Mission 11/17/2010

Make dinner for roomies + my new friend Naama.

-Acorn squash is delicious. Peel the rind off though. Thanks for the advice, Sarah!
-I forgot to squeeze the lime juice into the chili-lime vinaigrette. So it was just chili-...vinaigrette.
-There IS a difference between les haricots verts (French green beans) and regular green beans. The latter is more beany; the former is more leafy.
-If the recipe says use ice water, do not substitute "very cold tap water". The ice makes for a flakier crust for your Alsatian onion tart.
-However long you think it will take to cook a big dinner, double that time (at least). We ended up eating at 10pm instead of the appointed start time of 8pm.
-Cheez-its make a great dessert. I drew a mouse on my emptied plate with sriracha sauce and fed it a crumbled up square of Cheez-it. The real Hamouse, our newest house pet, never showed up, though he had been invited. His prolonged absence is disconcerting. It is likely that he is busying himself with building more cheese bombs. Also, there is a fish in the house, and no one knew except for Kathleen because it is in her room. 
-I love our house and the residents of our house and my new friend.
-Opened with Goosebumps today. Made a double leaf! Aw yeah...right in front of the Master Barista, too! Happiness abounds. A tiny baby boy with a tiny bald head came in for a coffee. His pajamas matched my socks. We were green-&-blue stripe buddies!

Babies

Once you are out of school, you have to give yourself assignments.

Walking home from ballet with a female classmate much older than I. She was going home to a husband of 37 years of marriage this December.

"Wow, congratulations!" I meant it. "I wish that upon myself."

"Oh, it'll happen! You've got to marry your best friend."

The simplicity of the advice is striking. And so sensible, too...I do hope my best friend is not a dog. Sometimes I think it might be a baby. I spent an hour in the children's section at the bookstore "studying", which is Arabic for "playing with babies". Being a baby is so exciting. You get to throw fistfuls of autumn leaves into the air for the first time. You get to alternatively give and take contents of your mother's wallet to a stranger over and over again, with increasing delight. You get to explore everything from books to feet with your teeth...even if you don't have any yet. Everything is amazing and new, and you are adorable just because you are so small and alien-looking and acting and because you walk funny...if you can even walk yet. Hah! Babies...

New Perfume

I smell like work..."caramel, nutty, and fragrant". Or is it "uncommon, rich, and full"? Whatever the particular coffee smell, it's in my hair, in my clothes, on my hands, and in my very skin. The grounds are stuck under my nails, too. Every time I grind a bag of beans, and shake it down to settle the grounds in the bag, I like to imagine the tiny brown particles flying all over my face and in the air like an earthy, organic pixie dust. It's no wonder I come home smelling like I do. Today, my co-worker and I took turns being latte-making machines. The line of customers did not clear until three hours into our shift, and only for a minute then before the next wave began. Wow...as a newbie, I'm still wowed by this.

"How do you say 'factory' in French?"
"Usine."
"Je suis une usine!"