amounts of alcohol. Despaired and whined. Threw bowls into freezer, then the microwave. Scooped, ate, and cheered. Hooray!

You know you're slightly addicted to food blogging when...

by Stephanie

...you create an absolute disaster in the kitchen and your first thought is "Do I want to blog about this?"

Readers, I feel like I am not that uptight of a person. My room is usually an organized mess, minus the organized part, and you know, I enjoy going with the flow and laughing at what happens along the way. But last Saturday night...oh goodness. A veritable disaster. My mother put me in charge of the Easter dessert, and I had all these visions in my head of a 13-layer cake complete with sugared pansies and the most perfect fondant hands could create. Kidding. But I did have the ambition to make a marble cake, and that all came crumbling (ha) down when my mom took the cake out of the oven 20 minutes before it was due to be done and called out, "Honey...I can't get it out of the pan." The cake was completely rock hard. I went over the recipe later, which called for milk in the ingredient list but never included when it was to be added in the procedure part...and so I completely forgot about it and never included the milk. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Talk about perfectionism rearing its ugly head. I have never been so upset about failure before. Baking is my thing. I don't do the whole botched cake thing. Was the world coming to an end?

At my wit's end (it was 1:30 am, people), I decided to make the brownie recipe on the back of the King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour bag. And they were wonderful indeed. I suppose even failures can be fortuitous at times. Because when push comes to shove, even a 13-layer cake can't top a hot fudge brownie sundae on Easter Sunday.

(according to the King Arthur flour bag) The Best Fudge Brownies Ever

1 cup butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups Dutch-process cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt (inc. to 1 tsp if using unsalted butter, which you should be doing anyway)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour (the good stuff, none of this whole wheat stuff, seriously)
2 cups chocolate chips (I chopped up one 4 oz. bar and got too tired to do the rest. It was still good)

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan.

In a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the heat briefly, just until it's hot but not bubbling. It'll become more shiny as you stir. Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl.

Stir in the cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla. Add the eggs, beating until smooth; then add the flour and chocolate, beating until well combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 28-30 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

No pictures from that little event, but here are pretty flowers from the City! Specifically, Bi-Rite Market (adorable).