Eleven questions

I came across these questions from the lovely Hannah J. Holmes in my Reader, and thought I’d give them a whirl because: a) Insta-content! I haven’t gotten around to editing/culling our 700 (no joke) Disney World pictures yet, so that recap will have to wait, and b) They’re interesting enough to give some insight into the respondent without being as tiresome as the usual “A to Z”-type memes. I’d love to see your responses, either in the comments or in a post of your own! Here are mine:

• Let us begin with the most important matter: Do you like cake? Why or why not? I think the answer here is obvious: it’s half of my blog name, you guys. I am a cake fan, but also a bit of a pie die-hard. In the eternal battle of cake v. pie, I’m going to have to be Switzerland. It doesn’t to anyone any favors to declare the supremacy of one over the other; excellent cake and pie are wonderful, and mediocre/bad cake and pie can bring a party right down. I’m sure there’s an extended argument to be made for crust v. frosting, but it’s too early to contemplate baking and whipping together butter and sugar.

• Have you ever been to Paris? If you have, tell me about it. If you have not, would you like to go someday? I’m lucky enough to have been to Paris twice. The first time, I was twelve, and was just there for a day (I was visiting family in England, and we did the obligatory Eurostar/bus tour). The second time, I went with GP and his parents, and…this happened. I can’t wait to go back (we sort of have to, right?), but there are many other destinations on the list before we can make a return trip.

• Given the choice, would you rather go out to eat at a fancy restaurant or stay home and order takeout? Provided that I have something to wear, some cash to spend, and am in good health, I’ll choose to go out to eat any time. This has mostly to do with my predilection for fancy food and dressing up, but also the lack of good delivery food in my neighborhood: our options are limited, I believe, to Indian, pizza, and maybe Thai.

• Similarly, would you rather go out dancing or or stay home with a warm blanket and a good movie? Here is a poorly-kept secret: I am not a “club” person. Between the dodgy dudes and alarmingly strong drinks made with alarmingly cheap alcohol that I survived as a member of a sorority in college, my desire to be bumped around by a lot of sweaty strangers is nearly nonexistent. On a Friday or Saturday night, the warm blanket and good movie (or even mediocre movie, I’m not too proud to admit) win out most of the time. That said, I wouldn’t rule out a cat-alarming dance party in the living room!

• What’s your opinion of Ugg boots: cute and comfy or too ugly to meet the sun? As the owner of a legit pair of chocolate-brown Uggs, I’m going to have to split the difference: yes, they’re sort of ugly, but they’re comfy as hell and are basically like being allowed to wear slippers in public. I generally wear them on weekends only, and have a strict set of rules about what they can be worn with (the only pants that get tucked into them are the jegs, and the thought of wearing them with anything but jeans makes me sort of itchy).

• Now onto the second-most controversial shoe known to man: What is your take on Crocs? While I will admit that, in a moment of pre-Disney weakness, I considered purchasing a pair of Crocs flats (there is a lot  of walking around at Disney World, you guys, and people seem to go ape over these shoes), I stayed strong and resisted the urge. The traditional, clog-type Crocs? Ugly as sin, and only vaguely cute on children. Don’t get me started on the idea of Crocs (which are shoes that have holes in them) as appropriate kitchen footwear, Mario Batali.

• Do you sing in the shower? The car? The opera house? I hum in the shower, sing my lungs out in the car, and have anxiety dreams about singing in opera houses.

• Do you have any unusual fears or dislikes? Well, no. Because it’s not unusual to dislike birds, which carry disease and are living dinosaurs. (CREEPY, is what I’m getting at.) I do like them as a design element, but will straight up kick a bird in its face if it comes too close to me.

• Have you ever seen snow? If so, do you remember your first snow? My first memory of “going to the snow” (which is what Central Valley Okies call it, or at least the ones I’m related to) is probably from when I was about six, and we tobogganed down a medium-sized hill in the lower Sierra. I’ve made up for my lack of early-life snow by marrying a dude who both snowboards and is from a place where it snows in the winter– which means that recreational winter trips include a lot of me staying inside and reading.

• Would you rather play in the snow or spend a day at the beach? Beach, but only with some sort of shade. I’m not an entirely crazy person, you know.

• Do you peel your banana the right way or the wrong way (meaning from the bottom or from the stem)? I’m going to have to take issue with the phrasing of this question, because this article clearly proves that the “right” way to eat a banana is from the bottom to the stem. Hence, I eat bananas the right way, but not in the way that this question seems to think.

#1: Eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant

I was lucky enough during the holidays (barely a couple weeks after I’d originally created and posted it) to begin checking items off my 30 Before 30 list. The first one to be completed was, completely coincidentally, the first one, to eat at at a Michelin-starred restaurant. The criteria for this particular one was a bit arbitrary, even if the Michelin guides are pretty reputable: there are quite a few restaurants in the area that have one or more stars, and just because I had this one meal doesn’t mean I would turn down an invitation to Manresa or The French Laundry. (Of course not, I’m not hopelessly ridiculous.)

