Things are happening.

This mess is my studio.  The black thing is a big sheet of metal spray painted black (and soon to be fixative-d), and all the black squares are soon to be magnets.  This is exciting.  Will post results soon.

(Sorry for the long hiatus.  Was being sick/a senior.  Also, the application for teaching in France goes up Oct 1!)

-Adrienne

While reading this entry, why not click above to listen to Pierre’s new EP, Washed Out?  If you like his music, you can follow him on Soundcloud, subscribe to his channel on Youtube, or even download his music entirely for free from his website.

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I’ve been working diligently for the Career Development Office, redoing their website, editing videos, implementing an online scheduling system, and generally improving their online presence.  Noticing my efforts, the Public Affairs office at Kenyon has offered me a job next year as their student worker, basically doing all the elements of my dream student job: graphic design, managing the website, and editing video.  It pays well and I’ll also get to stay on at the CDO half time next year, so I’m really excited about the things that are going on.

Recently I’ve been working on album covers and track art for Pierre’s music.  For example, I redid his old design for the album art up there in the player.  Before the summer ends I should be making at least one video for him, possibly more, so you should definitely subscribe to his youtube channel and see what I come up with.

I promise I’ll be writing again soon, but for now I need to go to bed.

This will be a two-part entry, half actual entry and half vague recipe.  You may have noticed by now - and I’m sorry if you have - that most of the recipes I put in here are more so I can remember them than so you can reproduce them easily.  So my measurements are pretty inexact, but I know what I’m going for so I can do it.  I promise that eventually, you know, when I’m a great chef and everyone knows me as that woman who makes amazing ____ (can’t wait for that day) I’ll better organize this stuff and maybe even put it online somewhere.  But for now, you get my silly, inexact, thrown together experimental recipes.  Fun!

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.  This has been an exciting time.  You know, usually I don’t get too personal on here but I’m going to go ahead and do so, just for two paragraphs.  I dated a boy named Pierre for almost four years.  We started dating in 11th grade.  We broke up April 22, while I was in France, immediately following my decision to come back and live in France (a decision that I’m still holding firm to).  It was mutual; we had spent a long time apart and were forgetting the nice things about being together.  It’s hard to do long distance, and perhaps I was a little too faithful in the strength of our relationship: in January, and the months preceding my departure, I was sure that we’d stay together forever.

It was tough.  Our four year anniversary, May 26, passed.  We still talked, and really it was like we’d not really broken up; we were confused and there was no real way to define what it was.  I returned to Kenyon.  A little over a week ago, after some wavering, I got the idea into my head that we needed to stop talking in order to get over one another and be happy in the long run.  Days of sadness and stress followed.  I didn’t really want to stop talking, and Pierre over and over contacted me, trying to get me to see that this wasn’t the way to do things.  Eventually, I realized that this was, in fact, a terrible idea.  We got back together, and suddenly everything was finally okay.  He visited two days later, and we had a great time getting to see one another for the first extended amount of time since my return to the US.  We had food, we talked, we laughed, we drove around.  It’s not normal to have a relationship only in text on a computer screen.  It had lost its feeling.  But now that feeling is back, and I’m really grateful.

I’m also grateful that Elizabeth’s malaria scare is over with.  That was fun.

On another note, I hate Pittsburgh, PA.  Nothing against you personally, if you happen to reside in or love the city, but I’m not a fan.  It’s just the traffic patterns.  The roads are ridiculous.  My GPS is also quite stupid.  Recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one.

