Five for Friday is a weekly series about the five new things I learned each week. It could be anything from a new recipe, new skills, or a new life lesson.
Welcome to the Five For Friday: Saturday edition! Because I’m a dork and I sent the publishing time wrong. LOL I also learned something else new when I went out for a walk this morning. So…here you go!
I Gained 10 lbs. For Nothing
Well, I’m sure you’ve already read about my disappointment of not being able to donate blood despite finally having met the weight requirement. Le sigh…
Hooters No Longer Serves Peanut Butter Pie
Yes, I like Hooters. The wings are good. The beers are cold. The girls are friendly. And I kick ass on video trivia most of the time. But what I like best about Hooters is the chocolate peanut butter pie. I haven’t been there a while, so I didn’t know that the menu has changed. First, I couldn’t find the 1/2 lbs. of shrimps I usually get. And then, I looked at dessert.
Peanut butter pie is gone. Instead of the luxurious, creamy, chocolaty deliciousness, you can get a caramel cheesecake.
What the fuck is THAT shenanigan?! Well, I guess now I have to make my own pie now…
Goodbye lover. (Photo credit: Yelp)
Pinterest Lab Success: Linoleum Cleaner
My hands HATE strong chemicals. That is why I have switched to using Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day dish soap a few years ago. I still do have a bottle of Dawn under the sink when attacking baked on aftermaths. And it is also why I’ve been experimenting with homemade, less toxic cleaning products.
The Dawn (apple), baking soda, and vinegar (I bought a big bottle of cleaning grade kind) combination worked well for me. I only did half the recipe because we only have 3 small areas to mop. The floor looks great and it smells pretty good. You can get the full recipe through my Pinterest Lab board.
Core a Lettuce in 3 Seconds
Mind. Blown.
Sprinting and Dance Walking
Well, this is not really something new I learned, but it is confirmed. Sure, I haven’t the drive or motivation to run a 5K. The total walk to the park, do a couple of laps, then walk back home takes total of 30 minutes right now. But at least I’m moving.
I went for the walk/run combo again today. While I have succeeded in slowing myself down so I managed to jog longer distance per interval today, I still find jogging boring. I decided to sprint the width of the park, back to where I left my water bottle, to end the work out. That there, was probably the most fun 15 seconds I had the entire session.
That and climbing through the kid’s jungle gym was fun. I totally can NOT swing on monkey bars any more. But running around in the playground was totally fun.
Now, I am thinking about forming a new fitness routine, combining sprinting, climbing through kid’s playground, and, naturally, dance walking.
2011. The year of changes. So much so that I pretty much forgot that I had set goals for the year.
Someone asks why I set goals. Well, I’m trying to set a habit-forming goals instead of something I know I can’t attain. Whatever I did well, I’ll keep up with for the years to come. Goal #10 has been a growing list, and I would like to keep it growing each year.
Now, let’s first look at what a failure I have been in 2011 before we move on to set goals for 2012.
2011 Recap: 5 out of 10
1. 12 books a year – Win!
Well, I got to 11.5. I’m going to call that a win. 🙂 I spent quite a bit of time trying get through Emperor of All Maladies before I gave up, so I’m going to count that as a 0.5. I really don’t like nonfiction as it turns out.
The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Seth Grahame-Smith
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer – Siddhartha Mukherjee …Did not finish
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
Ghost Story: The Dresden Files – Jim Butcher
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? – Seth Godin
Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files – Jim Butcher
Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale (Graphic novel)
Full Dark, No Stars – Stephen King
2. Play piano/guitar/sing on Sundays after dinner for an hour – Fail
I perhaps did that three or four times…
3. Eat a salad a week…Vegan Tuesdays don’t count!- Win
I did pretty good on this one. It’s good to have a few salads you’re addicted to and must have on regular basis.
4. Catch up on DVR on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends (Friday is flexible) – Epic fail
LOL … Why did I even bother setting this goal!
5. Cook one new recipe a month…and blog it!- Fail
And you thought that with having more time during unemployment would be conducive to more blogging! I did cook more but I didn’t blog as much. Also, once I started working at Saatchi LA, with me getting home at irregular hours, I actually haven’t cooked much at all.
