happy fireworks day!

I hope everyone is going to have a fun and safe holiday! What are your plans? I'm meeting up with some friends from high school in San Diego for an all day BBQ and celebrating extravaganza. I had to make an emergency Forever21 run last night to purchase something patriotic for the event. If you're throwing a party or going to one, remember that everyone loves cupcakes! The ones above are from my personal Guru, aka Martha Stewart. I really like the white frosting and fresh berries look, it is very sophisticated yet playful because it's a cupcake! Even if you don't have cupcake plans for your Fourth of July, make sure to have a great day and enjoy lots of fireworks, like these cupcakes from Cupcake Project did.

four is a horrible number

Four is pretty much one of the unluckiest numbers ever, according to Chinese beliefs. But, I'm bored and Frank posted this so I will, too, since I never do memes. Maybe you'll learn a few things about me, who knows, anything is possible with a meme.

Four jobs I've had:
1. Greeter at two different restaurants
2. Resident Assistant...something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy
3. Property management assistant (I have my California real estate license!)
4. Columnist for a regional music and art monthly publication

Four movies I can watch over and over again:
1. Old School
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Sixteen Candles
4. Superbad

Four places I've lived:
1. Stockton, California
2. Madrid, Spain
3. Pau, France
4. Irvine, California

Four authors I could read over and over:
1. David Sedaris
2. J.D. Salinger
3. John Steinbeck
4. Anthony Bourdain

Four TV shows I love:
1. Family Guy
2. Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?
3. Top Chef
4. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations

Four places I've vacationed:
1. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
2.Kauai and Oahu, Hawaii
3. Paris, France
4. Mykonos, Greece

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
2. Lean cuisine pizza
3. Salad with cilantro, avocado, and fresh lemon juice
4. Yogurt and honey

Four sites I visit daily:
1. All the ones listed in my "favorite sites"
2. Facebook
3. All four of my e-mail accounts
4. iGoogle

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Laughing on the couch with Rod
2. Home with Tater Tot
3. Under the Eiffel Tower
4. Hanging out in San Francisco

best banana bread ever

This is the only recipe I carry on me at all times. Seriously, I have it folded up in my wallet. It might seem weird, but trust me, it has come in handy so many times when I'm at home for a weekend or staying with a friend for a few days. People always buy too many bananas. I don't care who you are or how many people are in your family or how much potassium you have to eat on a daily basis, you will buy too many bananas and they will turn brown and mooshy and inedible, and you will throw them away. Not anymore! Print out this recipe or jot it down on a scrap piece of paper and keep it with you at all times. Trust me, you will use it. More than once. I feel like Mom buys too many bananas solely because she knows that it breaks my heart to see them end up in the trash and wants me to make banana bread.

Some people can take or leave banana bread. I, on the other hand, absolutely love it, and have hence perfected this recipe after many trials, errors, and taste testings. I've had this recipe for a while and don't remember where I found it, but I've altered it to be a slightly healthier by using mostly egg whites instead of the whole egg, and opting for fat-free milk. Plus, it has like 3 bananas in it. That's good for you, right?

Best Banana Bread Ever



Ingredients
1 cup packed brown sugar
7 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large egg whites
1 large egg
3 bananas
1 cup oatmeal
1/2 cups fat free milk
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine first 4 ingredients in a bowl. Beat well at medium speed of mixer.

2. Combine bananas, oats, and milk. Add to sugar mixture from step one, beat well.

3. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, level with knife. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon and stir with a whisk.

4. Add to sugar mixture and beat until moist.

5. Put in 9x5 loaf pan coated with spray. Alternatively, you could use a mini-loaf pan or a mini-muffin tin, or both. I used both because I doubled the recipe and had a ton of batter. We had a LOT of over-ripe bananas.

6. Bake large loaf for approximately 1 hour and ten minutes, or until golden brown. The mini-loaf pan will take approximately 40 minutes, but I would continue to check on the bread every few minutes after 30 minutes passes, as baking times differ from stove to stove. Mini-muffin banana bread takes about the same amount of time (40 minutes).





