Screw Work, Be Social

My life for the past week or so has been roughly divided in three parts:

1.  The part where I’m super social and having lots of friends over or going out and having a good time.
2.  The part where my mum is visiting and we clean and cook together because she wants to make sure I get my deposit back. We also laugh a lot.
3.  The rest of the time where I spend entire nights on the bathmat because my bathroom is literally the most warm and comfortable place in my house. Who invented “wide open spaces” and also “single pane windows.” If I ever live in a big house (read: more than 2 bedrooms, assuming less than 2 kids) please remind me that I hate large living spaces and what the fuck am I doing with my life.

We’re going to focus on parts 1 and 2.

The delightful thing about keeping my “Gratitudes” journal is that it’s like a snapshot diary, but only of good things. So this way when I want to remember what happened, I can just look at the day and be like ::smile:: “Oh yeah, that was a pretty cool thing that happened.”

Being social, going out, having friends over and having a good time

One of the cool things that happened was that the Tenor and I made Pho. That was pretty chill. Good Panda asked me a while back to write more recipes so I wrote the recipe. It is very classically me: it will certainly point you towards making a food, but in the meantime it a work of comedy.

Pho á la Sara

Ingredients:

· 1/2 lb or so of beef. I've been using about 1/4-1/3 lb per person when I cook this. As you suggested, you could probably get it cut really thin by the butcher. I go for the cut-up steak that says "fajita" on the package. I'm lazy.

· 1/2 Tbsp butter (side of butter wrapper has tablespoons marked out)

· 1-1 1/2 Tbsp Lee Brand "Pho: Vietnamese Beef Flavor Paste" (By half I mean just use the same scoop twice and put half as much in it. It's safest to start with real measuring spoons.)

· 8 oz mushrooms, white or portabella. Can sub any kind of veg here, but I think mushrooms are a safe starter veg. Shrooms can be cut any way you like, quartered or "pizza style" or whatever. Make sure you wash those fuckers first though. They grow in poop.

· Pho noodles. I used half a 16 oz package for two people. Probably 1-1.5 oz of dry noodle per person, if you can judge it. Or just use half the package.

· 2-3 Green onions

· half a fistful of cilantro. Sara sized fist, not Tenor sized fist. Probably a quarter of a Tenor fist. Haha. I never noticed how funny the word fist is. Fist. Whatever, cilantro is for garnish. If you cilantro (or parsley or celery) ever looks sad because it's dry, put the stem bits in water. They'll perk up in an hour.

· 1 jalepeño pepper, cut in 1/4 in slices. More if you want more spiciness. DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE OR ANY OTHER ORIFICES. Just don't.

· Sriracha (cock sauce) and plum sauce to season

Cooking instructions:

1.     Heat saucepan/pot (big enough for all the soup) to medium heat. Add butter, moving it around pan/pot by either rocking pot or moving it around with a set of tongs. Butter should be bubbly but not burn-y. Lower heat if butter is doing nothing but bubble. It should just hang out as a delicious liquid, occasionally bubbling.

2.     Add the steak bits. [As previously stated, this is Sara-Pho not restaurant-pho. In a restaurant they add the meat at the very last step because the high surface area allows it to cook in the broth.] Brown steak bits on all sides. This means allowing the bits to sit on one side for about 5 minutes or until brownish-grey in appearance. 

3.     Remove steak bits from pan and put on plate.

4.     Add water to pot so pot is about half full.

5.     Add Pho paste.

6.     Cover pot and leave on medium heat to boil. Boiling takes a while.

7.     Chop up your mushrooms, if you haven't done that already. If you're The Tenor, make loud choppy noises for no reason on the cutting board. ;-)

8.     While waiting three and half days to boil, chop up the green things. Put in mugs like a classy person to ornament your Pho. Or remikens. Or other small dishes.

9.     Add cut up mushrooms to broth when it starts to boil (bubbles around edges). Stir frequently but keep covered.

10.   As broth comes to a rolling boil (it's always bubbling, there aren't any calm patches) add your noodles. That should make the broth calm the fuck down for a bit. Noodles should cook 2-5 minutes but check the package for specific details.

11.   Noodles are done with they're squishy. Check texture by tasting it. Once desired squishiness is achieved, turn off heat.

12.   Serve broth with noodles into a comically oversized and mismatched bowl.

13.   Add meat, green toppings and hot/sweet sauce as you like. Keep in mind that jalepeños continue to cook as they're left in broth so just take them out when you're done with them.

Traditionally (restaurants) will give you bean sprouts with your toppings. Since we live in TLoTH, I couldn't find any fresh bean sprouts. The Outdoorsy Sage suggests pea sprouts that can be found at the store far away. I am a derp at finding them though, so here we go, sans bean sprouts!

AND THEN EAT YOUR BEAUTIFUL SOUP!

(Picture of Pho from a previous iteration, mostly to illustrate the hilariously 3 little bears-eque bowls I own.)

