(no subject)
Driving to work, two license plates: "JENSPONY" AND "MOIPONY", both on Mustangs. It is too early in the morning for that kind of thing, people.
In other news, the girl at the Fair Oaks Teavana recommended going to Teasim (which I've been disappointed by), Ten Ren (in MD), and Ching Ching Cha. The website for that last one? OMG. So promising! This after she had asked what kind of tea I liked, and I said mostly black, some green and white, and she asked whether I liked Chinese or Indian black teas. (Ten points to that woman for making the distinction after I hadn't bothered to do so!)
But yeah, Ching Ching Cha looks promising mainly because it looks like it's focused on the tea as a beverage rather than an event involving cookies, scones, and lace. Girly tea does have its place, and is often quite fun -- I'm all for excuses to eat cookies and gossip for several hours on a Saturday afternoon -- but the hot beverage is often not that good. It's related to the phenomenon where people begin with "Oh, you like tea? What kind? I just love the ___ flavor from Bigelow..." and I cringe and explain that I almost always avoid things with added flavorings. Jasmine flowers are one thing, but synthetic peach added to some rather pathetic-tasting leaves is always disappointing. (That said, I still drink Constant Comment, because it's crazy good.)
But, Jenna, what are you doing -other- than obsessing about tea? Hmm. Well, there's still work stuff, but that's not fun to talk about. There's family stuff, but I don't really want to get into it on LJ. There's relationship-stuff, but mostly it's either boring (things are just going along) or mushy. (And a small amount of reflection on the difficulty I have believing when people think and behave in a straightforward manner, and on the positive (and hopefully avalanching) good effects of being in a solid, sane relationship, and learning to trust and all that. Which is as well-defined as that thought gets at this point.)
Oh, and I'm learning to cook. The goal is to be able to do better than my mother and grandmothers, who are all pretty good cooks. (They also have the skills of preparing food for many people, on short notice, while taking into account everyone's weird aversions.) But I want to do more. I want to be able to walk into the store, see what's on sale, and make something awesomely tasty out of it, without ever having to look up a recipe. That -is- the way I was taught, basically -- because who uses a recipe to broil pork chops when they've been doing it for so many years? But I want to do fancier stuff (guest-food rather than home-cooking), and I want to use vegetables my mother doesn't cook with, and I want to understand how to make things turn out right.
One of my family members gave me a recipe-collection cookbook for Christmas. It's nice, and the pictures are coffee-table pretty. But it misses the point of what I want -- I don't want to go to the store and have my whole plan screwed over if they don't have salmon fillets in stock, and I don't really want to stock the pantry with weird ingredients that I pull out every few months for the one recipe that uses them. I want to be able to use the normal stuff -- the produce that even really low-key grocery stores carry (as if there were still any of those in this area) -- in more varied and more interesting ways.
I want to be able to start with less-processed ingredients, be they vegetable or animal: I want to know how to cut up a chicken myself, instead of being required to buy the boneless, skinless breasts out of ineptitude. I want to steer away from the temptation to add variety by using the Uncle Ben's flavored rice stuff or the Lipton's noodle packets or any number of other things that people consider good shortcuts -- not only because they're full of salt and additives and probably aren't that good for you, but because I tend to think "real food" tastes better anyway. If it's so far removed from biological sources that you can't make the six-year-old's distinction (milk comes from cows; Kool-Aid comes from a factory), why the hell are you eating it?
The Julia Child books that I also received, from other people, are much more in line with the goal. (I'm contemplating the Jacques Pepin "complete techniques" book, too, but I'm not sure whether I want it because it's useful or because I like collecting tools and reference stuffs for every single hobby I pick up.)
And now, grocery stores. I like Wegmans, and I like how "the guys behind the counters" always seem to know what they're talking about -- or can get someone who does. (That never seems to happen at Safeway -- their counter service is incredibly lousy.) I think if I wanted to have a roast larded, a process that Julia assures me any butcher will gladly do for me, they'd be more likely to manage it than anyplace else. And everyplace else seems to have scaled things up a bit to be competitive. But even the places that haven't have merits -- Shoppers sells bones for stew-flavoring, which I don't think I've seen elsewhere. Super H Mart seems sortof sketchy, and it smelled of fish in a not-so-good way yesterday, but man do they have unprocessed Stuff -- vegetable and animal. (I want to add fungal, but I didn't check for mushrooms. Oh, well.) Bloom (the closest grocery place) sells some hard-to-find stuff (organic stuff, old-school products like Borax, etc.) and often has appealing produce, but I'm always appalled at the cashiers' indifference. (I know it's probably a depressing, minimum-wage job, but damn. Don't put the dish soap on top of the lettuce. Stop ringing stuff up when you notice that the cocoa has a hole and is leaking powder all over your register -- I think I don't need to buy that one after all -- and OMG, are you just dragging the next guy's stuff through the cocoa without even attempting to wipe up? That can't be good for the register's electronics or for his pantry shelves.)
So as soon as I have a free Saturday or two, I'm going to start inviting guinea pigs friends over.