This is the first time I made this recipe using a mini-muffin tin and I loved the results. If you're not going to eat this right away after cooling, make sure to wrap them in plastic wrap and throw them in the fridge. This recipe yields very moist and light banana bread, but if you find after a day or two (if it lasts that long!) that it has gotten somewhat dry, just wrap it in a moist paper towel and pop it in the microwave for 15 seconds. It brings back the moisture and makes it nice and warm.

Twin loves this recipe so much that once when she was feeling pretty homesick in college I FedExed her a loaf overnight for $32. A lot of money, I know, but it was worth it!

wanted: prince charming

Twin isn't getting married anytime soon, but I found her the perfect cake today from the fabulous bakery Pink Cake Box. Sadly, they're all the way in New Jersey, but since Twin is single, I think we have some time to find a local bakery that would be able to make something similar in time for the (eventual) wedding.



Oh, and for her bridal shower? A glass slipper cake, of course!



My favorite cake was an adorable cat and pizza novelty cake:



Substitute the cats with Pomeranians, and you're speaking my language. I think this cake would make a super cute birthday cake for someone that loves their pets and pizza...just like me! This, uh, was a cake made FOR the pets, though. In the product description from Pink Cake Box, the baker writes, "A couple recently approached us and asked if we could make a cake for their cats. They were planning to have a pizza party celebrating their cats birthday and wanted a cake to match the theme." I swear to G, if I ever even pretend to want to spend 300 dollars on a cake for Tater Tot, someone punch me in the face. That is straight up not normal. I don't care how much you consider your animals to be "a part of your family," there is no way they need a cake that costs several hundred dollars that they can't even eat.

strawberry, to the rescue!

So I have no idea what is going on with these Targets in the SoCal area, but I've only been living here for two weeks and my two most amazing moments thus far have occurred in Target stores. Maybe it's just chance, these things could have happened anywhere, but by freak accident happened at Target. Maybe it has to do with probability, I spend most of my free time in Target so of course I'm going to have most of my non-school experiences there. Maybe it's like that whole salmonella outbreak with tomatoes where restaurants stopped selling them and then they were super expensive in grocery stores and then reports came out that officials aren't even sure if it really was tomatoes that were the cause of the outbreaks and I don't really know where I'm going with that example but it was really annoying to not be able to find tomatoes anywhere. Who knows what it is, but last week I met a celebrity in the school-supply aisle, and this week I became a hero in cosmetics.

I was wandering aimlessly from section to section, as I tend to do in Target, before landing in the exercise aisle and trying out a few different free weights. I spent a few minutes there, trying to convince myself how much I need and will use a pair of pink 3 pounders. I was just about to put the weights in my cart but then got distracted when a woman, frantic, ran up to the Target associate a few feet away from me and started shrieking about losing her son. The associate acted very calm and proceeded through a series of questions and actions that much have been stressed during her training period because she had the system down pat, let me tell ya. Anyway, within 30 seconds the employee had been able to calm the mother down enough to get a physical description of her son, the child's last known location, and then the associate whipped out her walkie talkie and radioed everyone in the store that a "code yellow" was in process. I understand what it feels like to lose a child (dog, in my case) so the situation wasn't funny, per se, but I was sort of amused by the whole "code yellow" schpeal. I mean, I didn't laugh or anything, but I definitely could have laughed. If I wasn't four feet away from the distressed mom.

Suddenly a storm of red and khaki figures were descending on the scene from all angles, and after a quick pow wow they all went running off in different directions in search of the missing child. Normally, if someone's child were missing, I would chip in with the search, but there were so many people already looking I figured I would just get in the way. So I continued with my shopping, making sure to glance down each aisle as I passed, just in case I saw the boy.

