Haitus Interruptus

Hello Beautiful readers!!!

Sometimes commitments, like writing blogs, don't work out the way you think they will. They will either fix themselves or they won't. But as the Little Bear's Mom reminded me that I have an easy platform for describing the terribly interesting events in my life so...I'm back for a moment.

First, MC's who are covered in glitter and give away tickets to see Prince are pretty awesome.

Second. Due to some pretty convoluted circumstances and confidentiality clauses..Psych! I can't actually tell you what's going on in my life! Instead, I will give you a musical tour of my life's events and emotions, for the most part in the past month. As always, identities are preserved by ridiculous nicknames but if you want to know exactly what's going on, please message me.

About a month ago, I volunteered for an event showing pre-teen girls that science is awesome. I was really stoked about this event as it only happens once a year through my school. Needless to say, I was a bit annoyed (but concerned) when my Mum called me ten times between the start of the event and lunch. When I finally got a hold of her, I found that my Darling Brother had gotten himself into a good ol' snowboarding accident. Neither he nor I have ever skiied or snowboarded previously. I don't think I'll be picking up the habit.

These two videos describe my Darling Brother, if you don't know him or didn't know he existed.

 and 

Cool cool. So I can literally do NOTHING about this situation. I quickly reach this conclusion and drop the matter as much as I can without being a sociopath. I tell my Darling Brother to quickly start Physical Therapy and stop working until he's healed. Well, you know how good teenage boys are at listening to their sisters.

Leading up to Pi Day, I was busy as a bee planning my super spectacular Pi Day party. To those who knew about both, my party was put on the same level as the Math department's, which is a pretty large department. Partner Penguin was an amazing help, and brought the pies from the bakery to the venue. The party was a fantastic success. I would like to point out that Partner Penguin and I are Geeks in Love.

That evening, after being elated from a job well done, I got struck rather rudely by some bad news. The Miser died. The Miser and I have had a complicated relationship. Well, complicated is a polite word for it. But as of late, I regarded this man as a pretty solid father figure in my life. He had genuine love for me as a sort of daughter and always treated me as such.

Part of why this blog is in songs is because I don't have the words yet to describe who this man was in my life. Grief is not an emotion I am familiar with. It is not a process I understand within myself. The only person I've known who's died was my grandmother, who raised me for most of my life. While she died “young” at 75, she had been very gravely ill for many years and it was a relief and a blessing to me when she passed. This was different. The Miser's life habits were obviously not healthy, to anyone with an ounce of sense. But he was never sick, never in the hospital, never had anything very wrong with him. And then he just takes a nap one day and WHAM! Massive heart attack.

Without my consent, my body decided to have the immediate reaction of a Hunger Strike

The bright side of this is that I now fit into a size 8 dress and I'm going to try to keep it this way.

The downside, of course, was that I was dreadfully hungry. I eventually was able to eat again, but it's still not always as exciting as it used to be. :/

The very next week, I had two midterms. I took many breaks and perhaps did not do as well on them as I will on others, but that's ok. I went on a hike with the Kittenman (girls love his pussies). Since it was the end of the week, we decided to go on a road-trip. But instead of a road-trip, we wound up eating Indian food. It's ok, sometimes these things happen.

One night, I had a little Defying Gravity moment. By which I mean I saw Oz The Great and Powerful and relived my 16-year-old love for all things Oz. I abandoned all sads at the door and snuck in half a cheesesteak. I must now note that Hollywood has an astounding ability to make something I cared less than nothing about (The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald) into a movie that looks good enough for me to possibly pirate several months after it comes out in theatres.

Upon leaving the movie theatre, all my sads rushed back, with the angry vengeance of being abandoned for several hours. This resulted in my winding up at the Otter's house, wrapped up in a handmade quilt pretending to sleep for the night.

(Music credit "Spirit Sea" by Ged Flood since I found him through him not being properly credited in this video)

However, after another week's time, bicycling, gallavanting with the Portly Asian, reading more than is healthy for any person on an iPad Mini, and meditating, things started to get better.

Partner Penguin and I also got to spend some quality time together.

And of course, we had some food like this:

and now I'm mostly back to “normal.” Hahahahahahaha.

Who knows. Maybe I'll start writing regularly again.

Plantains

3 very ripe plantains

galic, chopped finely (I made the mistake of not caring and eating large chunks of fried garlic.)

dry chili flakes. If you're fancy you can probably make fresh.

Enough oil to cover your pan ¼ in. I used Avocado

Put oil in pan. Bring to smoke-point (so you know where that is) and immediately reduce heat by about half. After 30 good seconds at the lower heat, add the chili flakes and garlic. Sautee for 2-3 minutes.

Bring in the bananas!! Plantains are heartier than regular bananas, and yummier, in my opinion. Slice the plantains about ½ a knuckle thick. Place slices belly down on the pan, making sure nobody dogpiles (1 layer only). Flip every 3 or so minutes. Don't cover. Be very attentive that things don't burn.

When they are all delightfully crispy looking, put them on a plate with a paper towel and let cool. We ate them with chopsticks! Yum!

Tortillas all the way down. Or was it tortugas?

Well I'm on a writing binge (yes, it's just as gross as it sounds) so I figure I'll write a blog because... well you've missed me for a month, haven't you! I also realized that I need to write regularly because when faced with a REALLY important application, I've failed pretty hard. It's thanks to some amazing friends and family who aren't afraid to speak honestly to whoop my ass into writing something that may qualify me for AwesomeScholarhipofAwesomeness. We'll face the verdict of that some other time, hopefully.

