My week:
This week, I moved across the country! Wowza! Please excuse the late upload.
I’ve been enjoying being closer to my friends and living in a walkable area. This whole thousands-of-mile move has been extremely seamless. It almost feels like no big deal. It always freaks me out to remember that traveling distances like this, which is so routine for me, would have been a life-altering decision for somebody a few hundred years ago. I mean, in 5 hours, I crossed a distance that would have taken months in a covered wagon.
It reminds me of this beautiful page from the book Blind Spot by Teju Cole:
In case you can’t read that, it says, “The first time our ancestors climbed a tall tree, or came in a migrating band to the edge of a cliff, they experienced vertigo. Only hundreds of thousands of years later did we experience jet lag, which is to chronological displacement as vertigo is to spatial displacement. Finally we had figured out how to move across time faster than time moves across us. In epiphany, you are neither here nor there. In jet lag, you’re in duple meter, both here and there at the same time.”
I think about this passage often.
I got to my new place (a sublet), and immediately started cooking.
What I made:
Awful lentil stew: This is definitely the worst thing I’ve made since I started this newsletter. I’ve made things that weren’t amazing, but this one was truly messed up and unpleasant to eat. Basically, I copied down the ingredients for this recipe but forgot to save the steps. Rather than go find the recipe again (which would have been VERY easy), I decided that I pretty much knew how to make lentil stew and that I could just wing it. Big mistake. I don’t know what exactly I did wrong, but I clearly messed up the order of operations somehow, and this soup came out crunchy. Which is not a quality I admire in a soup. The real issue, though, was that I eye-balled the amount of vinegar, and I added way too much. It tasted like crunchy vinegar. However, the deed was done, and this soup was chock full of nutritious foods, so this disgusting situation was my main staple this week. (Un)luckily, it provided me with many rounds of leftovers. On my final adventure with it, I discovered that adding a blop of greek yogurt made it much more palatable. Still a failure.
Peanut butter noodles: I did not make these. They were from a restaurant that I went to with friends. These noodles were so good, and I was so excited to have the leftovers for lunch the next day. However, (this was my first full day at my new place), when the time came to heat them up, I realized that my sublet doesn’t have a microwave! I don’t know, maybe this is normal, but I’ve never lived anywhere without a microwave before. So, I added a little splash of water and heated these up in a pan. Worked like a charm. After a week of life without a microwave, I would say it’s not a huge sacrifice. It does involve doing more dishes, and I do wish that the regular oven were a viable option, but all in all, I think that heating things up on the stove preserves the texture slightly better.
“Tostadas”: I know these don’t look very appetizing. You may even say that they look like dog food on a tortilla. If I had put a sprinkle of cheese or cilantro or pickled red onion on top, they would have looked better. I can assure you, however, that they tasted amazing. This is like an upgraded version of my bean and cheese tacos. I didn’t really follow a recipe, but I was very much inspired by the tostadas in The Weekday Vegetarians (which are much more visually appealing). My tortillas weren’t really crispy, but they still tasted good. I mean, it’s hard to mess up the components of this meal: refried beans, onion, garlic, tortilla. What’s not to love?
Garlic kale and carrots: This was yet another improvisation! I was going to follow a recipe for baked carrots and kale (which I think would have been awesome), but I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the oven in my sublet. So…. I pivoted to a stir-fry thing. I showed my boyfriend a picture of this dinner and he said, “It looks good. Doesn’t look very filling, though!” I couldn’t have said it better myself. After eating this, I found myself feeling panic hungry. I ran to the grocery store in a frenzy and bought cheese, pretzels, and a Milky Way Midnight. Crisis averted. But yeah, this probably needed some rice or something to go with it. It was good, though!
What I learned:
I learned not to trust my gut. At least, not too much.
I learned how to reheat things with no microwave assistance.
I learned that sautéing in a too-small pan is really a hassle. Maybe it’d be better to use a pot in those cases? Just to keep things from flying over the side?
I think my knife skills are slowly but surely improving… I’m finally able to do that consistent rocking motion when I chop. Although it’s still not super fast.
I learned that kale and carrots are not filling!
When I was heating up leftovers for my terrible lentil stew, I noticed a singular bean in the mix. This was strange, because I had not added any beans! At first, I actually thought it was a roly poly. So, intrigued, I picked up this bean. It was weirdly firm. I gave it a gentle squeeze, and it squirted bean juice right into my face. One of life’s small mysteries.
Crunchy vinegar… 😜🤣
Let us know what you need for your apartment kitchen next month! Don’t buy anything!