Ten minutes had passed and I was on the opposite side of the store, debating which SPF would best suit my every day needs (see yesterday's post re: sunburn) when I heard a faint rumble rumble squeak rumble coming towards me. I looked up from the oil-free SPF 45 and toward the noise and saw a little boy, all by himself, riding a tricycle. He didn't look lost or scared, but I had a feeling it was the lost kid from earlier, so I leaned down and in my most non-threatening voice I said Hi little boy, I think your mommy is looking for you. His hand shot up from the tricycle immediately and grabbed mine, and, bending down closer to the tricycle, I pulled him on the bike to the nearest Target employee who was able to get him back to his mom. In other words, I saved the day. Unfortunately, there was far less fanfare and confetti than I would have liked, but it still felt pretty good.

the sun burn cometh

I am the only person I know who could go outside for 30 minutes wearing SPF 15 and get sunburned. Not only did I take preventative measures to spare myself from the harmful effects of too much sun, but I was also mostly in the shade. Three months from now when I've been without a glimpse of sunshine for weeks in smog-covered China, I'll be praying for blue skies and yellow sunbeams. For now, though, I'm gonna go ahead and raise a recently manicured middle finger in the sun's general direction. Tomorrow, I'll be using SPF 30.

it's kind of sad, really

Twin sent me this from cuteoverload.com today, it would be funnier if it wasn't actually sort of true:



For real, though, Chinese people do eat dog. I guess in some cities guys bike around with these carts that have puppies tied to the back, which people buy then cook. SICK. How about I just buy a bunch and have a whole apartment filled with cute puppies. Then when they turn into not-so-cute dogs, I can release them into the wild and buy a new batch. I'm totally kidding. My apartment is strictly no pets.

well, at least someone will care about this blog when i'm in china

I guess in the back of my mind I was aware of it, but I didn't fully appreciate the extent of Chinese censorship until last night. Every Tuesday night all us graduate students have to meet for "highly encouraged" informational sessions from 7-9 P.M., because we're not insanely busy or anything. Last night the first 45 minutes were spent by some guy talking about his experience working as a ministry in Hong Kong which couldn't have been more boring to me. I mean, religion is cool and all, but I have no intentions of "spreading the word" in China, so I don't really care about effective and safe ways to do so.

On the plus side, there was an alumnus there to share her experiences on living, working, and studying in China, and that was really interesting. She mostly talked about the shock of Chinese toilets (they're squat toilets, as in you have to squat over them because there isn't really a toilet at all, it's just a hole in the ground), but she also briefly mentioned issues with communicating home and the Chinese government tracking literally everything you do and write. Immediately, visions of uniform clad men with menacing eye patches and swords attached to their belts kicking in my door and yanking me away from my desk as I write yet another intriguing installment in the life of Strawberry popped into my head. I mean, this actually happens, people. It seems amusing now, since it's so far removed from my sphere of reality, but there is an ever so slight chance that it might happen. And by that I mean it's actually possible. Here in the good ol' U S of A, the worst that could happen from writing scandalous material in your blog is that you get fired from your job and end up making 40k a month by blogging full time (Dooce is my hero).

It's all very unlikely, though, especially since they're mainly concerned with people discussing socially sensitive issues like religion and politics, which just so happen to be the areas I am least interested in writing about in China! Lucky me. However, I will have to self-censor some of my content from time to time, I'm sure. So this is just a warning beforehand, because if I were to write about the government censoring my blog content while I was in China, it would probably be immediately removed from my website. I know very little about the internet so I'm not even sure how that's possible, but China is constantly monitoring it's citizens, especially foreigners that are living there, and I have read several articles in the past hour or so talking about people whose e-mails were mysteriously deleted or had posts suddenly go missing. Also, to be even creepier, they totally go through the real mail. Their technology is so sensitive that you can't even detect that they opened the envelope, but things will be blacked out or cut away from your letters.

In a way, it's kind of flattering. It's nice to know that someone cares enough about my life to check up on why I'm Googling "johnny depp naked" and getting InTouch magazine and easy mac shipped to me bi-monthly. Let's just hope those don't become politically sensitive activities.

it's tuesday and i'll cry if i want to

I tend to avoid things that give me a headache. There are plenty of things I put myself through on a daily basis that I find uncomfortable, like wearing heels for example, but the pain of a headache is something I usually try to avoid altogether. In fifth grade when I went to see Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, I walked out of the theater because watching the alternating high and low speed transitions made my brain hurt. After about 30 seconds of Tom Leykis's grainy voice spouting misogynistic propaganda to penis-driven young males and insecure females, the beginning pounding of a migraine forces me to change the station. If only I had a choice when it comes to Chinese.