Speaking of recipes (but no more disasters, please!), here is my recipe/notes for what I made for dinner tonight.  Jeff and Elizabeth both gave it high praise.  Elizabeth even said it was her favorite thing I’ve ever made.  Sweet!  This is overly complicated and takes forever, but it was really delicious so… whatever.

awesome fried rice

-2 packets mandarin orange spice tea (I used Celestial Seasonings)
-2 cups water
-1 1/4 cups rice
-3 carrots, chopped
-1/2 an orange pepper, chopped
-thumb-sized piece of ginger (more if you like ginger), roughly diced
-1 clove garlic, diced
-1/2 cup thinly sliced leeks
-1 onion, cut into slivers
-handful fresh basil, shredded
-olive oil
-peanut oil (yeah, I used both… probably not necessary)
-salt
-1 tsp sugar
-small amount of soy sauce 

-wok
-rice cooker 

1) Carmelize onion while preparing everything else.  You can save dishes if you do this in a wok.  This is the part of the recipe that takes the longest.  To carmelize, toss in a pan (on low heat) with a generous amount of olive oil, being sure to cover all slices.  Stir frequently.  After 5-10 minutes, sprinkle with salt and add 1 tsp sugar, stirring in well.  Leave on low heat for the next 45ish minutes to an hour, stirring often, being sure the heat is high enough to slowly color them but not sautée or burn them.

2) Make two cups of fairly strong tea, steeping 2-3 minutes.  Put rice and 2 cups of orange spice tea into rice cooker and begin cooking.

3) Add the carrots and the pepper to the rice cooker when the rice seems to have soaked up most of the moisture but is definitely not ready.  (Add the carrot slightly earlier if you don’t want it at all crunchy.)  From now on, be sure to stir the rice every few minutes so that the rice/vegetables on bottom do not become dry or burnt.

4) The rice will probably be ready before the onions.  Turn off rice cooker and stir in shredded basil leaves and dash of salt.

5) When the onions are carmelized enough (golden color), remove to a bowl and put peanut oil into the wok and lightly fry the leeks, garlic, and ginger.  When they start to change color (2-4 minutes), add the rice and a small amount of oil.  Fry the rice, using a wooden spoon to stir and break up the rice.  Add a dash of soy sauce to taste.

Iiiii should go to bed soon.

In the meantime, let me tell you about yesterday!

Yesterday, Elizabeth and I went on a fun and exciting journey to Columbus, OH.

At first it rained like mad but by the time we got there it was sunny overcast again!  We actually first went to the wrong place, through a parking garage and back out, it was quite an adventure but Elizabeth got a compliment on her crazy floral dress out of it so all’s good, right?

Then we went where we intended to go and got too much food at the North Market.  It’s a pretty great place.  Elizabeth says she would consider living near it just for its awesomeness.  I wouldn’t go that far (Paris is better) but it was a nice afternoon of eating food.

After that we wandered around N High Street in Columbus, browsing shops.  We stopped at a chocolate shop called Chocoholique where we stopped to each try a piece of chocolate (earl grey tea chocolate for me, basil coconut chocolate for Elizabeth) and take some photos.

After that we went to our favorite restaurant (okay, well, the only one we’ve tried but by golly we liked it!) Lemongrass, a sushi restaurant.  It was fun!

It was a long day and we had lots of delicious food and bought some cool things.  I got a super duper fast whisk and a new little elephant to go along with a crocodile I got in Bordeaux.

Good night!

Elizabeth and I did a little experimentin’ and came up with this recipe for darjeeling rice with carmelized onion and ginger.  It’s not perfect yet as it could use a little something still, something crunchy - we were arguing over whether that should be carrots (her idea) or peanuts (my idea) - so let me know in the comments if you try it, if you change it, or if you have any ideas for what else we could try in it!

(I don’t have any pictures of the finished product.  Sorry.  I’ll update this entry next time we make it, and I’ll get real pictures!)

Darjeeling Rice with Carmelized Onions and Ginger

1 cup jasmine rice (or another rice that doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor on its own)
2 1/4 cups water
darjeeling tea
olive oil
1 onion chopped into reasonably thin slivers
a nub of diced ginger (we should have used more, but we used about 1 teaspoon worth of diced ginger)
salt
pinch of sugar 

other things we’re considering adding:
carrot
peanuts
garlic (diced and prepared with the ginger)

1) Peel and chop the onion.

