the inspiring truffle

When I was in college, I decided to take Mandarin Chinese on a whim. My dorm neighbor at the time was taking it, and I would always look at her homework and wish I knew Chinese because the characters looked so cool. As a result of this class, I ended up making Chinese my minor, and going to Taiwan for a semester of study abroad. During study abroad, I met the girl who is currently my roommate/partner in crime/Aly to my AJ. If I didn’t have someone so badass and cool to live with here, would I have moved at all? I have no idea. So basically, suffice to say that I owe my entire life after age 18 to said dorm neighbor (who in the real world, is called Lauren).

ANYWAY, said Lauren recently started a food blog that TheRoommate and I helped her design, and I’d like to brag about it for a hot second:

I mean look at that header! (Okay, admittedly, the header DESIGN was all roommate, while the ideas came from yours truly). Oh man… and a THREE COLUMN BLOGGER LAYOUT! We actually tweaked html to do that, since blogger templates are only 2 column.

Anyway, The Inspiring Truffle reviews restaurants in NYC, Hong Kong, Taipei and anywhere else she happens to be! She’s just starting out, but already has quite a few posts and you all should go check it out if you get the chance or will be visiting any of those areas! Or just go comment to thank to her for changing my life.

Speaking of changing my life.

Holy crap Park Bom. This song is now number SIX on my iTunes Top 25 Most Played. I’ve only had it for like 2 days. It’s SO GOOD. And the music video is absolutely adorable.

Look how gorgeous her kitchen is!
She’s wearing a crown!
She’s frosting cupcakes!
I want to die it’s all so awesome!

apples and goats

Hey, remember when I said I was going to make an apple picking blog but that never happened? HERE IT IS. I know. It’s like your wildest dreams are coming true.

So a couple of friends and I went on one of mta’s getaways, which was called the Farm Fresh tour. It was SO AWESOME. First, we all got on a metro north train at Grand Central and made our way up to Poughkeepsie, where the shuttle met us, and about a full bus worth of people.

Our first stop was Sprout Creek Farm, where we sampled their cheese, toured the milking facilities, and saw many farm-y type animals including my favorite… Soda Pop the GOAT!

Hello Goat!

Then we went to a vineyard and winery, named Millbrook, and we had a wine tasting, and the tour took us through the building and showed us how they make the wine (which apparently was totally unknown to me, as I discovered on the tour). The wine was actually pretty good especially their Tocai Friulano, and they served these amazing wine crackers which I would have linked here, but apparently they don’t sell on their site. Anyway, it was really quite fun and I took many pictures of the vineyard through the bus windows, so of course NONE of them came out… I mean hello, BUS WINDOWS, but I’ll show you one anyway.

And then last we went to an Orchard… which of COURSE I no longer remember the name, but it was cute and the apple trees were all in little rows for us to pick from! Now, I had never seen an apple tree like these before, and I was VERY excited. It was so weird to see all of the apples on the ground, and just SO MANY on the trees. It was ridiculous. So many apples! And you could just pick them off the tree and eat them. Not to mention, I had never seen so many different types of apples in my life. My fellow apple pickers were very upset that the Honey Crisp tree had been picked dry, but I’ve never had a Honey Crisp apple, so I’m now on a mission to try them soon.

Oh, the bliss of apple picking in the fall! So much fun, SO MANY APPLES. I wish I could make apple pie of some sort, so the apples don’t go bad. Poor apples.

beda day #26: bringing may flowers

a tad early.

So remember when I said the other day I nearly cried seeing tulips? Well I saw some more. And instead of crying… because that would be awkward for everyone, I took a picture of them.

Who needs a burger?

These tulips were in Madison Square Park, where the roommate and I got frozen custard at Shake Shack to try to beat the sudden heat. Where did it come from? The weather seriously jumped from the teens to the 30s instantly, with NO time at all in the glorious 20s we all know and love (Celcius, kids – learn it). This is not in my approval matrix.

More flowers for you!

Speaking of frozen custard… guess what flavor we got? The flavor of the day, which was SPRING FEVER! We took bets on what it was taste like, I thought it would taste like rainbow sherbet, the roommate thought it would taste like grass (which I seriously doubted), but we ended up asking so as not to be stuck licking wheatgrass flavored green goop in the middle of the day. So it happens that Spring Fever = Passion fruit, Orange, and Guava. Yeah, that’s right folks, I had POG flavored frozen custard in the middle of NYC.

