Pocket Altar 101

Witches and pagans hear me out! Everyone else, ignore this post!

Have you ever been out in the park and suddenly thought "hm I'd really like to do a magical/religious thing right now but all my supplies are at home!"? You've probably already heard of the concept of a "pocket altar" but let me tell you, it is a lifesaver, and if you haven't made one yet then you really should! I mean, far be it from me to tell anyone how to do their own spiritual thing - like, you do you, obviously - but it is a nifty little thing that comes in handy.

First things first, you're gonna need an Altoids tin.

How To Cut Down on Plastics in Three Parts

As some of you already know, I work at Ellis Island on certain Mondays every month. Well I am very pleased that as of yesterday, plastic bags have officially been eliminated from Ellis Island's Museum Store!

A lot of people don't know this about me, but as of the past few months this cause has become very important to me. We only have one planet and if we don't all do our part, it may not be livable by the time our children's children are born.

And plastic, though it does have its uses (in the medical field for example), is becoming a big problem. The accumulation of plastic in our oceans is fatal to marine animals such as whales, dolphins, seals, and sea turtles, who can get entangled in plastic materials and even mistake it for food. Plastic also takes a very long time to degrade, so we should be a lot more careful than we are with it. Because this problem shows no sign of slowing - in fact, scientists expect plastic waste entering the ocean will increase by a considerable amount by 2025 if we don't all do our parts to change our habits, and soon.

Look, I don't mean to get preachy. Really, I don't. But I like oceans. I like ocean animals and I like our planet and I want to keep all these things around. This is important so we shouldn't be selfish about it - if you can help, even just a little bit, why wouldn't you want to? I know most of the blame lies with big corporations, but every tiny gesture we makes helps just a little.

You guys, just because "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" was the greatest of all "Star Trek" movies does not mean that I want to head towards the future where whales have gone extinct because humans are assholes. So let's do our part in the following ways:

1. Make the switch to reusable products

This is such an easy, simple switch, and it actually helps to save money in the long run. By switching to reusable water bottles, bringing cloth totes to the grocery store, and refusing plastic straws in restaurants/at home (use a reusable metal straw if you absolutely must have a straw - they are fantastic for cold drinks), you help cut down on a lot of plastic waste. Slow down and eat in to avoid takeaway containers and plastic cutlery. And if you absolutely must use something plastic? Reuse or recycle it whenever possible!

Also, you can purchase ocean-friendly plasticless products. For example - and I'm not married to this company so feel free to do your own research and shop elsewhere - but LUSH has a lot of fantastic plastic-free products that smell delicious and work wonderfully. I've made the switch to their solid shampoo bars (which last much longer than liquid shampoo - I use this one, myself) and their "naked" shower gels, both of which cut way down on my plastic waste. And if you like to sparkle, all of LUSH's glitter is plastic-free and biodegradable.

I swear that I'm not sponsored or anything, I just really really love their products...

2. Make a commitment to sustainability

Perhaps this is just a broader interpretation of point 1, but the point still stands. There are a number of ways we can be more sustainable, not just with plastic, but with everything! For example, if you eat seafood (as a vegetarian, I do not), do your best to make sure you're eating sustainable seafood instead of contributing to the species extinctions that things like plastic waste help cause. I've included a link to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's (a beloved California institution) guide to doing so, but there are a number of such guides on the web. Also? Pick up after yourself when you go to the beach, as quite a bit of marine debris gets its start as beach litter. (Seriously, guys, don't litter - what are you, a Captain Planet villain?)

When in doubt, try to remember the 7 R's of Sustainability: Refuse (if offered plastic bags or straws when out and about, say no), Reduce (cut down on how much you're using), Reuse (use products again if they're still good instead of just throwing it out), Repair (if it's broken try to fix it before buying another one), Rot (if something is biodegradable or made of natural materials, compost it instead of throwing it out to go to a landfill), Recycle (duh), and Rethink (if you can't do any of the above then do you really need that product???)

3. Be the one who influences change 

Spread the word about your commitment to sustainability! It may feel like you can't possibly make a difference, but if every single one of us talked to just one or two people, and they all talked to just one or two people, well, who knows what could happen?