Of course, I do have a choice. I could just not go to China. However, that's not really an option. I want to go to Shanghai and teach English more than anything I've ever wanted to do before, but learning the language is like putting my head through a vise while simultaneously listening to recordings of the word "Ma" being said in all four tones. I have never tried to learn something before that literally gave me a headache when I studied it. Today in class, after a series of encouraging words, my professor offhandedly commented that I needed to practice my Pinyin and I nearly broke down into tears. Of course I know that I need to practice my Pinyin, to date I've only had 9 hours of formal instruction in Chinese, but after being asked to distinguish being "zh" "ch" and "sh" for thirty minutes my brain had reached maximum capacity. I am definitely making progress, but like any sort of language learning, it is taking time, especially since I have to learn how to read and write characters as well. Luckily, my class is super small (four people including me), so I was able to pull each person aside today and warn them of the inevitable waterworks that will occur sometime between now and the last class in 4 weeks.

To help in my Chinese language endeavors, I filled my Netflix queue with a bunch of Chinese and Taiwanese films and will be watching them over the next month to somewhat immerse myself in the verbal part of the language. It's pretty cool that this school is in southern California because there is a huge Chinese population, and so many stores and businesses have Chinese characters in their signs. So far I can really only recognize 5 characters, two of which are in my name, but when I do see a character I recognize it feels so rewarding. Approximately 3,000 are required to be able to read a mainland Chinese newspaper, so looks like I have 2,995 to go.

nobody likes you when you're 23

That's right. That's Travis Barker, the drummer of Blink 182. And even though it goes against the lyrics of one of his better known songs (I'm 23), he totally liked me. I even got to put my head on his shoulder! Swoon.

I spent the weekend with Rod, relaxing for a few days at his home in the Los Angeles area. Even though it was about 15 degrees hotter than it is here in Irvine, it was great to get off campus, out of my dorm room (yes, I am sharing a room with someone else and sleeping on a twin bed), and ignore my graduate studies for a couple of days. Oh, and meet up with some celebs.

As a way of avoiding overheating in the 109 degree weather, Rod and I spent the day shopping and sightseeing around town. I love Target so when I saw the big red bullseye we decided to go in and hang out for a bit. After trying on a bunch of clothes I didn't really want or need, Rod wanted to make his way over to the car accessory area to check out a bunch of stuff he didn't really want or need. On the way down the aisles I spotted a super sweet Hello Kitty lunch pail that I had to talk myself out of immediately grabbing from the shelf. While looking at it, though, I heard a guy talking to his son about a Pirates of the Caribbean lunch pail, telling the little boy it would be better to wait until school started to get an even better one.

I can't ever eavesdrop on a conversation without looking at the people talking, so I casually turned my head over my shoulder and saw a very tattooed man with two adorable kids. This guy looks familiar, I thought. Right away in my head I was screaming "TRAVIS BARKER! TRAVIS BARKER!" but Rod had also seen the man and didn't seem phased at all, so I figured it was probably just a case of mistaken identity. After all, he was wearing a hat, and plenty of people in LA are covered in tattoos. But still, I turned to Rod and whispered, "OMG, I think that's the drummer from Blink 182." Rod was just as skeptical as me, but urged me to get a closer look at the man to verify if it was Travis or not. And so my not-so-inconspicuous trailing of Travis Barker through Target began. I pretended to not be following him, but it was pretty obvious that I was navigating through the aisles a few steps behind him, quickly looking away if he ever turned in my direction.

A few times he caught me staring at his tattoos, so I decided to take a moment, grab my Treo, and try to find some recent pictures of the drummer on the internet. Well, my phone was going incredibly slow and was of absolutely no help, but I persisted. Rod kept pushing me to go ask him if he was, indeed, who I thought he was, but I was so embarrassed and worried that it really might NOT be him, and how weird would I sound? Oh, um, excuse me, your tattoos look like the tattoos of this band member guy, are you him?

