For the past couple days I've been busy cooking in the kitchen. While it is a lot of fun and exciting for me, I'm learning still that I am not perfect and things go wrong all the time. I've been wanting to make my own spring rolls for the longest time (the fresh ones, not fried). However, I accidentally bought lumpia wrappers. They didn't have spring roll wrappers at A-Dong Market. I considered throwing everything out, but decided to go for it and make lumpia with the prepared vegetables instead. I added tofu to it as well. lumpia can be served fresh, but it isn't that good and it falls apart very easily.
Yesterday, I didn't plan on making anything, but I just had to do something in the kitchen. So before Lydia came to pick me up for ultimate frisbee I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies.
Tonight I wanted to try three different recipes. They all are very different foods. I made a shrimp and spinach salad, sweet potato fries, and beet/blue cheese deviled eggs. The only one that seemed to be completely successful was the deviled eggs. They are pink in the middle because of the beet puree and the blue cheese is just a nice dash of zip. The shrimp salad was quite good (Cooking Light recipe). However, I had to improvise on the dressing when the stopper/spout on the olive oil bottle decided to fall out giving me more than the 1 Tablespoon needed. The sweet potato fries were my attempt at making them better than my mom. Her fries are always soft and never crispy. I sliced them thinly with my mandoline, hoping this would improve on crispiness factor. Alas, they just burned faster. I think the only good way to make fries is by actually frying them. That's why they are called fries, not bakes.
There are other deviled egg recipes on chow.com (my new favorite website). I'd really like to try the wasabi and roe deviled eggs:
http://www.chow.com/stories/11747
I also received help as to how to peel a hard-boiled egg. Every method I've tried has been a failure with me taking huge chunks out of the egg white. This is a fool-proof method: http://www.chow.com/stories/10879
If you have the time, just check out more from chow.com. I really love watching the obsessives videos (especially the sake, absinthe, and offal ones).
Friday, July 10, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
4th of July
Today I drove down to Eugene to hang out with my Bach Festival YCA co-workers from last year. It is always much further south than I anticipate. It's not quite like driving to Corvallis. I got there towards the end of their last rehearsal. As I was trying to find my way around the remodeled music building I ran into Angela, one of the other singers from Salzburg. She was singing with the festival choir again. Another person I was surprised to see was Sonja. This is her first year singing with the festival choir. She was in Ole Choir with me but we got to know each other a bit more when we both sang in the church choir at IHM in Minnetonka. When I was talking to her, I of course mentioned my plans to move away from teaching and go for performance. She was very enthusiastic and totally understood. Everyone I have talked to has been very supportive. I'm always a little hesitant to tell people, especially people I've known through choir and education, that I don't want to be a choir teacher right now. I was getting high-fives and people say "go for it!" or "awesome!" It makes me feel really happy.
Of course I saw some of my favorite people: my fellow chaperones from last year. It was so much fun to just goof around with them again. We all ate dinner together in Barnhardt and of course laughed over and over. After dinner, Chelsea and I went to Prince Puckler's ice cream shop. I had been craving one of their chocolate-dipped, frozen bananas with nuts. Chelsea was my roommate our first year of YCA. She chaperoned last year. I just love hanging out with her. She has a very positive and uplifting spirit. I call her my future neighbor. Last year when walking around Eugene's Saturday Market I told her that I would love to live next door to her. Today, we talked a lot about how much we've grown over the last year with our post-college experiences. She's been working on a farm in upstate NY that hosts outdoor school children.
I then got to pose as a YCA chaperone as we loaded the buses to their performance in the park. The kids sounded great. I didn't recognize too many because it's a very new group. Only 1/3 of the group returned this year. On the bus rides i got to chat with Cole, a fellow Ole alum and the choir teacher at LO, and Peter, a student from South Salem who I'll be working with at St. Paul's in the fall.
Which reminds me... I got a job! It's part time, but it'll take care of health insurance and loan payments. I will be the assistant director for the music ministry at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. They have some of the best music in Salem. It'll be a great opportunity for me. The director also volunteered the church for me to teach voice lessons in. That's going to be so helpful.
Things I Liked about today: (almost everything) chatting with g+g Zielinski, seeing YCA people and just picking up where we left off, seeing people I didn't think I'd ever see again, frozen banana, good conversations, my awesome blueberry pancakes, and cleaning up the kitchen
Things I didn't like about today: mosquito bites, almost falling asleep on I-5, I smelled by the end of the day
Latest song: "Cecilia" by Refice- an opera about the life and death of St. Cecilia
Of course I saw some of my favorite people: my fellow chaperones from last year. It was so much fun to just goof around with them again. We all ate dinner together in Barnhardt and of course laughed over and over. After dinner, Chelsea and I went to Prince Puckler's ice cream shop. I had been craving one of their chocolate-dipped, frozen bananas with nuts. Chelsea was my roommate our first year of YCA. She chaperoned last year. I just love hanging out with her. She has a very positive and uplifting spirit. I call her my future neighbor. Last year when walking around Eugene's Saturday Market I told her that I would love to live next door to her. Today, we talked a lot about how much we've grown over the last year with our post-college experiences. She's been working on a farm in upstate NY that hosts outdoor school children.
I then got to pose as a YCA chaperone as we loaded the buses to their performance in the park. The kids sounded great. I didn't recognize too many because it's a very new group. Only 1/3 of the group returned this year. On the bus rides i got to chat with Cole, a fellow Ole alum and the choir teacher at LO, and Peter, a student from South Salem who I'll be working with at St. Paul's in the fall.
Which reminds me... I got a job! It's part time, but it'll take care of health insurance and loan payments. I will be the assistant director for the music ministry at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. They have some of the best music in Salem. It'll be a great opportunity for me. The director also volunteered the church for me to teach voice lessons in. That's going to be so helpful.
