I really enjoy reading Bittman’s writing.  I used to read his pieces in The New York Times, back when I had to time to actually read a newspaper, and I follow his blog daily.  My family are unknowing fans, as I’ve backed countless loaves of his famous No-Knead Bread.  He’s a no-nonsense cook without the expecting his readers to be skilled culinary artists with copious amounts of time to spend in the kitchen.  I like cooking, but I don’t want to spend my entire life doing it.

When I came across this book at Powells on the sale rack, I grabbed it and half debated whether I’d just skip the rest of the work day to go home and start reading it.  When I finally had the chance to crack it open, I was instantly hooked.  I grabbed my blue post-its and immediately started marking recipes.

Here’s the thing.  I’ve been feeling like most recipes I come across are either meat-centric or very vegetarian.  While I enjoy eating meat, I don’t need it to be the main attraction, and while I enjoy eating vegetables, I sometimes feel like it lacks depth of flavor when it stands alone.  I’m also married to man who loves for his protein to come in animal form.  I’m not joking; he eats with such fervor when his plate is piled with meat.  But I feel gluttonous when the only vegetable on my plate is the onion in the sauce, so I try to offset it with a vegetarian meal on occasion.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him sit at the table and quietly (read: sadly) eat his veggie dinner, only to get up and grab a yogurt from the fridge as soon as he has eaten a sufficient amount that won’t raise my eyebrows.

Thankfully, The Food Matters Cookbook gives me the best of both worlds: meals that are chock full of vegetables and grains but also include meat and fish.  But unlike so many of the other cookbooks on my shelf, the dishes don’t overwhelm you with meat.  The amount is just enough to flavor and satiate.  I’m so excited to try out some of these recipes, I’m almost itching to go to the grocery store right now!  I can imagine what my husband might say as he reads this post: if a cookbook can actually get me excited enough to go shopping…   

I couldn’t log on.  I had changed my about-to-be-expired network password yesterday, so I figured it just hadn’t propagated out to all the systems.  I called the help desk only to find out that, for some mysterious reason, my account had been disabled.  The man on the other line outlined the steps necessary to re-enable it, which involved me notifying my manager, who would then need to submit a ticket to the help desk (yes, the very same group I was currently on the phone with), who could then reactivate my account.  Then he said something where I about fell out of my chair.  He said, “It’ll take us about a day, so you’re going to have a pretty unproductive day.”

Generally, I find email to be pretty distracting at work.  I often close Outlook altogether when I really need to concentrate on something, but at my workplace, just as any large company, so much is done through email.  Meetings are changed or cancelled at the last minute, and innocent inquiries spawn into ongoing conversation threads.   All day I felt like I was sitting at the dark, waiting to be enlightened.  I tried to work on tasks I had set out for the day, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was missing some big update to the project or change in direction.  I should have really just gone home; I probably would have accomplished a lot more.

At 4pm I walked over to a company-sponsored social where food and beer were served.  I am generally pretty relaxed about alcohol during the workday, especially when the employer/client is providing it and everyone is drinking responsibly.  But usually when these events come up, I’ll grab some food, mingle a bit, and then head back to my desk to finish up work before heading home.  Today, however, all things considered, I felt no reason to try to salvage what was already an unproductive day.  I drank my one beer and chatted up with various people from my project and then headed home.

Later in the evening, when I was sitting with my daughter and showering her with kisses, she stopped me and asked, “why do you smell like beer?”  It was then that I felt this twinge of guilt.  Not because I had a beer, but because in her mind, beer does not equal work.

Today, she would be right.

You see, I grew up in Minnesota, where there are far more Scandinavian descendants than there are of the Asian variety, and the Chinese sought one another out like moths to a flame. They created a bond based on the mere fact that all of them left their families in either Hong Kong or Taiwan for an education and all of them stayed and started families of their own, on their own. Instead of growing up with siblings or cousins, many of my childhood memories are filled with other ABCs, American-born Chinese. Our grandparents lived on the other side of the Pacific, and any relatives we did have in the US lived in densely populated areas like California or Boston. We spent holidays, both Chinese and Western, together. Our parents threw potlucks and dinner parties where the adults sat around the formal dining table while the children played games in the family room. Our parents kept tabs on all of us and how well each of us did in everything we did. We were all raised similarly, with similar expectations, and while we all tried desperately to fit in with our American friends, we accepted and embraced the community our parents had built for themselves and for us.