As a Christmas gift, my grandma opts to take us all out to a nice dinner rather than having to buy a sleigh-ful of gifts. This works out well for her, as it simplifies her Christmas errands, and it works out even better for us: shalom Christmas, shalom awesome meal! This year, we went to The Plumed Horse in Saratoga, which has one Michelin star. Because their holiday bookings were so, well…booked, we ended up at the chef’s table, which has a big window so that we could see into the kitchen as our (and others’) meal was being prepared. There was no Gordon Ramsay-style shouting, just a lot of precision and very shiny pots and pans. And the food! Oh, the food. We had a seven-course tasting menu (plus a couple add-ons), which consisted of…

Caviar and blinis

Lobster cannoli

Seared Yellowfin tuna with Ankimo Torchon (and a little more caviar)

Black pepper and Parmesan souffle with uni and Dungeness crab fondue

Seared foie gras

Kobe beef with shaved black truffles

(Slightly blurry, sorry) Pineapple panna cottaIce cream atop tapioca with foam

Bruleed bananas with sorbet

Raspberry sorbet and layered gelatin

We ended the meal, as you might imagine, completely stuffed and at least a little tipsy (not pictured are the cocktails, ice wine, and various reds and whites that complemented each course). It was fantastic to get through a first 30 Before 30 item, and all the sweeter to have enjoyed it with my family.

Sorry my arm looks like a football player's thigh here-- but I'm wearing the Mad Men dress!

Looking backward, looking forward

I was reading something recently that cited a study that could “predict” aggression levels in people while they’re drinking, and I’m going to attempt to extrapolate these findings to non-boozy settings. Sounds like Real Science, right?

Everyone lives his or her life preoccupied with some combination of the past, present, and future. Too much of any single one of these can lead to some serious periods of funk (and not in a fun, dance-y P-Funk sense), and I’m hoping that I’m coming ever closer to striking the balance that’s right for me. I was never much for focusing solely on the past– where’s the fun in that?– and have always preferred to have a fairly active imaginary/dream-life in which I envision all the different paths that I can take– pretty much like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but with actual life…where you don’t get to mark your place in the book, just in case you want to go back. In the past couple years, I’ve made more of an effort to appreciate the present moment, which has led to richer memories and a still-satisfying view of the future. The difference, I think, has been that I’ve found myself in moments in which I think, “I can’t believe this is actually happening.” (See: walking the streets of Tokyo in September, for example.)

In 2011, I made a set of resolutions. They were (in case you missed the dozen or so update posts):

• Take more (and better) pictures
• Read 40 books
• Meet a blogger in real life
• Try 30 new recipes
• Regularly practice some form of exercise
• Dinner at the table at least twice a week

Having achieved at least a moderate level of success in most of these, I feel comfortable establishing some new goals for 2012. Sure, I have the 30 Before 30 to work on, but what’s a few additional goals between me and the internets? In 2012, I want to…

• Read 45 books
• Host friends for dinner monthly
• No computer/internetting (in the case of a possible smartphone acquisition) after 8 p.m.
• Establish and stick to a personal spending budget
• Eat mindfully (less booze and caffeine, more water, less fast/junk food, more produce)
• Be active (either join a new gym or commit to moving my body regularly)

Happy New Year, internet! May you raise your glasses at midnight in joy, and find everything you hope for in 2012.

Christmas in review

We’re not even done celebrating Christmas yet– have to go to my Mom and stepdad’s tonight, and celebrate with my Dad tomorrow night– but it would be nice to get through all the Christmas-ing before 2012 rolls around, right?

As is our biannual tradition (which the Cambridge online dictionary says is the right way to communicate “every other year,” but I’m still skeptical), we headed to New York to spend the holiday with the in-laws. The day after our cross-country flight, we continued the traditional boys-go-skiing, ladies-go-to-the-spa outings (I think the MIL and I got the better end of that), then packed up the Saab and headed to Rockland for Christmas Eve with my sister-in-law, her husband, their adorable baby, and about twenty other extended family members from both sides. We brought painstakingly-decorated cookies (see the below likenesses of my FIL and GP; please also note that these two men are basically identical) and a whopping eight bottles of wine in our (free!) checked baggage.

We returned home last night with a bottle of champagne, various books about Disney World (where we’re headed in just over a week), some awesome aquamarine earrings (see the below no-makeup-Christmas-morning shot), and assorted other gifts.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a book to demolish and a cat to molest pet an appropriate amount.

