Stuck at the airport

Supposed to be in LA right about now, but our plane had electrical problems (?) and had to make an emergency landing in Chicago. A meal voucher compelled me to buy dinner at the only place in the terminal (other than Starbucks): McDonald's! 

Yaaay fish filet and a chicken salad that I will pick the chicken out of. 

A quick trip to Philadelphia

So, school starts in earnest this week (my full schedule doesn't kick in till Thursday, thankfully), so I gotta get these posts up asap! 

First off: Philadelphia! Ari and I took a mid-week trip to the city of brotherly love from August 19 - 20th. I had hotel points from a credit card I'd signed up for, so we decided to spend a night in the city that I'd only been to briefly before (I visited mainly the historical part with Michelle and Liz back in spring 2014). I wanted to see the cool parts that I'd heard about, plus I'd heard good things about the vegetarian restaurant there, called Vedge. So we booked a night at the Holiday Inn Express, which is literally a 3-minute walk from Vedge. And despite originally planning to take Amtrak there like the old-world travellers we wanted to pretend to be, we discovered that Megabus tickets were literally 1/20 of the price ($100 vs. $5!!). So we caught a Megabus at 9:30am and got to Philly by 11:30am. 

Once we got dropped off in the city center, we walked directly to Reading Terminal Market to grab some lunch. We got there during peak lunch hour, which was a little overwhelming. But we managed to get a decent veggie burger and cheesy scalloped potatoes at Hunger Burger, and find a spot to sit down among all the crowded tables. 

Waiting for our food. Notice the large amount of people. 

After that, we did a combination of two self-guided mural tours that I heard about from Hannah, my friend from high school who currently lives in Philadelphia (but who was sadly out of town when we visited). Important note: the majority of what we did in Philly was a suggestion from Hannah. Thanks, Hannah! 

The murals were pretty cool to visit because they are all over the city, thanks to an initiative started in the 80s as an anti-graffiti strategy, and continuing today as the MuralArts Program. Apparently this program has painted more than 2,000 murals all over the city since 1984. 

On the day we visited, it was a sunny 90 degrees with about 80% humidity, but we actually had a really good time exploring the city through finding these murals. Some of the murals had basically no background information, while others had a phone number you could call to hear a recorded message about the painting.

This mural was one of the wackier ones. We didn't get any background info on this one, but I liked how colorful it was. 

We had to take a break after about an hour and half of trekking in the sun, and stopped in Chinatown to get some boba tea. (The people behind Ari look warped because this is a panoramic shot.) 

This mural was painted near an animal shelter; each animal painted on this wall depicts an actual rescue animal that was adopted. To finance the mural, pet owners entered a lottery to have their pet painted into the mural. 

We came upon this adorable street (there were actually many like it, this was just the first one we saw) called Quince Street. I wanted to live in this ivy-covered house. I made myself feel better about the situation by telling myself that the house's owners probably don't have very good air conditioning in the summer. And it's probably really drafty in the winter. So yeah. Not that great. 

After walking all around the city for about 4 hours, we finally checked into our hotel (we were just carrying backpacks) and took a refreshing shower and a quick nap before going out again for a cocktail before dinner. Our reservation wasn't until 9:30pm, so we didn't have to rush. 

We also grabbed a snack at about 5pm -- we went to this awesome Israeli hummus place called Dizengoff (Ari wholeheartedly approved of their pita bread) and then we went across the street to get a grapefruit brûlée donut at Federal Donuts.  

After resting up, we walked to a pop up garden which was pretty cool, although a little heavy on the bougie-hipster vibe. The idea is that this organization turns vacant lots into beer gardens for the summer. 

I had a very sweet honey-flavored cocktail (too sweet--I couldn't finish it.). I think Ari had a mojito. You can see a beautiful, rusty tub thing behind us, as proof that this was a hip spot. 

Then we went to Vedge! Where everything tasted pretty darn good. But my favorite part HAD to be the cocktail called "Effie, Brace Yourself." For those of you that may not be up to date on your Mrs. Doubtfire trivia (I just watched it with my students last May), that is one of the funniest lines from the film. And it was indeed a very bracing cocktail! 

