ramen weather

Anxiety levels are always high when I'm back at home. But not just in the typical ways you could guess for adult child returning back to den of someone else's rules and habits. I regress about 20 years in mentality, but whenever I open a cabinet or drawer to find it stuffed full of papers and tools and snacks and toys and just all around junk, I feel the daunting task of one day having to be responsible for cleaning it out. Then I slowly close the cabinet or the drawer and walk away and tuck myself into my temporary bed and try to sooth my brain into believing I can just pay someone to take care of the mess when the time comes.

I can't even bring myself to really stay in the kitchen. The fridge is full of 2, 3, 4, 5 year expired jars and blocks of things, and the pantry is full of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year expired bags and cartons of things. The reluctance to throw anything out. The inability to begin any form of organization. Is this mental illness?

Before you say anything, yes, this is where I get it from. But at least I have control over my own things. Did anyone ever question if I, too, have a mental illness though?

I made these fried enoki with togarashi last year and looking at this tangled mass of fungi without any indication of where it starts and where it ends is not unlike looking behind any door in my parents' house.

meals' table: weekend of tender meats

 I did not expect BBQ stories to make me cry, but Chef's Table BBQ really found a way to hit all the emotional notes with their introduction of Tootsie. I mean, in addition to just how beautiful and romantic whole animal cooking is and every slow motion shot of that meat, juices dripping, sauces glistening. Tootsie talks about how fast everyone's moving these days (I mean, maybe not these days), which is at odds with what bbq symbolizes and how she does her bbq - taking hours tending to every piece of meat over those coals.

thirtyfour tortillas

Look
At
This
Tiny
(impractical)
Tortilla
Press
That I got from a hectic market in Mexico City, which is about one million years ago now *insert loudly crying face emoji*

To make tiny impractical tortillas. But they are so cute!
And you can eat like 50 of them since that's how bite-sized things work as I understand it.

SXSW Trolling

We weren't dying to go to Cancun, so we went to Austin instead.  Ann had a vested interest in the tech scene, I had never been to a music festival, and Lydia is Texas native by birth.  We awkwardly traveled on three different airlines though - that was the result of some expert planning (no sarcasm).

We went to the Whole Foods flagship store basically every day.  I mean... it's huge.  There's a rooftop patio.  And it's huge.  There, I was introduced to the wonders of dried mulberries.  How do I go about getting a large bag of these?