TEN

Viridian take all my money please.

Here we are at meal #4 or 5 out.

But we HAD to go. They were doing a collab with Merritt Ceramics.

Clearly I can't resist a good collab.

The collab dish was braised beef with the best fucking crispy eggplants I've ever put in my mouth - the only thing it was missing was a little bowl of rice.

And we got a handmade bowl to take home too *smiling face with hearts emoji.*

We got the honey walnut prawn toast for some carbs, which did not disappoint - fluffy on the inside, toasty on the outside.

 

emptied items:

n/a again *sobs*

12

oh my god the move is imminent. where will i put all my ceramics? i'm so excited to find out.

lunch was a mess of shrimp paella and sorry to say i stuck up the office with my seafood fumes. i did retreat into our cave of a private office so exposure was limited and also no one needed to see me sucking on shrimp heads.

 

my poor lats are still underdeveloped. i learned just how underdeveloped at conditioning today.

maybe because i undo all my hard earned silks work by coming home to drink tepache + champagne until i'm mildly tipsy and nibbling on duck broth tortillas that have been fried in duck fat.

by the way, when you don't have a normal sized tortilla press (because you only have a mini...), you must make do with two cutting boards and a slightly thicker tortilla. it's basically a cross between a tortilla and a tostada now.

i'm saving the bulk of the stack for the rest of my mole cubes but snacked on a couple with avocado and chili oil.

emptied items:

n/a

13

 

Look at this beautiful cross section fresh out of the freezer. Even the divot an isomalt iceberg left looks like a crashing wave. And I am enamored.

15/14 god bless the sea

This was the last event I'll host in this apartment :')

Bizarre dinners will have to be greatly reduced or heavily modified, but I will persist.

In the mean time, I was happy to expand the headcount (due to technical and logistical errors) for OCEANS.

20

My favorite thing during these moments of frantic pantry clean out are potluck dinners. Jamie and Shirley made us garlicky Oaxacan soup with squash blossoms and garlic noodles.

And I made a quick and easy lentil salad:

cooked in duck/chicken broth

celery. parsley. lacto carrot sauce.

Supplemented by breakfast Hot Pocket lunch because I'm in scarcity mode before Oceans.

twentytwo

Last morning of toasts pre ceramics.

avocado, everything bagel, pea shoots

parsley chimi (oregano, red wine vinegar, black garlic, preserved lemon, chili, olive oil)

strawberry hojicha tea

twenty three

Life sustaining toast to get me through five hours of ceramics where I finally attempted to put handles on things.

avocado, salted egg yolk, flybyjing chili

sunny egg, everything bagel, pea shoots

twenty four

I called this week a wash because almost nothing happened and what did happen didn't work. So I reserved myself a Friday evening to faceplant into brioche dough.

twentyfive

Note to self to not try to go for a run for the first time in over a year when your stomach is mostly empty. Apparently this lunch of noodles in duck braise with carrots and snow peas was not enough to sustain me through the day.

twenty six

My insides are vibrating, and they have been uncomfortable all day. I wonder what it's like to be inside other brains. Some brains might feel overly familiar, some brains might feel foreign, some brains might be relieving I imagine. I imagine I couldn't even fathom some brains - that ones that are free from vibrations and clouds.

I ate my bbq leftovers in the corner of the office like a crazed individual - gnawing on duck bones and corn on the cob. It doesn't matter because I come back ever Wed morning with puffy red eyes. Still not sure if anyone can tell I'd been crying, but some know about my weekly therapy block on my calendar.

My saving grace is an hour of circus where my brain can only focus on what my body is doing in the air.

I made a quick (and bougie?) tomato and egg with duck fat, diced heirlooms, and microgreens from work. Seasoned with xiancai and everything bagel seasoning.

Then I prepped the dried materials for a nuomifan. We found remainder bamboo leaves, shiitakes, some other dried mushroom, oysters, bamboo shoots, peanuts; and the sticky rice went into the duck braising liquid to soak up all the fatty gelatinous goodness overnight.

emptied items:

bamboo leaves

twenty nine

A peanut butter + doenjang sourdough pancake with herbs, everything bagel seasoning, sesame oil, and chili.

A moderately productive studio day where I forgot how to center apparently and friction burned my pinky on the wheel as a result.

A drive by Almanac to play with a bebe.

A couple of impulse quesabirria tacos from El Fuego to pregame dinner.

A few vulnerable tears.

Not pictured dinner of more ube sourdough coconut curry with extra charred veg.

emptied items:

Dutch peanut butters

thirty one

A cathartic day at work to finish hell week. I don't even know what I managed to eat for lunch - a spring roll, some more frozen yogurt. I was too agitated to sit down and focus on... lunch.

So my appetite all culminated in this second spread of katsu with grated salted egg yolk and kimchi, snap peas, and pea shoot accouterments.

No eating out exception for bars (and cafes). [and celebratory dinners].

Let us all admire this drink menu.