Ari models his awesome drink. 

My picture of the food is not very photogenic, but I'll post it anyway, just to give people an idea. We had stuffed avocado for the appetizer (not pictured), a ratatouille squash thing (in the middle), spicy grilled tofu (on the left), fingerling fries (on the right), and for dessert we had rutabaga fondue (which was DELICIOUS and obviously tasted better than it sounds).

The next day, we had to catch a bus back to NYC at 2pm, so we had to plan how we wanted to spend the majority of the morning. I'd already been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it was supposed to be likely thunderstorms, so we decided to take a risk and and spend the $20 each to visit the Barnes Foundation. According to the website, it's "the greatest private collection of post-impressionist and early-modern art." I looked at that description and thought, "Well, Ari and I were just in Paris where we saw a ton of that art period at the Musee D'Orsay. Do we really need to see more of it?" Turns out, we did! The value of the experience was more in the way the art was displayed than in the art itself. Barnes (the collector) arranged all of the art according to his tastes and preferences, and he did it in a very unique and quirky way. Artists from totally different time periods and parts of the world are hung next to each other, and it is all kind of packed together, so that you walk into a fairly small room and aren't really sure which of the thirty paintings to look at first. I recommend taking a look at the website if you want to get an idea what it's like, since they don't allow any photos to be taken inside. 

After we had spent a couple hours at the museum, we had just enough time to grab lunch and then head to the bus station. As luck would have it, Pizzeria Vetri (another Hannah rec!) was literally right across the street from the Foundation. We dashed over there and ordered an eggplant and stracciatella pizza. And it did not disappoint. As Ari remarked on the bus ride home, the bread products were really the highlight of our trip to Philadelphia. 

All in all, a wonderful 36-hour (or less, actually) trip to a city that's only an hour and a half away. We left Philly thinking we should do that more often--both visit Philly and travel to destinations that are convenient and easy to explore on foot. Next on the list: maybe Hoboken? 

Hope to see you next time, little guy! 

Here's what I ate for dinner tonight!

Whenever Ari's gone for dinner, I tend to default to pasta with vegetables or rice with vegetables. Tonight I had pasta. 

And my excuse for posting a more-inane-than-usual update? I got to gchat with Cammy tonight! So she used up my precious blogging time. Muahaha! Blame Cammy. 

So MAD

I'm not mad. I'm just MAD about MAD MEN! Hahahahahahahahah! (I'm also not drunk. I just don't feel like starting with a sane opening.) 

Today, Ari and I took the train all the way to Queens to visit the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI, or "Mommy" as I like to pronounce it) and see the exhibit on the TV show Mad Men, which is there through September. If you talked to me in May, you knew that I was, and am, a die-hard fan of this show. It might be my favorite show ever. (I have yet to see the Sopranos, but I have given Breaking Bad and The Wire a chance. They are good, but they didn't capture my interest the same way that MM has.) 

Ari is also a fan, so we had a pretty good time looking at the notes and costumes and sets for the show. The coolest part was definitely seeing Don Draper's office. Sigh. I am so sad this show is over. 

Covert photo taken when the security guard wasn't looking

On the way back to the train, we stopped at a Venezuelan restaurant and had arepas. Or rather, Ari did. I got the "Venezuelan breakfast" which was DELICIOUS.

                           

Too tired for a full blog post

So I'll just post that YAY it's Friday and I managed to jog all the way around Prospect Park at 10pm this evening. Please note: This exercise occurred after watching Bonnie and Clyde at Film Forum, going to get a veggie burger at Bark, and then eating a slice of Candy Bar Pie (R) at Milk Bar. 

It might have been that last part that finally motivated me to put on my jogging shoes. 

Oysters

One of my new year's resolutions (that I made two days ago) is to post more on this blog. As Hannah, my eternal blogging buddy said, if blogs are passé, then now's the time to write whatever we want! (Although I generally feel like I DO write whatever I want. I just want to put more of those random thoughts on the blog.)

