生活等於烦恼

这几天忙碌着。六月底要搬家，我现在才开始找房子。。。如果可以的话，我宁愿一直住在现在的房子里，即使每月多付几百块钱也可以，因为它又离学校近，又新。我跑到BRENTWOOD看了几间一千六到一千八的(比现在便宜一点)，都比较旧。而且需要乘BUS。沮丧。。。

Seared Tuna with Avocado

Hey, I have a question for you.

Am I awesome, or am I really awesome? Because I’m having trouble decide. XD

Unfortunately I am not as awesome a photographer as I am awesome in general. Apparently this is the best picture I can get.

I was going to do yesterday, but I started grilling late in the afternoon and did not have the appetite for a second meal. So, I kept my tuna on ice overnight, like so. At $23/pound (it has to be sushi grade) I wasn’t going to take any chances.

The ingredients: Olive oil, sesame oil, salt, pepper, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, cilantro, garlic, Jalapeno, ginger, lime. Oh, and my beautiful Tuna, of course. <3 The recipe doesn’t actually call for vinegar, but it does call for a full lime, and I only had half left. (I forgot the avocado in this picture.)

Mix, mix!

Mix, mix!

The recipe wants you to just salt & pepper the fish and sear it like that. I figured it would be good to toss in the sauce, so I did. What the hell do I know, though. I also cut my block in half (2 5oz pieces).

It sears! I seared for probably less than a minute per side. It is easy to tell when you should stop, since you can see on the side how much of it has been cooked. It’s like a progress bar, really. The aim is to just sear the surface, while leaving the middle raw. If you don’t have sushi grade fish then you should probably cook it all the way through. After it was about done I tossed the sauce in there.

If you’re awesome like me, you can take out the flesh of an avocado from the skin in one piece.

Then slice it up and plate! This is actually really simple. Takes maybe half an hour to do. The only difficult thing about this recipe is being able to afford sushi grade fish, haha.

Welp, it was really good, but the soy sauce was a bit overpowering. Must remember 3T is too much next time.

Lamb Ribs; or, The Tears and Suffering of Innocent Baby Animals ^____^

Tears and Suffering taste good, real good. Very tender.

This was actually an impulse buy (I don’t usually eat lamb), but I am very happy with it.

By the way, the entry I made in moon language just expresses my resolution to practice moon language (and French) more often, so that they don’t deteriorate. I will try to keep English language posts at a majority, though, as that is a language common to almost all my readers, even ones that understand moon language or French. Actually, I think wordpress.com may be blocked in China.

It looks more charred than it actually is. In fact, the thicker pieces were still rare.

Ingredients: Rosemary, garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper, and 4 pieces of Tears and Suffering. I went and bought the most expensive bottle of balsamic vinegar I could find, but it was still only $12. It’s hard to be gourmet when you do all your shopping at Ralph’s… This now brings my vinegar collection to 6 bottles (I also have some rice vinegar which I’ve been experimenting with to get a peanut salad dressing)…

Chop garlic and rosemary finely.

Combine.

Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I used 2T and 4T. This balsamic vinegar is a lot thicker than the other bottle I have, probably on account of all that fig paste they put in there. Oh yeah, in case you can’t read the bottle, it says “Autumn Fig”.

Seal lamb chops with marinade in a plastic bag.

It is very important that you arrange the lamb chops in a 69 position.

翌日…

Oh my what a fine day it is to be grilling on my BALCONY!

Since I’ll be moving out soon, I want to make as much use of my balcony as possible. I own a grill and I’ve probably used it no more than 5 times. This must change!

Form a pyramid with the charcoal.

Oooooooooo.

While the fire burnt, I washed the grill, which had lain dirtily in a corner since the Yosemite trip last fall. Washing a grill is one of the worst things in existence, right up there with hernias and local truncation error analysis. Because, you know, it’s not a surface. You can’t just scrub it as you would a dirty plate. You have to get into each bar. It’s awful.

After the fire goes out, push the stack over to let the charcoal sit uniformly over the surface. The charcoals are not all grey but that is okay. They will continue to burn.

This is pretty fun, I have to say. I could do this every weekend. I could even have friends over. But they have to bring the beer.

Close up. I have placed the meatier part of the ribs in the centre where it is hotter. Don’t mind the other pieces of meat sitting on the grill. I am just testing out my kalbi recipe. There will be another entire post about that.

I also grilled some vegetables after this was over. I like this picture a lot for some reason. It’s like… art… or something.

Conclusion: lamb is very tender. We should all increase our consumption of baby animals.