Another night, I went over a friend’s house and discovered my coat was full of spiders. Like, literally I had no bites and all of a sudden my shoulders were COVERED in spider bites. Fortunately this friend had a washing machine in her kitchen and she was kind enough to let me use this washing machine. I think I showered for 45 minutes when I got home. I felt like I was in A Scanner Darkly for the entire next day.

Besides that, dinner was AMAZING, the company was good and the wine…well it was Pinot Noir. So of course I had to introduce the friends to Peeno Noir. Because Titus Andromedon. We also looked up Hawaiian Superman which is pretty funny as a song. The hostess friend also made candy geodes and later gave me one. BEST. It is super-saturated sugar syrup dried out on fondent. Literally sugar on sugar. I took tiny little bites and had to eat a chip between each one. My taste buds are still confused.

Adventures picking up Mum 

Retrieving Mum from the airport was an interesting exercise in patience. The plane didn’t make the original connection that meant poor Mum stayed up for almost 24 hours straight. Fortunately I had some good friends (The Jr. Ranger and a new friend: Tall Dark and Handsome [TDH]) drive with me to airport (90 min away) so I wouldn’t fall asleep or have panic attacks on the drive home. Before picking Mum up from airport, I dragged them to a Polish restaurant. TDH was hilarious. He had never had Polish, or German or Russian food. There was a portion of the drive down when he kept asking if there were possibly hamburgers. But he was very brave and tried a plate of perogies. I got what they called a “Russian Roulette” of perogies. The Jr. Ranger was very comfortable ordering stuffed cabbage. She and I traded halves and all the food was super yummy and delicious. We brought down the house and the owner kicked us out at 9 pm. But he was SO nice about it. He was like…I’m really sorry to kick you out so have some reusable bags and a couple candy bars!

When Mum finally did arrive, we got this really sad message “lost my luggage”. So I immediately (as immediately as possible, airports are hard) parked. I walked into where she was talking to the attendant and walked up quietly behind her. As soon as I came into view I said “Here is some chocolate. It will make everything better.” Of course at some point I hugged her and told her I was glad I was safe, but chocolate is priority in these situations. I also gave some chocolate to the poor woman who had to deal with an entire flight of lost luggages.

Saturday was a bit of a drag because Mum was exhausted. Like a good daughter, I left her at home and went out partying on my own that night. I had a BLAST. I went to a board game group where I got to be a Viking and buy sheeps and stuff to build boats. I was surprised I liked that game.

Then the Jr Ranger, The Mexican and me went to go dance. The little beer co-op in town occasionally brings in a live DJ and they spin for a couple hours. On Saturday it wasn’t crowded so we got to dance around and have such a great time. I danced for 2 hours straight. Need to do that more! One thing this “club” had going for it was that there wasn’t any creepy grinding or leering. Even though this town is tiny, I have to give it mad props for pulling off a safe space to dance. That’s pretty damn difficult to do.

Sunday morning was derby practice as usual. For the first time, I actually participated in the full 2 hour practice. Mum sat on the side watching. Once we started to scrimmage my teammates called out to her “Ozone Mom, come inside the ring so you don’t get hurt!” I thought it was adorable.

Then, for the first time, I got to jam!!! The sport of derby is basically the story of 1 (jammer) against 4 (blockers). Jammer has to pass blockers. Blockers have to prevent jammer from getting by. So for the first time, I went up against 4 big strong women and tried to wrestle my way through their wall. It was exhausting but exhilarating and so much fun. I had some pretty good momentum built up and then someone shouted out “Take the hole. Make a hole in the Ozone!” I lost it. I cracked up so badly that I totally forgot what I was doing. It had somehow never occurred to me that choosing my name would lead to that exact pun.

Anyway, if it had been a real bout (match) I would have gotten 3 points, out of 5 possible. DO WANT MOAR. I’m gonna go work out all the time now so I have enough strength to do that again! Maybe another day though, my mum is still here and I have to do stuff with her that isn’t working out.

Hanging out with Mum

I have considerably less adventurous stuff to share about having my Mum here. We have mostly been cooking and cleaning together. We’ve had: Seared tuna with asparagus and rice, ratatouille with gorgonzola and chicken soup so far. We have had a lot of laughs over silly things like excessive spoons in tea and waking up at 4:30 am to tell me it’s snowing. We’ve had a lot of discussions about our identities and how they overlap and don’t. It’s made me very happy that she noted I am definitely her daughter and my Bubba’s granddaughter because I keep two towels for showering (one for hair) and fold my clothes like a retail person. We’ve talked about family and health and very little about politics. I introduced her to Gravity Falls and Hayo Miyazaki and The IT Crowd. I have been particularly appreciative that Mum has pointed out traits in my friends that may be difficult for me to see. This is very helpful as I’m assessing who are good influences and whom I want to keep in my life after this year. And also what kinds of traits are non-useful. To be fair, she’s only been here for 4 full days so we’ve done a lot. My apartment is considerably cleaner now.

To close out, Mum and I chose this version of this song. The original song’s music video is pretty far out there and we agreed this was more…entertaining. Please pardon the speaking parts. Except that the speaking parts have a guest appearance by Erlich Bachmann and Gilfoyle so they’re worthwhile for that!