So, in the words of those read-along tapes, Let's begin now. 

This past weekend was a milestone for me because: I tried oysters for the first time! And I got it on camera: 

I try an oyster as Sarah looks on, skeptically.

Yes, oysters are not vegetarian. I would not normally eat them. But, I figured it was something I had to try once. My friend and coworker Megan LOVES oysters, so convinced me and Sarah to join her at a local restaurant that had an oyster special just for the month of January. Sarah and I had planned to get regular meals and pass on the shell fish. But once we got there, we both figured that for $2 each (kind of pricey, but not too pricey?), we had to at least try a couple oysters.

We both ordered two: one from the West Coast and one from the East Coast. Supposedly oysters on the West taste creamier, while oysters on the East taste fishier. We definitely noticed the difference. I much preferred the mild-ish oyster from Washington, rather than the salty/fishy one from Chesapeake Bay, Virginia.

Megan and her 10 oysters. 

So now I can say I'm fancy (enough) because I have eaten oysters! They were...fine. I'm in no rush to eat them again.

It's a chai-in-the-poodle-cup kind of day

I suspect this is a sign of winter coming.

Also, you can't tell in this picture, but my poodle cup is BIG. 

Trivialities

In light of all the recent bad, no good, frustrating news (Boston, Texas, and the complete failure to pass decent gun control laws--ARGHHHH) I will now avoid a discussion of those topics, and write a post on something completely trivial. Not that my usual posts are much more substantial. But this post will be about what is in my fridge.

I know you've been dying to know what's in there. Especially considering how renowned my skills are as a cook. The time has come.

Voila!

As you can see, I don't have a full size fridge in my room. It gets full pretty quickly. This is what it looks like immediately after a grocery trip. 

• Yogurt, an open package of cookies, and some chocolate wrapped in a plastic bag on the top shelf
• Steamed veggies, apples, and bread on the second shelf (apples cost about $1 a piece here, by the way)
• Curry mix, a candy cane (leftover from when the parents came at Christmas), apple pear, water, and pasta. Yes, I keep a lot of random stuff in the fridge, because the ants tend to eat everything, including uncooked pasta. 

The door of the fridge. 

• A jar of Indonesia-brand Nutella rip-off on the top shelf. 
• A bottle of Ken's salad dressing, literally purchased my first week in Indonesia, when I had a craving to make my own salad. I should probably throw that bottle out. And then jelly dessert. I LOVE all the aloe/coconut/agar-agar jelly desserts they have in this country. 
• On the bottom shelf, a can of root beer (for emergencies), milk, pasta sauce, jam, and peanut butter. 

The "pantry." Also known as the plastic shelf unit I bought for $4 at Hypermart. 

• I have a plastic bag full of pasta mixes (Those mixes are my savior!! I thought I couldn't go any longer on just tomato pasta sauce and rice with veggies) in a variety of flavors--cheese, mushroom, chives--but really, they all just taste the same. I love them. And spicy seaweed imported from Malaysia. You know how much it costs to get that packet of 10 sheets of seaweed? $6!! That's a lot of dough. 
• On the second shelf, you can see tea, my two Indonesian sauces (hot sauce and sweet soy sauce), and two cans of Heinz baked beans. Because you never know. 
• On the bottom shelf, tupperware, unopened pasta, and corn. And my trusty (and gross-looking) rice cooker in front! I use that thing literally every day. Unless I end up eating out for dinner, which usually happens about once or twice a week. 

What, you want to see MORE of my room? Well, I don't have any more food to show you. But I can show you my desk! 

Nothing especially special. I generally don't have internet in my room (only when the wifi is being used by people upstairs usually between 8-4 on weekdays, which is when I'm usually out of my room), so I generally just use my desk for eating and watching movies. I have a half-drunk bottle of red wine (birthday gift from my boss! Wine is like gold here.), big empty bottles for drinking water, pictures of friends, and Ari when he came to visit. 