After finally giving up on my Treo plan, I looked around for the man and couldn't find him, and had almost resigned myself to the thought that I had missed a golden celeb sighting opportunity when I noticed a girl around my age taking a picture with someone who was standing in line to pay, and my suspicions were finally confirmed!

Did I run up to him, embrace him tightly, and pledge my ever dying love for him? I wish. I didn't even want to go up to him, I was so nervous. I insisted to Rod that I didn't want to bug the drummer since he was clearly there trying to be low key and buy toys for his kids, but in truth I was too scarred to talk to the guy. Rod wouldn't take no for an answer (thank goodness!) and made me ask for a picture. Travis was so incredibly nice to me. I admitted to him that I had thought he was from Blink 182 but wasn't really sure, and that I had been following him around the store for a while (he laughed at that). I also got to tell him what a huge Blink 182 fan I was which he told me was "awesome", and he assured me it was "no problem at all!" to ask for a photo even though he was there with his family. After I bought a tank top and a pair of shoes, I passed by Travis one more time as he was packing up two carts full of things for his children and I told him thank you again for taking a picture with me, he told me "Oh no! It's totally cool. Have a great weekend!" And I totally did.

sex in irvine

Ya, that title is misleadingly provocative. What I mean is I finally saw the Sex and the City movie with my roommates on Thursday night. You all know everything there is to know about it, so I won't bore you with a review of a movie that came out a month ago, but I did want to briefly mention that I liked it a lot. At first I thought it was going to be super lame because of how everything in the first twenty minutes was panning out, but over all I thought it was a perfect end to six great seasons of a show any woman can relate to. And of course, it made me think about love and relationships, and what it really means to be with someone through thick and thin.

I read an article a few months ago titled "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough", which I promptly forwarded to all of my best girl friends. I found the article through Martini, a happily single and fabulous girl about town who was somewhat skeptical about the whole idea of settling, but I felt strangely inspired and invigorated after reading the piece. Long story short, the author argues that women are often ingrained to have unrealistic expectations when it comes to relationships, particularly that they should never "settle for anything less than butterflies," to quote Carrie Bradshaw. The point is, the butterflies eventually fade from any relationship, and sometimes settling isn't so much lowering your standards, as it is learning how to compromise, which is something everyone has to do if they want to be in a happy, loving relationship.

Of course, there are deal breakers in any relationship. My deal breakers are extremely lax; for example, unless you punch me around or refuse to ever spend money, I would probably be willing to have you as a boyfriend (if I were single). The article is pretty long, but I definitely think it's worth the read. Since I know most people won't read it, I'd just like to add the section I think best exemplifies her argument: "My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.) ... I don’t mean to say that settling is ideal. I’m simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap."

In other words, don't be so damn picky. You're not going to find your soul mate because your soul mate doesn't exist. To paraphrase Chris Rock, you won't find someone who loves Jerry Seinfeld and the Wu Tang Clan, and if you do, it won't be the right time. So love the one you're with, or if you're not with someone, learn to be open minded when it comes to relationship expectations. There's a difference between a person not being everything you wish they would be and being a bad partner, y'know? Luckily, my boyfriend is pretty damn near perfect. But if he doesn't start shaving more often, he's getting the boot! Err, well, I guess I can let that one slide, as long as we can compromise that I don't have to shave every day either. Now that's something I could learn to live with.

what's the chinese word for "impossible"?

My cross cultural textbook that I was required to read before I went to France in 2006 made the profound statement somewhere around page 58 that "Expectations are premature disappointments." Yeah, that might sound a little pessimistic, but think about it. How many times have you expected something from someone and had them let you down? Or had a picture in your head about how an event or place would be, and then experienced something completely different? I don't think of that phrase as pessimistic, I think of it as realistic. A nicer way to put it I guess would be to say "Expect the unexpected."