Things I Liked about today: (almost everything) chatting with g+g Zielinski, seeing YCA people and just picking up where we left off, seeing people I didn't think I'd ever see again, frozen banana, good conversations, my awesome blueberry pancakes, and cleaning up the kitchen
Things I didn't like about today: mosquito bites, almost falling asleep on I-5, I smelled by the end of the day
Latest song: "Cecilia" by Refice- an opera about the life and death of St. Cecilia
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
New Summer
Well... it's a new summer. 2009 is here. I've never known how to appreciate summer vacation until now. After teaching middle school choir for 6 months, my brain, body, voice, was ready for the summer. I learned a lot from my experience at Parrish M.S.: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now is not the time for me to continue teaching in a classroom. While I have the chance to pursue a singing career I need to take it.
The summer started with one of my best friends getting married. Stephanie and Keith tied the knot on June 20th with a beautiful mass at St. Vincent's, the church where we all met through youth ministry. I was a bridesmaid and sang throughout the wedding. Though I had been looking forward to it for over a year, it was a relief to be over. I felt like a zombie by the time we cleaned up the hall. I never thought wearing heels all day, singing, and smiling could be so exhausting.
This summer I've been teaching music for the musical at CET. It's a great show written by the director, Greg Bowers. He's been composing it for the last two years. This will be a world premiere. The show is called Lewis and Alice and it goes back and forth between Victorian England where Lewis Carrol is telling his story and Wonderland. You really should come and see it: Thursday and Friday, July 23rd and 24th, 7:00 PM at South Salem High School auditorium.
My position at CET is very part-time and I only need to be there for two hours each day. I've had lots of extra time to practice voice lately and get some exercise in. It's my goal to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year. I love the Group Groove class at the Courthouse. It's an aerobics class with a lot of fun dance stuff. The other class that I like is called Group Centergy and it's a lot of yoga and pilates strength training and balance. I need to head back to a spin class as well.
I used to exercise in the evenings, but now I have a conflict. Every night but fridays and saturdays, I have rehearsals for My Fair Lady with the Pentacle Theatre, our community theatre. It's fun being in the chorus, they let me sing soprano and I'm so excited to start dancing.
I had a wonderful voice lesson yesterday, though today I'm frustrated with my voice. We picked out new literature and surprisingly a fair amount of it is coloratura stuff. Not at all what I thought I might audition for grad school with. But it works. I have much more agility than I thought. I don't know if I'm ready to tackled the big stuff, but I can handle cadenza stuff and trills. This week she had me look at "Villanelle" by Dell'aqcua "Ach, Ich Ful" from Die Zauberflote, an American art song by a new composer, an aria from Die Fledermaus and one from Ballad of Baby Doe. She's trying to pick out stuff that will show my high notes as well as the strength in my lower range.
Things I liked from today:
riding the scooter around town, learning some dance steps for the play, pear soda, successful shaving of the legs in the locker room, group groove, seeing my cousin, singing
Things I didn't like today:
Saigon Vietnamese restaurant, going to TJ Maxx three times, getting pelted by bugs when driving the scooter, getting frustrated with certain phrases in songs, cramps, my room is still a disaster area and it's spreading to the living room
Song of the Day:
"I'm Getting Married in the Morning" from My Fair Lady
The summer started with one of my best friends getting married. Stephanie and Keith tied the knot on June 20th with a beautiful mass at St. Vincent's, the church where we all met through youth ministry. I was a bridesmaid and sang throughout the wedding. Though I had been looking forward to it for over a year, it was a relief to be over. I felt like a zombie by the time we cleaned up the hall. I never thought wearing heels all day, singing, and smiling could be so exhausting.
This summer I've been teaching music for the musical at CET. It's a great show written by the director, Greg Bowers. He's been composing it for the last two years. This will be a world premiere. The show is called Lewis and Alice and it goes back and forth between Victorian England where Lewis Carrol is telling his story and Wonderland. You really should come and see it: Thursday and Friday, July 23rd and 24th, 7:00 PM at South Salem High School auditorium.
My position at CET is very part-time and I only need to be there for two hours each day. I've had lots of extra time to practice voice lately and get some exercise in. It's my goal to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year. I love the Group Groove class at the Courthouse. It's an aerobics class with a lot of fun dance stuff. The other class that I like is called Group Centergy and it's a lot of yoga and pilates strength training and balance. I need to head back to a spin class as well.
I used to exercise in the evenings, but now I have a conflict. Every night but fridays and saturdays, I have rehearsals for My Fair Lady with the Pentacle Theatre, our community theatre. It's fun being in the chorus, they let me sing soprano and I'm so excited to start dancing.
I had a wonderful voice lesson yesterday, though today I'm frustrated with my voice. We picked out new literature and surprisingly a fair amount of it is coloratura stuff. Not at all what I thought I might audition for grad school with. But it works. I have much more agility than I thought. I don't know if I'm ready to tackled the big stuff, but I can handle cadenza stuff and trills. This week she had me look at "Villanelle" by Dell'aqcua "Ach, Ich Ful" from Die Zauberflote, an American art song by a new composer, an aria from Die Fledermaus and one from Ballad of Baby Doe. She's trying to pick out stuff that will show my high notes as well as the strength in my lower range.
Things I liked from today:
riding the scooter around town, learning some dance steps for the play, pear soda, successful shaving of the legs in the locker room, group groove, seeing my cousin, singing
Things I didn't like today:
Saigon Vietnamese restaurant, going to TJ Maxx three times, getting pelted by bugs when driving the scooter, getting frustrated with certain phrases in songs, cramps, my room is still a disaster area and it's spreading to the living room
Song of the Day:
"I'm Getting Married in the Morning" from My Fair Lady
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