On the vanity-thing next to my desk, I have amassed a collection of random stuff. Mainly, three pictures of my friends in bathing suits. (Gasp! Couldn't show pictures of bathing suits to my students! One of the cultural differences I didn't think about when choosing which pictures to bring from home.) And two pictures of Ari, followed by a card from Ari. And an origami fox sent from Michelle. 

You might be thinking, "Where are you pictures of your parents? And the rest of your family and friends?! What kind of person are you?" Well, those pictures are actually up on the wall in my "office," where I can show them off to my coworkers and students, and look at them every day. So it's not quite as disgraceful as you think. 

If it ends with martabak, it's OK.

Last Friday, January 11, as a favor for a friend of a friend, I went out to visit a pesantren (Muslim boarding school) in Lamongan, which is about two hours outside of Surabaya. While I wasn't especially looking forward to this trip because I knew it would take all day (I was doing two presentations, one for the students and one for the teachers), I figured it would be a good chance to explore a little outside of Surabaya. And in fact, the trip turned out better than I expected.

First of all, I got to try some local specialties: ental (the seed-looking things) and jemblek. The ental apparently comes from a palm, and it is peeled and eaten like a kind of gelatinous, flavorless fruit. I only had one bite. That was enough.

Ental and jemblek

Legen

 Then I got to drink legen, which is apparently made from the juice of the flower (?) of the same type of palm as ental. It was interesting--super sweet, and borderline alcoholic. Apparently if you let it ferment for a few days more, it becomes alcoholic.

Here I am, holding jemblek. As you can see, it's wrapped in palm leaf, which you have to unwrap to eat what's inside. What inside is...a brown, gelatinous, sweet goo. I was able to eat about three healthy bites before putting it down. I watched as local teachers wolfed down the sweet in seconds.

At this point, I'm sorry to say that I am less than impressed by Indonesian desserts. They are generally weirdly sweet, and almost always gelatinous. My favorite dessert so far is brem cake, and even that is made from something fermented. What gives?

Anyway, back to the story at hand. I had some local treats, and then ate lunch, which consisted mainly of seafood, since Lamongan is on the coast.

The black stuff is squid, there's some obvious fish in there (which is apparently a type of fish that's very common in the area), and the yellow stuff is shrimp mixed with coconut milk and...other stuff. It was all quite good! Had some difficulty with the bones of the fish, but I think I managed it alright.

Then, after lunch I got to meet some of the star students. These three girls were apparently the best in English from their class, and they were amazingly cute and sweet. At first they were shy, but after about ten minutes we were talking about music, classes, and marriage traditions. Ha.

Then came the actual presentation itself. Apparently the director of the school decided that I should only speak to the girls, since I'm a girl. Okay. Can't argue with that! Or can I?

Anyway, let me just say, that I have never felt this much like a rock star. I came on stage to this group of approximately 100 girls:

Who literally started screaming and shrieking as soon as they saw me. When I did the presentation, I asked for volunteers (NO ONE wanted to volunteer, argh), but when I walked into the audience to look for someone, they all started reaching out for me to shake their hands. So I started shaking their hands, and they all started screaming again. Whaa?? Is this how Justin Bieber feels at his concerts?

At the end, there was (as always) a question-and-answer period, and one group of girls in the front really wanted me to sing Adele's song "Someone Like You." This song is probably the most popular song in Indonesia right now. And somehow I still haven't learned it! So I kept saying no, sorry, until finally I decided I could attempt the chorus. So yes, I sang a, uh, passable, cover of Adele for this group, not to mention all the other random people who had gathered on the sidelines. Good times. At least it wasn't the Titanic song, I guess.

My last moment as a rock star occurred at the end, when I was almost attacked by girls who wanted to stand next to me for a photo. They were pushing and shoving each other, and I was getting jostled and squeezed, and almost fell over! Man, when the teacher who coordinated this told me that his students would be excited to meet a "Native Speaker," he wasn't kidding. I just hope made enough of an impression on a few of these adorable kids to push them to continue studying English and hopefully travel abroad someday.

On our drive back to Surabaya (a full eight hours after leaving it), we stopped for a quick photo shoot with the Java Sea. I've now been to the Java Sea (and I didn't even know it existed until I went there)!