I will re-asses when school starts what my posting schedule will be because I have two labs per week this semester. Yey chemistry!!!

In the meantime, it's the end-ish of winter break and due to some incredibly idiotic bureaucratic decisions at Craptastic Community College District, my financial aid is in in a horrible money jail with no bond. WHICH MEANS IT'S TIME FOR ENDLESS BURRITOS!!!! (warning, I am unabashedly White and this is not a traditional recipe, it's something I just made up.)

Endless Burritossss

• Tortillas, 10”. Can be corn or flour. I use flour because I don't do well with corn
• 1 can (14.5 oz) canned tomatoes. Try to find un-seasoned. A case of these is about $8 at Costco. (can use 2 medium fresh, more expensive though)
• Either 1 medium onion of ½ of a large onion, chopped finely
• 2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• a bunch of olive oil
• 1 cup rice. I like brown rice since it takes longer to digest. I chose long-grain. There is a difference in cook-times with different rices, so this is less trivial than it seems.
• A bunch of water
• *1-2 serrano peppers. Jalapeño are also acceptable.
• ¾-1 cup dry beans, prepared and cooked. See some other blog of mine for bean cooking. Spices to cook with might include bay leaves, Better Than bullion, thyme. No oregano for this dish! Here it is! Towards the bottom of the page
• *MEHIIKAN CHEEEESE (Mexican cheese). We got the shredded, four cheese blend from Costco. Trader Joe's also sells a nice blend. Or you can visit your local Mexican grocery store.
• *Sour cream
• *guac, if you're into that.

*ingredients optional and based on financial availability. Guacamole you can get cheaply if you live somewhere that you can buy avocados or pick them off trees.

Rice first! First things first, make sure your pan/pot is about 10” in diameter and 2-3 inches thick. If you need to make the rice in a different pot, do that. Don't want overflow.

Make sure you've cried out all of your onion tears. On a medium heat, warm oil and put garlic and onion in pan. Translucify the onions. They shouldn't be full-on caramelized but they should be mostly there.

Add the matoes. Fold the tomatoes so they are evenly distributed with the onions. Then bring in the rice. Fold in the rice so it's evenly distributed because it will fall to the bottom and it won't matter. Cover the whole mixture with water, so that most everything is submerged. Bring to boil. Boil for 5-10 minutes, covered.

Reduce heat and let simmer, checking and stirring about every 10 minutes. Water is your friend and it tends to disappear so make sure there's plenty of it till close to the end. The more the rice cooks up, the more you will have to stir to maintain even distribution because rice clumps. White rice usually cooks in 20 minutes, brown in 40.

Rice and beans: 

NOW THE PEPPER.

Yep. I'd never actually used a hot pepper before I randomly decided to buy two serranos. Different peppers have varying amounts of optimal wrinkly so ask your friendly grocer what means what. Serrano are more spicy than Jalapeños.

Things I learned too late:

• scrape out the white part and the seeds unless you really like spice. 
  • If a pepper tastes like bread, you will be in pain within a matter of minutes, have glass of milk or horchata nearby.
• DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T DO IT. And if you did, DON'T WASH IT AND SPREAD THE OIL CLOSER TO YOUR EYES. Just let it burn. It hurts like a son of a gun but it's not worth getting in your eye. Believe me.

Best to do all of this without touching your face at all and wash your hands thoroughly about 5 times before touching your face.

I chopped up the pepper to the smallest pieces my knife could manage. Then I folded them into the rice mixture. I think two serrano peppers turned out to be too spicy but only by like..half a pepper's worth. You'll notice that I didn't include cilantro. This is because I hate cilantro. But if you're one of the people who likes it, go ahead and chop some up at this point and add it!! It's probably good at this point to transfer the rice to a pot or something so you can use the pan to actually make the burritos.

Tortilla-friends

We had a house-mate for a while who subsisted on quesodillas. He would put the tortilla directly on the gas burner and cheese would drop on the little thing that catches stuff around the burner. Though this pissed me off to no end, it was very informative in terms of how puffy a tortilla should be before adding anything to it. The gist is that you want a few bubbles puffing up, then flip and there should be bubbles.

Be kind to your house-mates and use a pan. Apply tortilla directly to pan on medium-low heat. If things start burning, lower the heat. It will work, just takes longer.

Let tortilla bubble on one side, flip. Bubble one second side and put on a plate.

add rice

add beans 

add cheese

fold this way

fold that way

Or maybe fold your own way because mine turned out trapezoids instead of mostly round.

Put some oil, enough to kinda cover the pan but not too much that you'll deep fry, in the pan. Place burrito, folded up side down.
 I would suggest keeping the heat pretty low on this part so nothing burns because it tends to. Play it by ear and check every 4ish minutes to see if it looks toasty. Then flip.

THEN EAT YOUR BURRITO!! ¡MUY DELISIOSO! Add sour cream and guac as you see fit.

I made a bunch (hence the large amount of ingrediants), let them cool and then wrapped them in tin foil and froze them. My guess would be let thaw then micro and maybe toasty-up on stove if possible for re-heating. I can also see an oven working out ok, but it'll probably take an hour from frozen.

This song, particularly his face throughout, is my new favorite song.