When traveling or doing something where you are put into a position far outside your comfort zone, it is better to have overall goals rather than expectations. Like, I don't expect to learn Chinese over the next four weeks, but my goal is to be able to write my Chinese name with ease (and not need to look at an image of the characters) and to know at least 30 characters and 10 phrases. So far I already "know" a handful, the real test is being able to retain it all.

The image above is my Chinese name. The first character is my surname, "Ma", which is a common surname in China and most similar to my American family name. The two other characters are "Li Kou" pronounced "Lee Koh" which semi sounds like my real name (which was the point, kind of). Li means beauty and Kou means red and also young lady. I really wanted something with the word red in it, and I think this name sounds really pretty when you say it out loud. My super awesome Chinese friend came up with it (and 10 other options) for me. He's a filmmaker and just got accepted into USC's film school, hopefully one day he becomes famous and gives me a job writing screenplays for his Oscar winning movies. They'll be all about cupcakes and pomeranians and other fabulous things.

a real valley girl

Even though I'm from the valley (the central valley), I don't think that's really what everyone means when they talk about "valley girls." Yet, I feel so connected to the southern California state of mind, and by that I mean I am completely superficial. Well, finally my location has caught up with my attitude and I am officially a valley girl for 6 whole weeks while I'm doing the summer school portion of my graduate studies. I have class pretty much all day Monday - Friday, which sucks, but it's going to be exciting being in school again and learning all sorts of new things. For example, tonight I learned that when you receive or give a business card in China you must use both hands to hold it, and if someone is giving you a business card you have to look at it for several seconds before putting it away in your purse.

Anyway, I wanted to share an anecdote from the other day as a way of illustrating that I have more in common with Cher from Clueless than simply owning a white jeep and having tons of clothes. My cousin's step son was over at my house for a while on Friday and we got to talking and he shared with me that he is joining the navy. What was my first reaction? "AWESOME! Now for the rest of your life whenever you attend a formal event you get to wear your cool uniform!" Of course there are a million other (and better) reasons for joining the navy, but that was the first thing that popped into my head and regrettably left my mouth. Not to be outdone by my total airheadedness, he quickly replied, "Oh, yeah, that was pretty much what sealed the deal for me."

In other news, I have three roommates who are all very different but all seem really cool (so far). They're all going to be in Shanghai, but will not be teaching at the same school as me. A lot of people in this program are super religious, which I don't have anything against but it's definitely not the type of person I am. Someone sort of put me on the spot tonight asking me if I would be willing to go to the same church as this other girl who doesn't have a car and I had to answer that I don't go to church. Not everyone is like that though, and I know that at least one of my roommates isn't an avid church goer.

OH, and finally, David Sedaris came out with a new book! It's called When You Are Engulfed In Flames. Knowing him, it's totally amazing. I just uploaded it to my Kindle and plan on reading as much of it as I can tonight, so I'll give an informed opinion on its merits once I'm done.

one man's trash

...is another (wo)man's 600 bucks! I always talk mad smack about yard sales (because seriously, it sucks having one), HOWEVER, it was pretty awesome walking away from six hours of sitting around telling people how much things cost with tons of cash in my wallet. I'm having the second installment of my yard sale extravaganza tomorrow. My parents have been super enthusiastic about this whole project and my dad keeps taking stuff out of storage to add to the sale. Hopefully I make a few more hundred tomorrow, that would totally rule. I seriously had no idea I would make this much money from stuff I don't want/need anymore.

itunes lies

ITunes has a new commercial out that plays every 20 minutes featuring sexy, sexy Chris Martin singing Viva la Vida from Coldplay's new CD. As a general rule, I love any kind of Apple commercial. I don't know what kind of people they have in their marketing department, but they're seriously geniuses. That whole Mac guy VS. PC man thing? Classic. Well, that aside, the Coldplay commercial is a total lie. At the end of Chris Martin's little jig, a black screen appears with the words "exclusively on iTunes." Really? Is that why I tried to order it today and was informed that it would not be available for download until the CD release on July 17th? Thanks, bitches, for totally bursting my lanky-white-British-musician loving bubble.