6. Wednesday Date Night – Win-ish
Having gone out to eat quite a bit in the later months, we sort of just called that date nights too. At least we did get out to do stuff together a bit.
7. If the hair needs a wash, work out! – Fail
Again, why did I even set this goal if I keep forgetting?
8. Write every week day on the way to work – Fail
Hauling the laptop to work everyday became cumbersome. And then I didn’t commute on the bus any more. I could’ve written every morning during unemployment, but obviously that didn’t happen much either.
9. A secret goal…which was to find a new job than the one I had – EPIC WIN
So, yeah. I consider this a win because the old job did get left behind. I still haven’t found a full-time position yet though. Hee.
10. Keep up with past success – Mostly win
Weekly lunch out and coffee treats, totally worked. I actually eliminated coffee treats altogether at some point! Vegan Tuesdays stayed mostly dry and mostly egg-less. I did switch out a few days in the year but I did quite well. I’m still taking Italian lessons albeit ever so slowly. And I’m still finishing up magazine within days of their arrival. The only fail in this would be that I didn’t try NaNoWrimo again. November has become way too busy with tailgating and such that it was not realistic even to try to write any more.
Not bad, right? So…yay!
Now. For the next year…
2012 Goals
1. Find a job I love
Whatever it is! Now that I have had a taste of what it is like to work where you’re happy instead of just grinding away, this will be a difficult challenge. But I am sure I will find my place in the world.
2. Blog once a week on OakMonster.com
With all the microblogs I’ve got going on, this blog gets neglected. I’m going to fix that.
3. Cook one new recipe a month and blog it
Let’s try this one again…
4. Launch the Side Project
We have a web project we have been discussing with a friend for a while now. I just have to actually get to work on it.
5. Do at least 20 push-ups and/or crunches everyday
Baby step for this fitness averted girl. 🙂
6. Try one new restaurant a month
My taste buds need an adventure. Besides, this will give us perfect excuse for date nights!
7. Take a trip somewhere even nearby once a season
Once in a while I’d ditch Italian class for a weekend getaway. We’ll have to maneuver around the spring when Brandon is taking classes and the fall when I have football games. But we can totally do this! Already have a weekend getaway plan in January for our 10th wedding anniversary. 🙂
8. Play the piano/guitar once a month
Once a week was a bit ambitious. Let’s start smaller.
9. Update the paper trails
You’re supposed to keep, what, 7 years of documentation? I’m sure I have more like 12 years around here. Time to commit to cleaning house!
10. Keep up with past successes
Read 12 books a year. Lunch/coffee out only once a week. Veggie Tuesday (but less strict on eggs). Eat a salad for a meal on a non-veggie day. Continue with Italian classes. Leave no magazine unread.
It wasn’t difficult for me to fall in love with Italian cuisine. One of the restaurants we frequented growing up was Thailand’s first Italian establishment owned by a Thai guy. My dad’s friend, to be exact. My mom also made some killer bolognese in the slow cooker and I was always envied when I brought spaghetti to lunch at school.
As you know, when I first started to cook when Brandon and I got married, it was Rachael Ray who got me into the kitchen, but I quickly graduated from her onto Giada DeLaurentiis.
I can see some of you hard core food nerds rolling your eyes right now. But hey, like bacon to a former vegetarian, there is always a gateway celebrity chef who inspired you to cook. Giada got me interested in Italian cooking, cultures, and language. (I’m currently on my second year of casually learning Italian, made more difficult by being a third language learned on a second one.)
Naturally, I paid a lot of attention to Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation when he visited Italy once again in search of the origin of the Red Sauce. [ETA: Gah…video has been removed. Gotta find another copy.]
I took notes of all the ingredients mentioned in this video and paid close attention to what was being put in the pot. There isn’t a recipe laying around or anything, so I just went for it.
The video more or less tell you everything that goes in the ragu:
Onion, garlic, good extra virgin olive oil. Pork sausage, veal, pork ribs, and braciole (pieces of veal wrapped around parmesan cheese, garlic, basil, parsley, raisins, pine nuts). You brown the meats in the pan, then cover it with tomato puree. Put it on super low, just so it barely bubbles, all day. Skim of the fat. Toss the sauce with the pasta as your first course, then serve the meat as main course with wild greens sauteed in garlic and pepperoncino.