Me and teh flowerz.

It looks like I cut my hair, there. But I didn’t. It’s still long. Also, I have to admit, I’ll be right sad when this BEDA thing is over. It’s been a good (albeit crazy) month.

beda day #3: getting things done

To start off, in December of 2007, I asked for a book called Getting Things Done for Christmas. I can’t remember if I actually received it, or if I bought it for myself with my new cash, but the point is that I really wanted this book and now I own it.

He's also kinda sexy, right? I'm not crazy?

This may come as a shock to you, especially if you know me personally, because I am probably the least productive person on the planet, and my idea of multitasking is putting chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream. But I am DETERMINED TO CHANGE! Seriously! I have a book and everything!

Did it work? I don’t know. The book’s main idea is a system for making to-do lists that requires you to do all the heavy thinking as you are writing down the item, rather than when you go to complete it. FOR EXAMPLE:

If I wanted to melt all the the cheese I own to create a cheesy fondue dipping sauce, I would not write down “MELT CHEESE.” Because then when you look at the list, you have to MAKE DECISIONS, like HOW DO I MELT THE CHEESE? WHEN DO I MELT THE CHEESE? HOW MUCH CHEESE DO I HAVE TO MELT? etc, and then you will look at that item on the list, and it will seem too complicated and you will think “eff that,” and go watch that Top Model marathon instead.

So what you have to do is make the list as detailed as possible, so that when you look at the list, you don’t have to think, you just have to complete a series of tasks.

IN THE SPIRIT OF DAVID ALLEN, HERE IS MY GTD-ESQUE TO-DO LIST FOR TODAY:

1. Take the giant vacuum cleaner box, which has been sitting in the center of our living room for a week now, and throw it off the fire escape.
2. Boil water, add ramen noodles, wait 3 minutes, add soup base, TURN OFF STOVE (important step that I totally forgot once), pour in bowl, consume.
3. Upload that photo of that one time my college friend and I went to the Museum of Natural History.
4. Shower (I have this one pretty much down, so I’ll leave out the hairy details, HAHA)
5. Check Daily Intel tags: Gossip Girl every five minutes to see if they have posted the entry where they showcase the best comments of the week.
6. Cry because my comment was not picked.
7. Invent a way to form ice cream out of thin air! SPECIFICALLY ALMOND COOKIE ICE CREAM. LIKE THEY HAVE AT THE CHINATOWN ICE CREAM FACTORY! Because I really want it right now. And I am entirely too lazy to walk the the path station/sit on the train/walk 3 blocks or however you get to Chinatown and actually buy it.
8. I just might teach myself a Wonder Girls dance.

Wonder Girls! This is their song “Tell Me.” Most is in Korean so I obviously can’t understand a thing (well, except for, “tell me”) but they are so GREAT!

RIGHT? RIGHT? GOOD PLAN? I think so.

(Also, my Google Reader is going CRAZY because of BEDA. I LOVE IT!)

you know what is great about being sick?

Nothing.

Okay, that’s a lie. The suppressed appetite isn’t bad, especially since I barely have the energy to eat anyway. So having an excuse not to eat is quite a sweet deal.

Other than that, sitting in bed all day with a headache and bad breath really leaves quite a lot to be desired.

The good news is that a friend of mine was able to nab me a copy of the oft-mentioned-on-this-blog PAPER TOWNS! I am halfway through with it and so far it is very good. John is truly the master at creating these amazing girls that the protagonists fall in love with. I mean… I think Alaska Young of Looking for Alaska is still the queen of the John Green-verse but Margo Roth Spiegelman is a close second. Not to say that LfA is better than PT… we’ll have to see about that. I’m liking it a lot. So far the “paper towns” section is the most amazing part of this book. John obviously knew that, which is why he named the book after that section.

My headache is really getting to me. It’s making it hard for me to stare at the screen and/or read.

I have a craving for ramen. Not the good kind, with like real vegetables and crap, I mean the amazing one with the suspicious “shrimp” flavor that comes out of the little square package and is ready to eat in three lovely minutes.

That sounds amazing right now. I mean just LOOK at the wonder and complexity of taste!

Okay, well now I’m all hungry. Stupid internet.

Oh and my current top five for ANTM is as follows: Samantha, Analeigh, Sheena, Joslyn, Lauren Brie