Also, the trick Adam just showed me:
Go to Google
Type in "find chuck norris" and hit "I'm feeling lucky"
In other news, the girl at the Fair Oaks Teavana recommended going to Teasim (which I've been disappointed by), Ten Ren (in MD), and Ching Ching Cha. The website for that last one? OMG. So promising! This after she had asked what kind of tea I liked, and I said mostly black, some green and white, and she asked whether I liked Chinese or Indian black teas. (Ten points to that woman for making the distinction after I hadn't bothered to do so!)
But yeah, Ching Ching Cha looks promising mainly because it looks like it's focused on the tea as a beverage rather than an event involving cookies, scones, and lace. Girly tea does have its place, and is often quite fun -- I'm all for excuses to eat cookies and gossip for several hours on a Saturday afternoon -- but the hot beverage is often not that good. It's related to the phenomenon where people begin with "Oh, you like tea? What kind? I just love the ___ flavor from Bigelow..." and I cringe and explain that I almost always avoid things with added flavorings. Jasmine flowers are one thing, but synthetic peach added to some rather pathetic-tasting leaves is always disappointing. (That said, I still drink Constant Comment, because it's crazy good.)
But, Jenna, what are you doing -other- than obsessing about tea? Hmm. Well, there's still work stuff, but that's not fun to talk about. There's family stuff, but I don't really want to get into it on LJ. There's relationship-stuff, but mostly it's either boring (things are just going along) or mushy. (And a small amount of reflection on the difficulty I have believing when people think and behave in a straightforward manner, and on the positive (and hopefully avalanching) good effects of being in a solid, sane relationship, and learning to trust and all that. Which is as well-defined as that thought gets at this point.)
Oh, and I'm learning to cook. The goal is to be able to do better than my mother and grandmothers, who are all pretty good cooks. (They also have the skills of preparing food for many people, on short notice, while taking into account everyone's weird aversions.) But I want to do more. I want to be able to walk into the store, see what's on sale, and make something awesomely tasty out of it, without ever having to look up a recipe. That -is- the way I was taught, basically -- because who uses a recipe to broil pork chops when they've been doing it for so many years? But I want to do fancier stuff (guest-food rather than home-cooking), and I want to use vegetables my mother doesn't cook with, and I want to understand how to make things turn out right.
One of my family members gave me a recipe-collection cookbook for Christmas. It's nice, and the pictures are coffee-table pretty. But it misses the point of what I want -- I don't want to go to the store and have my whole plan screwed over if they don't have salmon fillets in stock, and I don't really want to stock the pantry with weird ingredients that I pull out every few months for the one recipe that uses them. I want to be able to use the normal stuff -- the produce that even really low-key grocery stores carry (as if there were still any of those in this area) -- in more varied and more interesting ways.
I want to be able to start with less-processed ingredients, be they vegetable or animal: I want to know how to cut up a chicken myself, instead of being required to buy the boneless, skinless breasts out of ineptitude. I want to steer away from the temptation to add variety by using the Uncle Ben's flavored rice stuff or the Lipton's noodle packets or any number of other things that people consider good shortcuts -- not only because they're full of salt and additives and probably aren't that good for you, but because I tend to think "real food" tastes better anyway. If it's so far removed from biological sources that you can't make the six-year-old's distinction (milk comes from cows; Kool-Aid comes from a factory), why the hell are you eating it?
The Julia Child books that I also received, from other people, are much more in line with the goal. (I'm contemplating the Jacques Pepin "complete techniques" book, too, but I'm not sure whether I want it because it's useful or because I like collecting tools and reference stuffs for every single hobby I pick up.)
And now, grocery stores. I like Wegmans, and I like how "the guys behind the counters" always seem to know what they're talking about -- or can get someone who does. (That never seems to happen at Safeway -- their counter service is incredibly lousy.) I think if I wanted to have a roast larded, a process that Julia assures me any butcher will gladly do for me, they'd be more likely to manage it than anyplace else. And everyplace else seems to have scaled things up a bit to be competitive. But even the places that haven't have merits -- Shoppers sells bones for stew-flavoring, which I don't think I've seen elsewhere. Super H Mart seems sortof sketchy, and it smelled of fish in a not-so-good way yesterday, but man do they have unprocessed Stuff -- vegetable and animal. (I want to add fungal, but I didn't check for mushrooms. Oh, well.) Bloom (the closest grocery place) sells some hard-to-find stuff (organic stuff, old-school products like Borax, etc.) and often has appealing produce, but I'm always appalled at the cashiers' indifference. (I know it's probably a depressing, minimum-wage job, but damn. Don't put the dish soap on top of the lettuce. Stop ringing stuff up when you notice that the cocoa has a hole and is leaking powder all over your register -- I think I don't need to buy that one after all -- and OMG, are you just dragging the next guy's stuff through the cocoa without even attempting to wipe up? That can't be good for the register's electronics or for his pantry shelves.)
So as soon as I have a free Saturday or two, I'm going to start inviting guinea pigs friends over.
Also, the trick Adam just showed me:
Go to Google
Type in "find chuck norris" and hit "I'm feeling lucky"