Of course, there is no braciole to be bought and I wasn’t about to make one. I deconstructed THAT and use the ingredients right in the sauce.
A good testament to a solid base recipe is this: even I took off running with the ingredients and put my own interpretation to it, the result is still fantastic. I may have really been Italian in my past life after all!
For my Sunday supper, I didn’t go to the length of doing the sauteed greens, but I did separate the meats from the sauce. However, I did provide plenty of scarpetta to mop up the sauce at the end.
Ragu Napoletano della Oakley
Inspired by this awesome Italian momma on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation. This recipe can easily feeds 6…or 4 really hungry people. Obviously, I winged the whole thing since momma never actually gives her recipe. So there’s really no measurement to much of anything. Trust your judgement!
Ingredients
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 lb. Italian mild/sweet pork sausage, kept whole
3-4 lbs. country-style pork ribs
1 small onion, chopped
4-5 cloves of garlic, sliced
A palm full each of pine nuts and raisins, roughly chopped
Strained tomatoes in a can, box, or bottle. I used a box of Pomi (Trader Joe’s) or a bottle of Bionaturae (Whole Foods).
A palm-full of chopped Italian parsley
Parmesan cheese rinds — if you have some. You can buy them from Whole Foods too now.
Pasta. I used rigatoni.
Accompaniment: grated Parmesan and crusty bread to mop up all the goodness
Steps
Heat the EVOO in a pot on medium-high. Liberally season the pork ribs. Brown all the meats, starting with sausage (yup…the whole thing goes in), one batch at a time. Set aside. Keep the fat in the pan.
Turn the heat to medium, add onion and garlic and a pinch of salt. Cook until soft. Add pine nuts and raisins. Cook a few more minutes.
Add the meat and juices back to the pot. Add the strained tomatoes, cheese rind and parsley. Move the meat around to get the sauce all the way to the bottom.
Bring it to bubbling. Then turn the heat down as low as it’s going to go. Let simmer. It’ll look like soup the first few hours. But don’t worry, we’re going to get that reduced and thickened.
Keep the sauce on slow bubbling at least 4 hours. VERY slow bubbling. I’ve gone to 8 hours once! Whatever time it is to achieve the fall off the bone tenderness from the pork.
Cook your pasta in a pot of boiling salted water. While pasta cooks, skim the fat off the top of the sauce, and there will be a LOT of it. Then remove the big chunks of meat and sausages from the sauce and put the meat on a platter and keep warm. It’s okay that some pieces are left behind in the sauce–we’ll just mix that in. Discard bones and cheese rind at this point.
Now, the pasta should be about al dente when you add them HOT into the pot of sauce. You can reserve a cup or so of the pasta water before your drain over the sink to use for loosening up the thick sauce to your liking. (I usually fish out the pasta from the pot and put it on the sauce directly so I have all the pasta water in the world.) If your pasta water is nicely salted, you won’t have to worry about it diluting the seasoning of the ragu.
Toss well, and you can turn off the heat now.
Serve your pasta with a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil and side of grated parmesan cheese and the platter of meat.
While I *am* indeed the official partner of Ghirardelli and a hostess to the upcoming Ghirardelli Intense Dark Pairings event for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there was a glitch in promotion and folks are being sent here to OakMonster HQ for information on the event instead of to Food.OakMonster.com where all the coverage of the event will be. Click on the banner on right or…
Get the information on the event and see how you can get on my invite list.
Ah. The woes of having an internet empire. 😉
Disclosure: Posts on the blog and twitter about the Ghirardelli Intense Dark Pairings event are based on an advertising relationship. I have been paid to host and promote the Intense Dark Pairings event for Ghirardelli. However, the opinion about the products are all mine.
Before we move forward, let’s see how I did with 2010 goals, shall we?
