Pages

29 March 2018

Saying Goodbye to Momo





This morning, my cat back home in California, Momo, passed away of what was likely kidney failure.


She was a unique soul. We used to call her the "nurse cat" because whenever anyone in the house was sick or sad, she would go to their side and lay with them and let them cuddle her or cry into her soft fur or whatever they needed.

She would sit like a person, and was the type of cat that when you spoke to her, she would meow (loudly and, if I'm being honest, somewhat obnoxiously) to "talk back". She had the loudest purr I had ever heard.

She was a large, round, lazy ball of orange fur and love. I got to say good bye to her on FaceTime last night (thank the gods for modern technology), and she is going to be cremated just like her sister was.

I don't have it in me to write much more than that for now, I am afraid.

Rest in peace, Momo. I love you.
-Nym

24 March 2018

Searching for Anne of Green Gables

I've been thinking a lot of Anne of Green Gables lately. The series has not only been my favourite for most of my life (since I was 9! Almost 19 years!), but something I come back to again and again, re-reading the books with a sense of coming home. If fernweh is real, then I feel it for L.M. Montgomery's Avonlea and have felt it for as long as I could remember. I return to Anne Shirley and Green Gables again and again, as a safe haven when my modern life and my depression become too much for me. (The author of the series, L.M. Montgomery, also suffered from depression, and sadly not even Anne's sunny nature could keep her from ultimately taking her own life.)

Lately, though, the series has been on my mind for more reasons than that. Of course, as my last entry mentioned, Sarah and I are planning a vacation to Canada, home of Anne Shirley and L.M. Montgomery, and if there are any Green Gables souvenirs available on our trip, you can bet your ass I'll be begging Sarah to let us take it home to our Brooklyn home. So that's reason number one.

Reason number two is that I've been reading the first and last books in the series at the same time in the last few weeks. The first book, I've been reading out loud, one or two chapters a night, to Sarah, who had never read the series before but wanted to know more about it as she performed Diana's song from one of the musicals based on the book for a cabaret recently. Sadly, no one filmed her singing it so here, have a video of one of the other songs she performed that day because I love Sarah so much and she's so talented:


The last book, The Blythes Are Quoted, is the only one in the series I hadn't read before. It was the last book Montgomery ever wrote - she turned in the manuscript to her publisher very shortly before her suicide - but wasn't published in full until 2009. I've wanted to read it since then, but it's incredibly difficult to find a hard copy on the book for anything under $200. Luckily, a coworker of mine gave me her old Nook after her husband got her a Kindle, and it turns out an electronic copy of the book goes for a whopping thirteen dollars, something even I can afford. So I bought it, downloaded it, and devoured it, savouring every word of Montgomery's swan song and the last book in which Anne Shirley Blythe appears, following my dear literary kindred spirit all the way up into World War II.

And yet I can see why it wasn't published in the forties when it was written. It doesn't feel like the other Anne books. It's undoubtedly Montgomery's prose, with her flowery descriptions and subtle humour, but it's much darker than the sunny and comfortable optimism that's a trademark of the first few books. It has a ton of darker themes that really reflect just how bad Montgomery's mental state had gotten by the second world war - themes of adultery, illegitimacy, despair, misogyny, revenge, bitterness, hatred, aging, death, and even murder. It's fascinating.

While I still love the first three Anne books best, as reading them feels the most like a homecoming for my soul, the completionist in me is glad I finally got to read the final book.

In diving so much back into Anne's world, both in sharing the first book with Sarah (which has been fascinating as it's like seeing it for the first time through someone else's eyes) and finally getting to read the last book, it's giving me such a longing to literally visit Anne's world. I don't just mean reading the books or watching the various movies and TV shows that have been made based on the books. I want to walk past the Violet Vale and the Lake of Shining Waters and take tea with Anne Shirley and Diana Barry and my beloved Sarah in Avonlea itself! I am impatient and don't want to wait for our Canada trip - I want to find Anne and her world right here in New York!

Tea service at Chat Noir, Rockville Centre
 But is such a thing possible?

23 March 2018

Quick and Dirty Vegetarian Poutine

I... have been a terrible blogger lately, haven't I?

It's not that I haven't been doing anything. I've done quite a lot since my last blog entry. My mom even came to visit, and we did lots of fun things, such as seeing Billy Joel in concert and going to the restaurants of three chefs who have been judges on "Chopped". I've also gone to multiple museums with my friends, the Museum Girls, from the Louis Armstrong House Museum to the Whitney.

I've just had a lot on my mind lately, and it makes it difficult to sit down and focus on drafting a blog entry. I know that's no excuse, of course, but it's the truth. I just couldn't make myself sit down and type anything out. I've been too busy planning.

Planning what, exactly? Wellll... I suppose I can reveal the secret.

Sarah and I are planning a vacation to Canada!

It won't be for awhile (we need to get through tax season and save up first) but I'm very excited - we both are. And one of the things we're most excited for is trying Canada's most disgusting delicacy - poutine! In fact, I was so excited to try this Canadian favourite, I didn't want to wait the months and months until our vacation to roll around. So, of course, I decided I'd have to make it myself.

Unhealthy? Yes. Delicious? OH yes.
Now, I am not gonna call this a recipe. If you want a meatless poutine recipe where you make the fries and the gravy yourself, there are tons and tons of actual recipes on the internet. No, this is more like a... tutorial. For those of us who are lazy and don't want to spend the time cooking, or for those of us who are doing this after a long day at work and don't have the time to spend doing all that from scratch.

You will need...
  • French fries (You can either use the freezer variety that you bake in the oven, or if you're super lazy, you can order fries from a local restaurant on Grubhub or Doordash or something)
  • Cheese curds, or if you can't find curds, then fresh mozzarella cheese broken up into small chunks
  • Campbell's mushroom gravy in a can
  • Vinegar (I used white vinegar because I keep a lot of it around for cleaning, but apple cider vinegar would likely work as well)
Here's what you do:

1. If you're using freezer fries, bake them in the oven to your desired degree of crispiness. I would recommend making them crispy because you don't want them getting too soggy under all the gravy.

2. Mix a splash of vinegar into the gravy and heat it, either on the stove or in the microwave, depending on how lazy you're feeling. The vinegar is optional, but after much experimenting, I've found that it adds some much-needed acidity to the heavy mushroom gravy, which makes the dish taste better and feel less heavy in my sensitive stomach.

3. Assemble it on a plate! Fries first, then cheese, then gravy. OPTIONAL - plate your poutine on a red and white plate, the colours of the Canadian flag, and listen to "Canadian, Please" while you chow down!

And that's it! It's quick, it's easy, and it's delicious!

I hope you enjoy, and I promise I'll try my best to do a more substantial blog entry soon!
-Nym