Failure

L’autre jour, j’ai fait pleurer une fille en classe pour la première fois. Je demande habituellement des volontaires pour résoudre des problèmes devant la classe, mais personne n’a voulu la faire (? this sounds weird), donc j’ai choisi une victime par un processus aléatoire. (J’ai proposé une gamme des nombres desquels les étudiants ont choisi, qui ont déterminé le siège où la victime s’est assise–mais ils ne le savient pas.) La victime ne savait pas comment resoudre la probleme, et, succombant à son inquiétude, a commencé à pleurer… Merde…

联系 练习

最近发现语言能力退步得很严重。我一般只有给家里打电话时说中文，现在发现有时候竟然会对爸爸妈妈说英语，因为。。。用中文无法表达。。。OTZ

我决定采取“朋友”的 suggestion，认真练习中文。啊，我也有法语。所以，从现在起，我每次更新博客时会轮流用这三种语言。还有，碰见 fob 时应该尽量用 fobnese 和他们谈XD

虽然中文是我的母语，现在英文已经是我的主语了。做梦时的人物都是用英语对我说话的。还有，做数学时必需用英文。这不仅是因为我不认识单词(不过我知道 Lie Groups = 李群，呵呵一直觉得这个比较好玩)–我的中文很简单，不能表达太复杂的思想，所以逻辑推理当然是不可能的。我臆想这是因为当我的脑袋在发达推理的能力时，我已经出国了。

啊，你可能会觉得有点不对，因为我自称不太能用中文表达，而这篇文章里的思路还是比较清晰的。不要被我骗了！我能写出这样的东西，是因为我现在坐在电脑前，可以反复思考怎么说。呵呵还有，因为这是电脑上打出来的，错别字率下降许多。如果我用笔写。。。后果不堪设想。

Tea Eggs

Looks like marble.

Anise is the least common ingredient in making tea eggs, so since I have it, I decided to make some.

But, I do not drink tea! Not to worry, I managed to swipe some from the weekly departmental tea last week.

I ended up using all those teabags except for the Lemon flavored one. Lemon has no place in tea eggs >=(

I bought 18 eggs from Ralph’s, but could only fit 14 in the pot. Add unknown amounts of soy sauce, salt, sugar, honey, ginger, and anise. Some recipes will tell you to boil the egg first, then simmer in the sauce. But, the lazy man’s approach is to just boil it in the sauce.

I made a huge mistake: I let the string of the tea bags dangle over the side of the pot. The thing that you’re supposed to hold on to is made of paper, and the heat of the metal in the pot was enough to set it aflame. I did not know it got that hot!

I made a second huge mistake: then the burnt parts fell into the pot.

Then, after the eggs are cooked (be sure of this), hit them repeatedly with something blunt, such as your intellect, so as the break the shell.

I was hoping these would last me a while, but… they are just so morey!

It Means “Very Thai”

I got roped into doing Muay Thai by Justin. I thought this was going to be full of sweaty fat guys with their balls in my face, but actually, there’s not many fat guys in the class, and it’s not wrestling, so no balls in my face. It’s ok, I guess. It would be more fun if I were actually good and could do stuff, but as it is I’m just hurting my foot cuz I don’t know how to kick right. That’s the same with all thing, though. It’s not very fun until you attain a minimum level of proficiency.

It’s got me wondering what it would feel like to hit someone in the face as hard as I can. I’ve never been in a fight–which is good, because getting hit is painful and I’m probably a wuss. I wonder how much I’d have to pay someone to let me hit them in the face. It’s probably more than I’d be willing to pay to find out. The alternative is to get into an actual fight. Then it would be free. But not really. It’s free in dollars, but you are paying for it with pain. The amount of money I’d have to receive to get hit in the face by someone is probably more than the amount of money I’m willing to pay to hit someone in the face.

Blouse

I have finished House and have since moved on to Heroes. In one of the earliest episodes of House is contained what is possibly the greatest moments in TV history–a British actor acting as an American who is faking a British accent. LOL! (Picture unrelated.)

Scallops & Snow Peas

Whirl!

One pound of scallops. Doesn’t look like very much, does it?

They are sliced and marinaded in salt, olive oil, and corn starch. Looks like chicken… For truly, scallops are the chicken of the sea. Actually, I think we decided that oysters were the chicken of the sea. Because chicken is wont to carry all kinds of diseases if not cooked thoroughly. Oysters, too, when consumed raw, can make for some fun trips to the ER. That’s why they’re worth paying $1.5 a pop for at Sushi Mura.

They are fried like there is no tomorrow. Unfortunately, this part, like the frying part in the Kung Pao chicken episode, hurts. I dried the scallops before marinading but… still popping all over the place.

The snow peas are also fried, with garlic and ginger. But they are not fried like there is no tomorrow; they are fried like they will wilt and lose texture if left in the wok too long.

I was supposed to used chicken broth for the sauce. But, I prematurely did my shopping before I looked at the recipe, so I mixed my usual Asian sauce. Fish sauce + cooking wine + soy sauce + sugar + corn starch + love.

Aerial moneyshot:

What do you know, it’s pretty good!

I am three weeks behind

on my period the Economist.