Goals for 2010: 6 out of 10
1. SUCCESS: Lacto-vegetarian Tuesdays. I totally rocked that. Sure, there were some accidental lapses and a few intentional ones, curiously some of those cases involved bacon. But more or less, I did REALLY good. And I even threw in no alcohol to that mix. So yay me!
2. FAIL: One hour of piano/guitar/singing, twice a month. Another victim of my television habit.
3. SUCCESS: Keep up with Italian. Still going strong despite feeling like the village idiot in class. The joy of learning the third language on your second one.
4. FAIL: Work out at least once a week. HAHAAHAHHAHAHAH …nope.
5. FAIL: Read at least one book a month. 8 out of 12 and two of those are graphic novels. So yeah, I cheated a little bit. I didn’t do so well this year because I rocked #6. And I got stuck trying to get through “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Zombie Survival Guide” when I should’ve given up and moved on. The sad reading list looks like this:
Serenity: Better Days #1 (Comic book)
Serenity: Those Left Behind (Comic book)
Angel Time – Anne Rice – the first book I ever hate
New Classic Family Dinners – Mark Peel – Read it but haven’t cooked all of it.
Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
Room – Emma Donoghue [ETA: Totally forgot to mention]
Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh
Naked Heat – “Richard Castle”
6. SUCCESS: Finish reading the magazines as they arrive. And that’s why it eats into #5 goal a little bit. I usually read my book before I go to bed so I’d bring in the magazines some nights instead. Someone was laughing at me that I couldn’t finish reading a magazine in a few hours. Unlike other people, I *do* really read my magazines, getting my money’s worth. Entertainment Weekly gets read the day it arrives, except the big issues. Food & Wine gets in the next few days as well and will get another going-through when I sift through them later to pull out recipes. WIRED and Self also get read cover to cover but over a longer period of time, in that order.
7. FAIL: Do my household paperwork on early day from the office. Not so much. I found myself using that time for something else like catching up to the DVR. Again, another victim to a television habit.
8. PARTIAL SUCCESS: Eat breakfast everyday. Not very consistent here, but I did make an effort to do so.
9. PARTIAL SUCCESS: Take a crack at National Novel Writing Month. Another weak yes. I did it but didn’t accomplish it.
10. SUCCESS: Keep up with what’s working. Starbucks and lunch out once a week for most of the year.
*
Goals for 2011
Less ambition! More routine setting!
Well, a lot of the failures last year has to do with bad television habit. It’s like a vicious cycle. If I don’t watch the show(s) that night, then I’d have to sacrifice another night to catch up and therefore losing time. ETC. Hopefully, I have come up with a good solution.
Here goes!
1. 12 books a year. One of these years I’m going to be able to manage this! Already have some books lined up to get read:
Full Dark, No Stars: Stephen King
Side Jobs: Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden short stories
Emperor of Maladies: Siddhartha Mukherjee
These will be alternating some what with a bunch of cookbooks I haven’t read yet, and the three newest edition.
Momofuku: David Chang — this has more stories than recipe!
Ad Hoc At Home: Thomas Keller
Fiesta at Rick’s: Rick Bayless
2. Play piano/guitar/sing on Sundays after dinner for an hour. More manageable and a set schedule on the least busy night of the week.
3. Eat a salad a week…Vegan Tuesdays don’t count! Trying to add more vegetables into the diet here. And yes, I switched from calling it meatless or vegetarian Tuesdays because I also don’t eat eggs. That just throw people the hell off for some reason.
4. Catch up on DVR on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends (Friday is flexible). This doesn’t mean no television on any other night. We will still watch a show with dinner, but I will not linger on the couch and watch everything else on the DVR every night of the week. Tuesdays, since I already can’t have meat or alcohol, I’ve gotta have me one of my vices!
5. Cook one new recipe a month…and blog it! This could be a total disaster, but it’ll keep me on schedule at least. Especially with all the cookbooks I have/want to read.
6. Wednesday Date Night. We MUST establish a day or it never happens! LOL
7. If the hair needs a wash, work out! With much hair, I am not going back to washing it daily. No way in hell! So, if it’s the pony tail day, it’s a work out day. And by work out, I mean doing something active. Like going for a walk or go to yoga class, or doing some mini workouts with the weights I have sitting on the bathroom floor before hitting the shower.