new banner

To be fair, I'm actually not IN China yet, but I got the idea for a clever cartoon-y looking image of a Chinese food take-out box filled with strawberries the other day and have been wanting to change my banner for a while so I decided just to make the leap. That and the fact that I spent three hours taking pictures of strawberries in take-out boxes, cutting them out in Photoshop, then learning how to make them look like a cartoon. I hope everyone likes it, because I promise I am not changing my banner for a long while. Slight adjustments, maybe, but I really like this image and I worked very hard on it, so it's here to stay.

it's only wednesday?

Things I am looking forward to this week: Friday (dinner with Bebe downtown then ogling over the hunkiness of Edward Norton in The Hulk), tonight's Top Chef finale, moving to SoCal on Sunday, shopping for clothes for China, mani/pedis, depositing graduation gift checks.

Things I am dreading about this week: Friday (hosting a huge yard sale in order to get rid of a bunch of stuff and make some mad money for China), Saturday (yard sale continues), packing for SoCal, leaving Tater Tot, waiting in line at the DMV.

I'm super psyched for tonight's Top Chef finale. I don't really care who wins, as long as it's not Lisa. Okay, so I guess I kind of care who wins, but seriously, she is such a whiny bitch I can barely stand watching her. My mom and I had a Top Chef party tonight which wasn't so much a party as it was me cooking a new and adventurous meal for my parents. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it, but Rod is Persian and of course introduced me to the wonder that is Persian cuisine. I absolutely love it but have only cooked it once and it was a total fail, I halved the entire recipe except for the salt and so the dish was total sodium overdose, gross.

Well, this was a Top Chef party and the whole point of Top Chef is to push your boundaries, so I gave Persian food another go and this time is was actually quite delicous! I made zereshk polo which is basmati rice with barberries and I even successfully managed to cook it with tadig and everything! Tadig is this hard layer of sort of fried rice that forms on the bottom of the pan after cooking the rice and it is so freaking delish. I also made chicken sautéed with onions in a lemon and saffron sauce and a very simple, fresh salad with avocado, cilantro, lemon juice, and olive oil. I would include the recipe for the rice, but it was seriously over 10 steps long and also took over an hour to prepare, so just enjoy the gorgeous picture of my first edible Persian meal.

a HUGE test of will power

I am not even joking, there is a giant vat of cream cheese frosting in the fridge here.  What is wrong with these people?  Are they moonlighting as Keebler elves or something?  I don't get it.

a test of will power

My mom's best friend and her husband went out of town for a few days and their housesitter bailed on them last minute so Strawberry to the rescue!  I offered (for a price) to watch their house and cute mini poodles for them, not knowing that their home is the personification of temptation.  I walk into the kitchen, set down my housesitting gear (laptop, gossip mags, toiletries, pillow & blanket), and immediately spot two home made pies and two plates of freshly baked cookies.  And it didn't stop there, the fridge is stocked with tons of delicious not diet drinks like IBC rootbeer and pure pomegranate juice, and they have about six boxes of the best cereal selection ever.  Good thing I came prepared with my not-so-appetizing 240 calorie Lean Cuisine pasta meal for dinner.  Also, I got on the scale this morning to make this whole "losing 10 pounds" thing more official, and I weighed 4 pounds less than I thought I did!  Total score.  That's almost as good as finding $20 in the back pocket of some jeans you haven't worn in a while.  Actually, who am I kidding, weighing four pounds less than you thought you did is way better than finding any amount of cash.

what was i thinking?

I already regret giving up sweets. It's only been an hour and I'm going through withdrawals. Must. have. chocolate.

Speaking of food, I don't know what my dad eats when he's watching TV, but the remote is always greasy when he leaves and I take the remote to switch channels. It must be his way of marking his territory, y'know, wiping his Swiss cheese nom-ing fingers all over the place. It also might be his way of hinting that I need to stop camping out on the couch and actually 1. go do something during the day or 2. hang out in my own room instead of taking over the family room.