2011 resolution check-in, day 347 of 365

Oh, lordy, the lists! I know. And I’ve been doing exciting things, too, things that I want to tell you about! But first…the penultimate entry in my 2011 resolution series. Tracking all these things that I’d said I’d do at the beginning of the year has helped me to feel like I’m progressing toward something. Even if that something is just the last day on a calendar, or a check mark next to a number, it helps when I get that feeling that nothing is getting accomplished around here. (I like to balance my more manic bouts with supreme hopelessness. It’s super fun.) So, here’s where we are:

Take more and better pictures
I took eleventy katrillion pictures in Japan, and will be (of course) documenting the trip out to New York for Christmas. We’ll look at Flickr for final judgement, but I think I’ve been doing fairly well at this.

Get a grownup, non-intern job
I still have it, they still like me, it only makes me crazy about 15% of the time. We should all be so lucky, right?

Read 40 books
36 of 40 so far, and multiple in progress. Maybe next year I’ll get all crazy and go for 50?

Meet a blogger in real life
So, all right, here’s the deal: either I don’t live in an area rich with bloggers, or I’m unfortunately friends with lovely bloggers who happen to live rather far away from me. Maybe both? I did head to a ‘pinup in October, which was a cool exercise in Meeting Strangers From the Internet, and ended with a few new friends and some (real!) bottled Coke in a Mission taqueria. Close, enough, I say!

Try 30 new recipes
31. Awww yeah. AND! We had a cocktail party last weekend, and…you know how I am good at Making Way Too Much Food? Yes, that. Also, n.b. about parties, particularly around the holidays: when you tell people it’s ok to bring things, they will invariably bring sweets. (Or wine, which we also have a ton of.) So, when you’re planning your party, it’s ok to lean toward the savory end of the spectrum. Either that, or just get excited for the dozens and dozens of cookies that will be left in your house, and which do not interest your husband in the least.

Regularly practice some form of exercise
You guys. My gym closed. While this, of course, sucks…it’s pushing me to be more creative about how I’m getting myself moving. This usually means walking like a maniac, but I do miss the structure of the gym. Maybe I’ll join the Y with all the other resolutioneers in January?

Dinner at the living room (like people) at least twice a week
GP is pretty great at keeping me on track with this one– it’s nice to feel a little more like grownups when we have a proper dinner setup, I think.

30 Before 30

This will probably end up being its own page (much like my Reading and Cooking pages…if you’re in a Reader and don’t usually click over, you should!), but I thought it would be appropriate to post my 30 Before 30 on my 28th birthday. Celebrations started last night, when my mom and I went to a local “Ladies Night Out,” which mostly consisted of dodging over-Chardonnay-ed white ladies as we browsed Christmas tchotchkes, but also included my first birthday present! Thanks, Mom. Also, thanks for giving birth to me. That can’t have been easy, from what I hear.

And now, without further ado (not “adieu,” as much of blog-land seems to believe)…

1. Eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant

2. Take a cooking/cake decorating class

3. Take three weekend-trips to destinations I haven’t visited before

4. Complete a 10k (or two non-back-to-back 5ks)

5. Go horseback riding

6. Hike to the top of Mt. Tallac

7. Host a ladies brunch

8. Send birthday, thank-you, and just-because cards to three friends each month

9. Have a live Christmas tree in my house

10. Attend a UCLA football home game at the Rose Bowl

11. Have a Big Fat 30th Birthday Party

12. Wear skirts/dresses every day for a week

13. Fill up a paper journal

14. Save $10,000

15. Learn to apply liquid eyeliner well

16. Watch every Best Picture winner

17. Watch 12 live performances (musical, theater, etc.)

18. Take a photo a day for a year

19. Donate to a charitable organization each month for a year (money or time)

20. Support local artists/businesses

21. Adopt and train a dog

22. Reread six books that I loved as a kid

23. Teach someone to do something

24. Learn to knit or crochet

25. Create and send out photo holiday cards

26. Eat only non-processed food for a week

27. Weed my book collection

28. Develop a signature dish

29. Visit five local museums or historical sites

30. Own three “investment pieces”

28 Things I Have Done in 28 Years

I’ll be 28 tomorrow, and that’s when I’ll share the 30 Before 30 list that I’ve created. (See? I promised lists and…voila! They are ready to be unleashed onto the internets.) While I was making that list, however, I started feeling like it was a little silly to think of all the things I want to accomplish in the next two years without acknowledging at least a some of what I’ve accomplished in the preceding 28. It was an experiment in both reflection and curation, as it turns out that I’ve done more than 28 things…hopefully what I’ve included actually bears inclusion. (As in, yes, “Learned to read” seems basic, but literacy is important, and I really like reading.)