8. Write every week day on the way to work. It’s proven over November during NaNoWriMo that I *can* write on the bus on the way to work without getting motion sick! The route is pretty straight on and the traffic is never too staccato. And I don’t really miss the morning nap that much. That’s an hour of productive time I can have. And I should use it!
9. A secret goal. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask me personally. 😉
10. Keep up with past success. Weekly Starbucks and lunch out; Vegan & Dry Tuesdays; Italian lessons; Reading magazines as they arrive; and participating in NaNoWriMo.
It has been a crazy year. You can tell by the infrequency of my posts. Despite the fact that I have given up my involvement with Thrill the World almost completely (I still do twitter for TTW headquarter), I managed to remain as busy as ever.
I mean, look at how neglected this blog is!!!
Let’s take a look back this year, see what all I did, and give out some 2010 awards, shall we?
2010 in Pictures:
Drinking Buddy of the Year: Bus Buddy Amanda
We’ve been riding the bus together for a few years and carpooled together numerous times. But it was this year that Amanda and I started hanging out outside of the bus. We grabbed a few drinks either in Downtown LA or right here back in Los Alamitos. We occasionally dragged our husbands with us too, like when we went to the Night Dive at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Next up on our agenda is shopping. Our wallets should be afraid. Very afraid.
Bar of the Year: Chaya Downtown
I actually have visited less and less Downtown LA hot spots since last year. Work dynamic continues to shift and happy hour gathering has become more and more difficult to manage. Yet, I kept finding myself moseying over to Chaya Downtown whenever I have an excuse to do so.
At the beginning, I didn’t really give Chaya much of a chance. Compared to the cozy vibe at the Library Bar, I felt Chaya was a bit more snooty. I was proven wrong on that. Also with Library Bar having become so popular it was too crowded for my liking, Chaya has plenty of space to spread out either right up to the bar or out in their Japanese beer garden. It’s one of the better places in the financial district for happy hour these days with great menu and strong drink specials. I mean, that $5 cocktail specials they have would knock a lightweight on her ass, I tell ya!
Chaya bar is not just for drinks, but for lunch too. Bartender Greg always take a good care of me whether I was just picking up a very reasonably priced to-go bento box or sitting down to pig out alone. The food was surprising fast out there at the bar versus sitting down at the proper restaurant section.
Newcomer Award: USC Trojan Nation
Gridiron Goddess and the OakMonster at the top of the world. (Photo @ Gridiron Goddess)
It only took me 11 years since graduation to get around to buy USC football season ticket. Bless her heart, at the time of purchase, Gridiron Goddess Amy shouldn’t be spending her money on the ticket, but she did. And we roamed and ruled USC campus as tailgate nomads, lugging our own food and beverages, looking for a place to crash.
During the sesason, I reconnected with old friend Roy aka USC Psycho and crashed at my rarely-seen Trojan brother Joel and his wife Zoe’s tailgate. I never quite made it to Hawaiian Jen’s group at the engineering quad though, my one regret. I also made new Trojan tweeps as I tweeted my away games from my couch or at the bar with USC Long Beach Alumni Club.
Yes, the Long Beach Alumni Club is back and very alive! As destiny would have it, it got resurrected this year. And naturally, I joined and soon became their director of technology, handling their twitter account and soon to design their website.
More Trojan Nation shenanigan will ensue through the spring, I am sure. Thank god I’m not a basketball fan too or else my husband will never see me again…
High point of the Year: NaNoWriMo
I have great friends who always supported me through everything I do whether it’s AIDS Walk Long Beach with Team Lesser Weevils or joining GuerilLA in a spectacular improv musical unleashed upon the unsuspecting crowd at Universal City Walk.
This year I took a swing at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and raised money for the foundation set up in my grandfather’s name in memory of both him and my mom. Friends were super supportive with donations and encouragement.
I was writing on the bus on the way to work. I was writing it at lunch at work. I was writing some of it at home too. 50,000 words in 30 days proved to be too much for me as my inner editor and procrastinator kept chipping away at my words and my time. However, I did have half of that for a draft of a memoir about our family’s ties to mom’s two big folders full of fortune teller notes.