Research conservation policies of public officials before you vote, or contact your local representatives about measures that cities like San Francisco have taken such as banning plastic bags and plastic straws. Speak up about your concerns if you spot a threatened species on a restaurant menu, and take part in initiatives that fight for the cause!

This is gonna sound absolutely cheesy, but we can do this if we work together. Yes, it feels like an uphill battle - because it absolutely is one - but it's not impossible.

#SaveTheWhales
-Nym

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

Quick and Easy Vegan Ramen

One of my favourite meals to make from scratch is ramen. It's simple, it's filling, you don't need a recipe, and it's very easy to customize to your own tastes. Do you like corn? Throw some canned corn in there. Do you dislike tofu or mushrooms? Leave them out! Pretty much the only thing a bowl of ramen needs to be called ramen are broth and ramen noodles. I'm only going to show you my favourite ramen recipe, a recipe I created myself, but feel free to add or take away ingredients as you see fit.

I'm going to be real with you guys. I did go to the Mitsuwa up in Edgewater, NJ to get some of the ingredients for this. Most of the Japanese ingredients in this recipe, however, are entirely optional. But the ones I do use are available at Mitsuwa (California friends, there's a Mitsuwa in San Jose on Saratoga Blvd near the 280 exit) or at Whole Foods. Tofu is becoming more and more readily available at regular grocery stores, too.

Anyway, here are the ingredients I used, the asterisks (*) noting which ones I got at Mitsuwa:

• Vegetable broth or veggie bouillon cube
• Miso paste* (Though it is optional, I strongly suggest including it. I've made ramen without it before and it is so much better with!)
• Ramen noodles* (It's worth splurging for good ramen noodles, but if you're unable to find them, the noodles from the instant packets are okay. Throw out the flavour packet if you're using instant ramen noodles.)
• Tofu*
• Crimini mushrooms
• Enoki mushrooms*
• Dried seaweed*
• Spinach
• Garlic
• Olive oil
• Salt, pepper, and spices

So here's what you're gonna do to make this delicious dish...

1) Boil a small pot of water with a bouillon cube, or vegetable broth. (Meat eaters can use whatever broth you want.) If you're not vegan, you can also soft-boil an egg in this broth that you can later use to top your ramen!

2) Slice one or two crimini mushrooms. Chop your tofu into the amount of cubes you want and save the rest in a tupperware container of water for future recipes. Mince one or two cloves of garlic.

3) Heat a small amount (about two tablespoons) of olive oil in a pan. Add the minced garlic and heat until fragrant.

4) Add miso paste to the boiling broth. Stir. (The amount you add is up to you. I have a squeeze bottle so I added one squeeze.) Then add the ramen noodles to the boiling broth.

5) While the noodles are cooking, stir fry the mushrooms and tofu in the garlicky oil with salt, pepper, and spices to taste. (I use powdered ginger and just a little cayenne pepper.) If you like other vegetables, you can add them to this stir fry too, just remember to add them in small amounts! This is a very quick flash fry. This shouldn't take longer than 5 or 6 minutes.

6) Spoon the noodles into a serving bowl and top with broth. Using a spatula, add the tofu-mushroom-whatever veggies mixture to one section of the bowl. Top the other sections with enoki mushrooms, spinach, and whatever else you like. (Non-vegans, this is where you chop that soft-boiled egg in half and place it right on there.) Sprinkle some dried seaweed on top.

7) EAT THE HELL OUT OF THAT MOTHERFUCKER BECAUSE IT TASTES SO GOOD.

So there you have it. A simple recipe for a delicious dinner! If you try it, let me know if you enjoy it! Let me know what modifications you made!

-Nym

A Modern Victorian Retreat Day

My teatime spread

 God bless the Wayback Machine, honestly.

One of my favourite websites that I discovered back in my early twenties was a website called "Eras of Elegance", one that appealed immensely to my history-loving sensibilities. It was divided into sections such as "movies" and "fashion" and "lifestyle", and gave not only brief overviews of historical eras and trends (i.e. the Ancient era, the Medieval era, the Regency, the Rococo, the Victorian period, etc.) but also gave lists of fiction that took place in these eras, historically inspired recipes, and ways one could translate historical fashions and hairstyles into a modern street look.

I loved that website so much. I was heartbroken when it disappeared from the internet. Thankfully, on the internet nothing is gone forever!

