ionic blooms

I haven’t posted in a good long while. Ugh, who knew graduate school could entail so much work? Well, here’s a drawing I did a good long while ago.

According to my sketchbook, I drew this June 10, 2010. I remember drawing it on the plane ride from the US to China and some of the Chinese people nearby were watching me do all these drawings and kept asking me about what I was drawing. My Chinese was pretty lacking at the time so the only way I could explain it was to say “flowers” but I don’t think they quite understood. Ha. The plane ride itself was pretty horrible (middle seat for a REALLY long flight) so I was really glad to be able to talk to someone to break up the boredom.

Eventually I’ll get around to turning it into an Illustrator file, but right now I just don’t have that kind of time. Sigh. Off to do more homework now.

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on a now-deleted blog and is reposted here for my own sake.]

what do you do at 3 am?

The below picture was taken at approximately 3:30 AM. Ah, yes. I baked cookies at an absurdly late hour. My sleep schedule is once again topsy-turvy because I managed to turn off all of my alarm clocks and not wake up until 6 PM, which left me wide awake at 3 AM. This happens way more often than it should. So what does any normal person do at 3 AM? Well, I for one decided to be productive, so I washed dishes, did laundry, and made cookies. Go me.

almost valentine’s

Tuesday is Valentine’s Day and I really don’t care. I like holidays and especially holidays that involve chocolate, but I’m not a big fan of the heart shapes everywhere or the red. I’ve never really liked the color red. But … Bjarke Ingels (BIG Architects) has this installation in Times Square, so I went down to see it. Eh. Since the structure uses LED lights, it was probably more impressive at night. Anyway, it was a nice little trek away from my part of the city so that was fun. And I can’t wait until I get me some chocolate!

chicken nuggets for dinner

I generally don’t eat the healthiest. Actually, I eat quite horribly if you’re talking nutrition. I generally like things that are yummy, greasy, sugary, artery-clogging. The good thing is that I don’t eat out much and I rarely eat fast food. It’s just that it’s such a hassle to cook. But … since I was procrastinating, I decided to make dinner. So I made myself chicken nuggets! Yum.

I chopped up some chicken breast into pieces that were about 1/2 inch thick. Dipped them in egg and covered them with a mixture of breadcrumbs (from rosemary-potato bread), parmesan cheese, and potato flakes. Fried in oil and voila. Not the prettiest, but whatever, it’s just me eating them. Yay!

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on a now-deleted blog and is reposted here for my own sake.]

making pork meatballs

I’ve never pretended to be a good cook, and I’m not much for experimenting. But I had some ground pork in my freezer that I wanted to use, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. To be honest, I’m not sure why I even bought it. I was in Chinatown and the meat is just so much cheaper down there than up here, I felt compelled to buy some. Yeah … I impulse-bought pork.

Anyway, I made pork meatballs out of it. It was actually kind of fun to make them. I wasn’t really sure what went into meatballs, but how hard could they be? They’re basically just balls of meat, right? Well, a quick search of AllRecipes led me to a myriad of different recipes, so I decided to just wing it. When I made bread the last time (it was a rosemary-potato bread), I turned part of the loaf into breadcrumbs. I mixed some of those breadcrumbs with parmesan cheese, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Then I was going to add an egg … but I forgot. I squished all of that with the ground pork and formed meatballs. Yay!

Then I wasn’t sure whether to fry or bake them. Online it seemed like either way would work, so I decided to just fry them in some olive oil because I didn’t want to turn on the oven just for a few meatballs. They fried up pretty nice, but it probably would’ve been better if I’d made them smaller. I cooked up some penne, simmered up some marinara (with the meatballs), and voila. The meatballs were a bit dry, probably since I didn’t add any egg and I cooked them too long because I was worried about them still being pink inside. Anyhow, it was a learning experience.

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on a now-deleted blog and is reposted here for my own sake.]

settling in nicely

The semester is ramping up and the kinks are almost smoothed out. I’ve decided on my classes and am starting to get into the rhythm of my new schedule, which is always a bit of a task since each day is different. Two weekends ago I went down to Bryant Park and did some ice skating, which was fun … in a sense. Oh my goodness I was so sore afterwards. Balance is not one of my talents. There’s a reason I got a ‘B’ in gym class. But that little adventure was followed up with some yummy apple cider, so all was forgiven.

Back then (oh so long ago), it was cold and it snowed. The weather’s warmed up since then, and it’s REALLY weird. February 1st and the temperature is about 60F right now. It’s 60 degrees! In February! In New York! Oh goodness. I’d better go read now. Ack. So much reading.