As a mother I very much miss having a community for my family, particularly for my daughter. She doesn’t have siblings, and her cousins are far away. I love that my cousin (whom I love like a brother) and my sister-in-law live in Portland, and she loves being with them. But when we are together she is the lone kid, and I think she is aware of that. She’s at an age where she understands that she is not always a part of the conversation or the center of attention, and I sense she craves a relationship of her own that is in parallel to ours. Most of our friends have children, but we don’t see them consistently enough. Mike has his friends, and I have mine. The overlap is small. Thus, we spend time with friends like we are on rotation, on an individual basis, and never in the multi-family settings I grew up with.

I suppose maybe this is a compelling enough reason to start going to church?

I despise grocery shopping. I always have. Before parenthood, my husband and I often went out to eat. I enjoyed cooking but not enough to have a consistently stocked pantry. Sometimes, we’d make a thing of it where we did it together, as a couple. But when my daughter was born, especially as she got into eating more foods, it was necessary evil, and it became a strike-force task: get in and out as quickly as possible.

Posted via email from Margaret Wang

After so much rain and gloom, it finally feels like Spring may actually arrive here in Portland. Today was a beautiful day, and Mike took full advantage by sporting around in shorts! You can tell someone was hungry for some sun since it barely hit 70 degrees. I’m just hoping we get a few more days like these…I don’t want another cold and short summer.

I finally got around to picking some flowers from our yard. I love fresh flowers in the house!

Posted via email from Margaret Wang

I wanted to give the kiddo a dollhouse for Christmas. She’s always engaged in some sort of imaginative play, and she always plays with the dollhouse at our favorite toy store. So deciding on what to give her was a no-brainer. But if you know me, you know I can be very picky about, well, everything. I had scoured all corners of the Internet to find something within my budget (otherwise it would’ve been Plan Toys Eco house). I finally found it: a wooden dollhouse with some color, furniture (including a weight set and bench!), and doll. AND it was modular so you could “build” the house to whatever your tastes. All for $80. I was so excited, and I had over two months until Christmas! Then I screwed up. I didn’t really know where I was going to store the thing without her seeing it, so I decided to hold off on buying it. When Mike said I could hide it in his workshop, I decided there was no rush and that I’d wait until cyber Monday, just to see if it would go on sale.

That morning, as I was drinking coffee, I went to online to buy it. Only the dollhouse didn’t come up in the search results! After a slight panic, I remembered I had copied the link. Click. “Noooooo!” It was sold out. Ok, I thought, I’ll just check if other places carry it. I had vaguely remembered other stores having it, but I couldn’t remember their prices. After searching every store I could think of and entering about a thousand different wordings of essentially the same item, I couldn’t find one for anywhere near the $80 tag. The next best price was nearly double, after accounting for shipping (first place had free shipping). At this point, I kicked myself. Hard. I wasn’t sure what to do. To buy both house and furniture was going to blow our budget. The runner-up set no longer seemed suitable to me. I started to think that I would just scrap the idea altogether and get her something entirely different. After talking it over with Mike, I decided I’d just get her the furniture, and we’d make do with boxes or something. After all, she’s still young enough that boxes are toys, too. And what good is house if your dolls have no place to sit or cook their food? At least this way, I could pick and choose the furniture sets.

After some time, I started thinking that maybe I could whip up a cardboard version. Just something a tad better than using a shoebox. Of course, then my brain said, “Nah, Miss Destructo will crush it in no time”. In the end, I got some foam core board (like what they use for displays and presentations) from the dollar store, and, with scrapbook paper, pages from a catalogue, and wrapping paper, constructed a one-of-a-kind dollhouse. it may not be what I originally had in mind, but to her, it’s perfect (Christmas was over a month ago, an she still plays with it). And in the end, that’s all that really matters right?

Not quite step-by-step, but I documented the “construction” with photos.

Posted via email from Margaret Wang

Adding to the kiddos ever-growing collection of stuffed animals, I saw a knitting pattern (link to come) for this ridiculously adorable giraffe and wanted to make it. It was my first knitted toy, but I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Now, I just have to refrain from cuddling with it myself…at least until Christmas.

Posted via email from margaretwang’s posterous

Channeling my inner-Martha

Posted via email from margaretwang’s posterous