The Eras of Elegance homepage

One piece of the website that I had completely forgotten about, that I rediscovered again thanks to the Wayback Machine, was the ideas the site's author(s?) had for a "Victorian Retreat Weekend". That is, a weekend where one turns off all modern technology and does activities predetermined by the website (I assume the schedule is to be printed before the technology all goes off) to live in the spirit of the Victorians, if not quite historically accurately.

This idea intrigued me and would not let me go. I knew, now that I discovered it again, that I had no choice. This idea was gripping my mind. I couldn't stop thinking about it for weeks. I just had to do it. But there was no way for me to get an entire weekend off - so I consolidated it to just a day, combining the suggested schedules for two days into one:

7:00 am: Rise and shine, get ready for the day
8:00 am: Make breakfast from scratch.
9:00 am: After cleaning up from breakfast, morning devotional activity or reading.
10:00 am: Housework, crafting, or family time.
11:30 am: Prepare a picnic lunch.
12:00 noon: Picnic lunch at a local park.
1:30 pm: Afternoon excursion - possibly a local historical museum or antiquing.
4:00 pm: Afternoon tea. Once tea is cleaned up, reading, crafting, or writing in a journal.
6:30 pm: Prepare dinner.
7:30 pm: Dinner and clean-up.
8:00 pm: Family time.
9:00 pm: Back to the future.

I set rules for myself. I would make historically inspired recipes, I would dress historically-inspired (in a vintage Gunne Saxe dress - Victorian by way of the 1970s), and I wouldn't use any appliances that they did not have in the Victorian/Edwardian eras. My phone was only used as a camera (they did have cameras) and a phone for 8pm family time (my family lives in California and it's my sister's birthday, I couldn't not call just because I wanna escape modern life for awhile).

So then how did it go?

Matcha Swedish Pancakes

I know, I know, I have been a bad blogger lately. One of my two jobs fell through and right now much of my time has been spent job hunting, which doesn't make for very good blog entries. And while I do still make it to many museums, I'm unsure how many people want to read yet another "LOOK AT THIS MUSEUM I WENT TO YOU GUYS" entry. What's a blogger to do?

How about instructions for a quick and easy recipe I make all the time?

Swedish pancakes are a bit time consuming (as are regular pancakes), but they're easy and delightful. They're thinner than American pancakes, though not as paper-thin as a crêpe, and rather than stacking them and drenching them in maple syrup, they're traditionally spread with butter and/or jam and then rolled up. Though you certainly can drench them in syrup if that's your preference. I won't judge.

The matcha flavouring is optional, too. I just happen to love matcha in everything. I love the slightly-earthy, slightly-sweet-but-in-a-bizarrely-umami-way flavour just a little bit of matcha powder adds to things. I love the eye-catching green colour, too. If I had it my way, I'd be having matcha something every day, whether it was a matcha latte, a matcha ice cream, or, well, these things!

It's easy for me to get a cheap tin of matcha powder - they sell tins of it in Chinatown - but if you can't find it or just don't like it, you can easily leave it out for regular Swedish pancakes.

So! Let's do this!

Four Thieves Vinegar

Today I made a batch of Four Thieves Vinegar, which is currently sitting in my dark closet so it can seep for a month and be ready to use by Thanksgiving.

Some of my readers are going to know exactly what this stuff does and why one would want to have it around, and some of you are probably scratching their heads and wondering, Nym, what the ever-loving fuck is Four Thieves Vinegar?

How to Make Candles

Believe it or not, I actually can be a pretty crafty person when the mood strikes me. I consider myself to be a creative person. I write, I draw, I keep an artsy journal, I paint. But with the big move coming up, I haven't had much time or energy to devote to more extreme crafts. That, and I can't exactly try to make something huge when I'm in the process of getting rid of a bunch of stuff.

When the craft bug bites, though, sometimes there's little one can do but just make something.

Thus, candle making. Candle making is simple, and the end product is small and makes a great gift. I've done it before - the red one in the photo is a cinnamon/vanilla scented one from a few months ago. And when the crafting bug bit today, I made lavender candles! Why? Because I love lavender. It's one of my top favourite smells. It's calming, it's grounding, and yet it's magical and ethereal.

This time around, I took pictures every step of the way. So if you ever get the urge to craft, here's how I did it...