1. Learned to read

2. Played the violin

3. Tasted wine in Australia, Napa, Sonoma, and the Sierra Foothils

4. Swam in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico

5. Visited 10 Disney parks in 3 countries

6. Completed 18 years of formal education

7. Hiked to the top of Vernal, Nevada, and Chilnualna Falls in Yosemite

8. Worked as a grocery bagger, a barista, a tutoring center co-manager, a research recruiter, a library intern, and a research assistant

9. Learned to speak, read, and write in Spanish

10. Developed a strong relationship with the Oxford comma

11. Driven a moving truck

12. Flown first class, internationally

13. Traveled to seven countries and fourteen states (I’m including D.C., adjust accordingly)

14. Seen two Broadway shows

15. Taken ballet and gymnastics classes

16. Colored my hair

17. Made bread, ice cream, caramels, and jam from scratch

18. Explored Paris, London, and New York on foot

19. Gotten married

20. Lived in a sorority house for two years

21. Cooked a meal for my family and used my wedding china

22. Snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef

23. Watched every episode of West Wing, Sopranos, Mad Men*, Dexter*, and Friday Night Lights (a couple of these are in progress, and I plan to keep watching, idiotic marriages or M. Night Shyamalan-esque plot “twists” notwithstanding)

24. Rowed a boat in the Grand Canal at Versailles

25. Made a latte for Tom Hanks

26. Eaten at the Chez Panisse Cafe

27. Traveled by train (Frankfurt to London and Rhinecliff, NY to Montreal)

28. Read Chaucer in Middle English (with glosses, fine, but still)

15 Small Things and 7 Big Things for Which I Am Thankful

It would seem that late fall is List Season for me… (I say this with no fewer than three lists in the works. Yikes.)

Small Things I Am Thankful For (in no particular order)

• Free shipping
• That I live within walking distance of a family-owned grocery store, a rose-filled public garden, and a library
• Romantic comedies
• Amazon Prime Instant, Netflix streaming, and Pandora
• Waffles on Saturday morning
• The internet
• Slippers in the winter, flip flops in the summer
• The Sharks, the (baseball) Giants, and the (UCLA) Bruins
• Wine
• Rosebud salve
• My Kindle
• Fresh produce from my backyard
• Tote bags
• Board games
• My food processor, stand mixer, and toaster oven

Big Things That I Am Thankful For (again, no particular order)

• A family that I not only love, but also genuinely enjoy and get to hang out with regularly
• Friends who put as much time and energy into our relationships as I do
• My husband, who is a partner in the truest sense of the word
• My education, which is ongoing
• My job, which is valuable and valued
• My body, which is miraculously able and healthy despite the steady stream of caffeine and couch-sitting
• That circumstances have allowed me to pursue and protect numbers 4-6
• The reassuringly-large world, and my reassuringly-small-but-important place in it

Friday, I love your face

The last couple weeks have been a little trying, health-wise (the in-laws brought a throat-focused ailment to town with them, which left us both with tonsillitis, then I had The World’s Worst Sinus Headache for a couple days this week), but I’m finding plenty of reasons not to completely take to my bed immediately after limping home from work. Among them…

• An anniversary dinner at a nearby Austrian restaurant, which allowed us to taste some never-before-sipped wines (even beyond the wonder of grüner veltiner!) and sigh over some pretty wonderful spätzle (and, clearly, to have more fun than ever thought possible with umlauts)
• A flurry of online-purchase shipments, including our now-traditional anniversary album (Yes, two years in a row does a tradition make. That was some weird syntax right there.)
• Friday Night Lights. I know I’m about five years late to the “I love the Taylors” party, but you guys…I love the Taylors. And Matt Saracen (and his grandma!), and Tim Riggins, but not Lyla Garrity. Sorry, just can’t. Even when she’s getting her locker defaced with lipstick.
• Christmas music on Pandora. Somehow, I skipped over the segment of July in which I desperately yearn for sweater-and-hot-chocolate weather, but I’m making up for it now– the perfect counterpoint to hours of Powerpoint editing at work.
• Moccasins, my new iteration of house-slipper. GP has been rocking the moc slippers for quite some time (you’re welcome, dude), but I had been holding out for the right pair…which I found for about $12 at Target. It’s all I can do not to just wear these everywhere during the weekends. Target, you complete me.
• The beginning of hockey season. Not just because I get to regularly sport this shirt, but because I missed those guys. We have full-season tickets now, so I’ll get to do even more power-play-shark-mouth-hand-signaling. Joy!

Tell me, friends, what’s making your week? Also, here is a picture of me in some Sally Jesse Raphael glasses, taken in Japan. Enjoy!

Caturday: Guess who’s coming to dinner

When we manage to eat at the actual dining table, Sydney always makes sure he’s perched in his seat, looking beseechingly in our direction. It is awkward and hilarious to explain to guests that they’re “sitting in the cat’s chair” when they come over for dinner. (Why yes, he does have a favorite. Why do you ask?)