33

Yesterday, I slowly descended into turmoil. Today, I stared into a mental abyss while wondering what I'm even ... doing. Two overwhelming brain worm themes are trust and shame. But I can stay distracted with moving goals in the mean time.

Two skinny slices of kimchi sourdough with tomato jam from the freezer reserves and cheddar.

thirtyfour

One more round of this dense bebe malt bread became breakfast toasts for more bebe peanut butters. Date cinnamon and coffee sea salt today. And munching on these was the only quiet contemplation I got to myself all day.

The other moment of alone time I got was when everyone else scattered for lunch, and I prepped myself a little lab lunch from some fridge dregs - turns out I'm also high anxiety about fridge food at work.

Fresh pasta from a nixed dish + leftover lemon caper sauce + fried onions + a hit of garlic + one egg to emulsify + crispy onions + parmesan flakes = one momentarily happy Amelia.

Does the disgusting fogginess of my lens convey how chaotic the lab day was?

thirtyfive and some

I need like one of those "__ days without incident" signs but for drinking. 463 days without throwing up/blacking out, but Saturday brought me back down to 0.

Saturday also saw me breaking my no eat out rule because I had no choice while wandering the streets of SF with Kyle and Riley, but Good Good Culture Club was worth.

chilled dungeoness crab - red curry coco, crispy rice, sunflower seeds, asparagus, smoked trout roe

crying tiger shrimp salad - coconut makrut cream, cucumber, crispy butter beans, serrano

scallion bun - smoked beef belly, house hoisin, daikon kimchi, golden sesame

pandan espresso martini - vodka, barley shochu, espresso, espresso liqueur, pandan, brown sugar

thirtyeight

 Therapy question of the day is: will I ever get better?

What does it mean to get better. Or feel better. Or be better.

How do you know when you're ready to... be... done?

I'm not supposed to know the answer to this, nor am I expecting one.

I don't know.

This is makgeolli with strawberry cheong and it's like summery alcoholic dessert in a jar.

Liban was gracious enough to food style for me after bringing the onion I needed for chana dal.

Delighted to use up the rest of my dal while also pulling out a bunch of my spices - cumin and fennel seeds, garam masala, coriander, tumeric, amchur, asafoetida.

With frozen rice, carrots, and pea shoots from work.

First and failed attempt that ig's darling mini tarte tatins - apricot, ricotta, pistachios, agave.

How do I not completely maul my apricot slices? How do I get the underside of the puffs to be brown and crispy? Well we're certainly going to start this again.

emptied items:

chana dal

thirtynine stories

Me walking around all day at work: I don't get paid enough for this i don't get paid enough for this idon'tgetpaid enough forthis idon'tgetpaidenoughforthis

*a break in frustration for catered lunch*

*then renewed rage when i realize i could just get paid more*

Anyways, I came home to rage food prep for game night.

A quick dry udon for me: chili + lemongrass peanut butter (from De Pindakaaswinkel - this SUPER aesthetic store that caught my eye in Utrecht and I looked closely to see it was all peeeaaannnnuttttt buuutttteeerrrrr), molasses vinegar, grated galangal, a bit of agave, garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

forty summer solstice

Tandem goals include throwing out one old thing a day, whether it be a stack of  papers I don't need to be hanging onto (check), a piece of packaging that I thought I'd reuse (I didn't and I won't, check), or a donation item that won't get thrown out per se but just removed from my home (check).

I think I can make it through because we get food catered at work so much that any urge to eat out should be satisfied there. Distraction level is also high there. Frustration level is only growing by the day. The least I deserve is a tupperware of leftover Thai food from lunch.

Well anyways, the star of the evening:

She is undressed. She is crispy in all the right places. She could use a bit more sauce. But she totally hit the spot after a double duty of circus classes.

emptied items:

errrrrr no progress made today

does the can of Madre mezcal I snagged from work count?

fortyone pastas

I was introduced to the Naked and Famous by a bartender at the Double Standard after I told him I love mezcal and he just somehow knew I love aperol too. 

Well I don't have aperol (or yellow chartreuse) at home... so this is a Naked and Almost Famous:

mezcal

jager

orange cheong

lime juice

bitters

Look away if you have tryptophobia, but I ordered the sampler Sporkful pasta shapes, and this is the quattrotini, which I instantly looked at and thought.... HONEYCOMB PASTA. It's perfect guys - having never actually made it with rigatoni before, I imagine these quattrotini stand up much easier.

These bebes get piped full of ricotta with a touch of garam masala and then drowned in a simple ish tomato sauce with fennel and more garam masala and then finished with a blanket of mozz.

fortytwo

When I have to wake up early, I get so much done, and it's nice. But when I don't have to wake up early, I stay in bed until the afternoon and am barely conscious of the world outside.

I love days when I can stay distracted. This cake was an attempt to use up all my colorful buttercream on a little snack cake: olive oil from the freezer archives filled with raspberry curd with coffee buttercream background. Now what do I do with the awkward amount of buttercream left.