belated
Yea, yea, yea. I know. I have been in Colorado for over a week now and I have not made any announcement on my blog. Well, I am here and most of you know that already anyway.

I have been feeling either sad or extremely sleepy most nights that I have been here. I don't like writing angry/sad/sleepy entries. Despite this, I often think in blog terms during the day. That means, that I think in my head like I am writing a blog entry so this is long overdue.

Mainly, I have been wanting to write about food. I have been apathetic about eating lately because I haven't felt like cooking. I have decided to cook mostly eggs, beans, and tofu. I am excited for all my egg and bean adventures. My first adventure was an attempt at channa masala. At least that was what the recipe called it, but I still need some help on sorting out the difference between many Indian dishes. It did not turn out too well and I think now I am going to avoid cooking Indian food. Instead, I am going to next try a chickpea soup containing beet greens and spinach.
I also want to make my own wontons and freeze them for quick meals. These will contain meat like ground pork or chicken. But first, I must obtain this shiny looking steamer. Without knowing until July 6th how much I am currently being paid, I am hesitant to spend any needless money so my wonton project will have to wait a while.
I have been curious lately about miracle health foods, but I have been lazy to read more about them. Madhur Jaffery tells me that miso soup is very good for women and that she eats a bowl of it every day. That made me excited because I think that my little instant miso packets make the most wonderful snack or light meal. I assumed that making the soup wouldn't be too tough since she makes it daily, but she uses a strainer and takes some other steps that I will probably be unwilling to do. I would like to make it with instant dashi rather than opening cans of broth all the time, but I have still not made it to the asian market in town and doubt that they carry it.
It's tough starting over in a new home without all the food essentials like flour, salt, sugar, oil, and pickles. Every day I think of something new that I am missing. I am still missing the pickles, but they are high on the list. My mango pickle and my umeboshi is still in my home refrigerator. Tragic!
Maybe this weekend I will go out and buy all the baking ingredients and, if limes are still on sale, I will make this pudding cake.

I was inspired to post this entry because of an annoying thing that I discovered. I was checking out the great found paper products on lovely design and it led me to these salt and pepper shakers. At first I was pretty excited about the website, because I like shops with well-designed objects even if they cost more than I can afford. But then I came across these little hugging salt and pepper shakers that were sold everywhere in the streets of Thailand. I wanted to buy one when I was there, but I sort of forgot before I returned home and was worried that they might break. If I had purchased one, I doubt it would have cost me more than $4. This designer is trying to make these salt and pepper shakers sound all fancy and artsy by saying that the black and white colors "suggest that we are all brothers and sisters on this planet and we need to treat each other with kindness, compassion and respect." Well, in Thailand many of them were blue and yellow for the queen and king colors. I wonder what kind of worldly respect the Thai people were suggesting. The site also touts their storage benefits. I doubt that most people have trouble finding storage space for their salt and pepper shakers.

On the note of design, I pass by the ugliest scientific poster EVER whenever I go into my lab. I hope that whoever made it does not stumble upon my blog, but I'm sure it is unlikely. It could have been the decision of a phd professor. Anyway, the entire poster is in the windows font named "papyrus." Every single word. It is so awful that I have to shield my eyes whenever I walk down the hall. I recently came across this website about banning the font "comic sans." I really think that the banning of both "papyrus" and "tempus sans" is higher priority.

I found this blog that is a little like the best blog ever, not martha. How about orange has posts about good design, good fonts, and links to fun crafty projects. I found them from paper forest, with which I am obsessed. I have almost used up all of my sheets of white card stock making fun paper toys. Today I made a spiky baby to sit on my desk at work. He is a country western baby named Johnny and he matches the spirit of the lab. Country western music is often on the radio in the lab. So far, it doesn't bother me much, but it definitely makes me miss dancing to things like Madonna or Suburban Kids with Biblical Names during late lab nights with Elizabeth. Check out this photo I found on the Whitman site showing Rishi working with our tubes of Cadmium.

One last thing. Being in a new place, I am again getting that question about my hobbies. I do not know how to tell people that my main hobby is being kind of snobby about things. I have decided that I am a snob about food, music, tea, and definitely design, as I just demonstrated. When they asked about my music, I said that I like all kinds of music but especially some crazy weird stuff which was actually like saying, I like music that you have never heard. This t-shirt pretty much explains it. Those really are my hobbies other than staring at the internet, devising some master plan to bring eric closer to me, and occasionally dreaming about or actually working on some crafty project.

If you made it through this whole entry and clicked on all the links, I thank you and hope you are well because you must be a good friend. Expect more about my actual day to day life in my new Colorado home to follow soon.
- posted by Lyndsay @ 10:33 PM