2) Boil the water and prepare the tea.  Make sure it takes a lot of flavor but don’t over-steep it or it will be bitter.

3) Put a generous amount of olive oil in a pan, coating the bottom, and let it heat up on a medium setting.  When it starts popping a little, turn it down a little and add the onion.  Stir with a wooden spoon to coat all surfaces.

4) Put the rice into a rice cooker with the tea.  Don’t start the rice cooker yet.

5) Caramelizing onions takes a bit of patience and a lot of attention.  Stir them frequently.  After a few minutes they should start to seem more flexible and translucent.  Add a pinch of salt, stir, then sprinkle on a small amount of sugar, less than a teaspoon, to help the caramelization process.  Keep stirring and redistributing the onions in the pan.  Make sure the heat is not too high or you will burn them or dry them out before they caramelize.  Add more olive oil if necessary.

6) Dice the ginger.

7) When the onions start to caramelize, turn on the rice cooker.  Once they are reasonably browned, you can add them to the rice cooker, stirring them in well.

8) In the same pan, heat a little more olive oil and fry the ginger.  When it is browned, add it to the rice cooker, too.  Salt to taste.

9) Let the rice cooker work its magic and enjoy.

We sure did.

In the past week and a half I’ve been migrating gradually more and more westward.  Plane, train, car, I’ve done it all.  From Paris to London to Philadelphia to Carlisle to Gambier, here I am.

Here’s a picture of the skyscrapers in Philadelphia as I was leaving the city on the Amtrak train.

With my dad I attempted to make an île flottante, which was a silly idea.  Next time I decide to waste 140g of sugar on an overly complicated French dessert you should probably kick me.

In other news, I’m back in the same place as my old roommate, even if for the moment we are not actually roommates but rather apartmentmates. For kicks, here she is wearing some thing on her head at Walmart.

Yep, it’s good to see you again too.

I will miss this place.

Well, here I am, once again packing my life into a series of bags.  Unsurprisingly there’s more than I came with.  Dismantling my wall, emptying the cupboard, going through piles of paper.  I’m trying to not be disappointed.  I have had a wonderful, full, enlightening 5 months here and I will be back.  I won’t lose my French.  Everything will be okay.

Wednesday night Carolyn arrived from England and we ate dinner on the balcony with my host.  Afterwards Carolyn went to bed, looking like this.

Thursday we walked all around (and had some really delicious crêpes for lunch) and in the evening my host took us to Pont Neuf to take a bateau mouche (riverboat tour).  I had thought she was calling it a bateau moche, or an ugly boat, which was amusing to me.  She kept wanting to take our picture together (probably because Carolyn is so cute with her short hair) so here we are on the bus

and then on Pont Neuf.

Did I mention Carolyn’s haircut is awesome?  She seems lit by an inner glow.

The boat ride was pretty cool. Among other things, we passed this thing

and even succeeded in seeing the minute that it lights up all sparkly at 11:30pm.

Afterwards, we went to one of my favorite little restaurants, Chez Prosper, where Carolyn made faces of delight over her tiramisu served in a mason jar (no photo at this time as it’s on her camera and she returns to Exeter at 3am my time) and I tried an île flottante which was super delicious.

Today we walked around even more to avoid taking the metro more than was necessary, and got lunch at this yummy Chinese food place with a big aquarium.  I don’t have the picture of me with the aquarium (again on Carolyn’s camera) but here is Carolyn looking downright dapper.

She’s got me addicted to Sherlock (the new bbc show, not the original) fanfic so now I have something to distract myself from stupid decisions I make at 2 in the morning that cause me to fruitlessly worry for days.  Hooray!

After taking her to the train station, I met my friend Margaux (she’s going to be at Kenyon next year as she is the new French assistant… yay for French friends who follow me back to the US!) at Châtelet and we came back to her house outside of Paris for dinner.  We played some games and spoke lots of French.  Her little brother is cute.  Played Yam’s which is like the French version of Yahtzee until midnight.  Should probably go to bed soon so I wake up in the morning!