Low point of the year (other than a disappointing USC football season): Sickness and death among friends
This year has sucked for so many friends healthwise thus make it a low point of the year. Friends have been afflicted with fibromyalgia, MS, and cancer. I hate you, diseases, for making my friends’ lives unnecessarily harder. My fist. Your direction. Grrr….
Also, a former colleague who had been dealing with kidney issues unexpectedly passed away. He was okay one day and died in his sleep over the weekend. It was quite a jolt.
Holiday of the Year: Halloween for a completely different reason!
The past two years, weeks leading up to Halloween had involved running around with Thrill the World. This year, I passed on the torch so I get to have my favorite holiday back! Then again, the costume change this year was the most I’ve ever done. 5 costumes leading up to Halloween, if you can imagine.
Halloween Friday: Nerd Herder for work
Halloween Friday Party: Slave Leia for a Star Wars party at Amy’s house.
Halloween’s Eve: Crazy USC fan gear. Well, I just topped off with what became my signature Dr. Seuss hat for the game.
Halloween afternoon: a Jedi costume was thrown on to visit Gregg at the hospital. I did tell him I was going to bring out Slave Leia but I didn’t think it was appropriate for a hospital. David said if anyone was to have a heart attack, that would be a good place for it. LOL.
Halloween: Resident Evil’s Alice accompanying Brandon’s Tallahassee from Zombieland to our usual trick or treat evening at Paul’s house.
No, I haven’t seen the Social Network, Inception, The Kids Are Alright, or anything critically acclaimed. Naturally, Woody and the gang won this round.
Surprise Movie of the Year: Hachi: A Dog’s Tale
It’s a straight-to-video gem. I’ve grown up knowing the story of the original Hachikp in Japan so I was curious to see this movie Entertainment Weekly and my friend were raving about. I knew it was going to be a 3 hanky type mush so I expected a little tears in my eyes. But oh, no. No no no no. THAT was the middle of the movie. At the end, I was sobbing so hard Brandon asked if I was okay. I never cried like that for a movie. Ever.
Amy G. knows me more than I know myself sometimes. She definitely knows something I don’t when she saved me a pre-release copy of Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness she had received at an event. It only took me months to get to read it. And once I did, I was inspired and depressed all at the same time. You know, excited about the future and the fact that there’s a company out there that has the same perspective about “work should be a happy, inspiring place” as I do. (Damn you, Zappos for being in Las Vegas!) And of course, it’s a little disheartening to look at my current situation which is not quite what it could be. Then again, there’s not much fun you can really wring out of the line of work I do. *sigh*
TV Show of the Year: Doctor Who
I might have just become a late fan of the show (helloooo Martha Jones!), but my attachment to David Tennant is pretty strong. So I was very skeptic of Matt Smith’s taking over. But the show managed to change my mind and kept me glued. So, hats off to you, Doctor!
Runner Up: Hawaii Five-O. Alex O’Loughlin’s taking his shirt off every other week? If this is not the best show on television I don’t know what is. But to tell you the truth, it’s Scott Caan’s performance that is keeping me hooked. His big softy, smart alecky Danno is the only real character on the show. Everyone else is kind of two dimensional.
Oh, and you’re welcome for the following clip. (Good luck, Aquaman!)
We have always known of Koi Sushi. As a matter of fact, my memory of it was that Brandon’s parents wanted to take us there once but the line was out the door. We rediscovered it one day as a part of my quest to find a true Japanese restaurant, not just a place that serves sushi and teriyaki. Koi was exactly what I was looking for.
They hooked us at our first visit with a huge hunk of braised pork belly “appetizer”. I mean, we could’ve split that for dinner, it was that big. And it was delicious. The teriyaki beef got Brandon addicted. Tender beef cooked perfectly and the teriyaki sauce that’ not cloying. What I like most is that they a special menu that changes every week I believe. Food was fresh and portion is generous. Service was great. As long as we get there off peak hours, there wasn’t any line.
When it’s a restaurant that Brandon actually craves, that gets on my favorite restaurant list!