Post Script: Before they dropped me off at my room, my hosts took me by a martabak stand to buy both one regular martabak (like an omelette--it's like an omelette, with egg and green onions in the middle) AND one sweet martabak (I had one of these in Bandung at the beginning of my stay; it's like a crepe on steroids). All for MEEEEEE.

Another food photo

This is a picture of a "meal box" that I got as a gift after doing a presentation at a local school this morning. It's pecel, pronounced like puh-CHULL. Pecel is a kind of breakfast food here. It's usually a little meat, in this case chicken, and some kind of gorengan (fried food), in this case fried tempeh, with rice and a lot of veggies. Oh, and the sauce is this spicy peanut sauce. I actually really liked this dish when I first came to Indonesia, but then, as with gado-gado, I ate it way too much and now I am just lukewarm about it. But at least it's mostly vegetarian-friendly!

Nasi Campur

Checked out of the Sheraton yesterday (kicking and screaming). Back to reality for two days before I leave on Wednesday for a youth camp in Jakarta.

I realized that I haven't posted many pictures of what I've been eating. This is a picture of the lunch I ate today (that I eat pretty much every day that I'm at work). It's called nasi campur (pronounced Nah-see Chahm-pur). The name translates to "mixed rice," and pretty much just means rice and lots of other random stuff that you select from the food cart.

As you can see, I selected green beans, lots of tempe, and a fried egg. A really greasy, pretty delicious, fried egg. Oh, and lots of "sambal," or hot sauce. It's pretty much unavoidable to get sambal with everything you order here. It costs 6,000 rupiah--the best deal around (that's about 70 cents). It's not a huge portion, but it keeps me filled up for a few hours.

Also--you may notice that I am using a fork to eat it. This is not the standard way of eating anything, really, in Java. Most people use their hands. I gave that a try for about two weeks, and then once the novelty wore off I decided it was just easier for me to stick with what I'm used to, and be able to eat more competently. I like to think people at least appreciated the effort. My coworkers are still impressed that I actually, truly like nasi campur to begin with. 

This is what 96 degrees does to me

It makes me buy Jamaican Ginger Beer (which I have been craving since last summer; it seems to be sold seasonally) and impulsively pick up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream Bars.
 The ice cream bars are definitely NOT vegan. But so cold and peanut-buttery....

SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONNNEEEEEE

It just dawned on me: since Ari's been gone at camp (1 1/2 weeks), I have been eating the archetypal bachelor's diet.

• Sunday night: Takeout Chinese
• Monday morning: Cereal
• Monday afternoon: Leftover takeout Chinese
  
• Monday night: MORE leftover takeout Chinese, followed by cereal for dessert
• Tuesday morning: Cereal
  

Yes, since the weather's been over 90 degrees (and only our bedroom has decent a/c), I have been on something of a cereal kick. (I usually eat oatmeal in the morning, but it just makes me sweat even more than I already am.)

I have also discovered the joys of mixed vegetables + General Tso's bean curd = $9.00 and feeds me for three meals.

Yikes. This is starting to look pretty pathetic. My excuse is, I'm just getting by until I leave for CALIFORNIA on Saturday!

Mmm

Couscous, Trader Joe's hot sauce, and peas (from the freezer). This is the dinner I am eating right now. I need to go grocery shopping.


In other news, I am DONE with my final exams, as of 7pm this evening! Unfortunately, summer school begins on May 19. But until then...DONE.

In one day (today), I ate ALMOST a whole loaf of challah bread. I decided to allow myself to enjoy non-vegan food till January, so I bought the challah (with egg in it).

And now it's 11:37pm and my stomach is STUFFED with bread.
It could be worse.

Rice rice baby

Roger Ebert is publishing a cookbook solely based on things you can make in a rice cooker. Be still my heart.

The first week

A few random shots from my first couple of days here.

The night I arrived: Ari made me chocolate pie! With homemade whipped cream. He knows what I like.

Refreshing fountain in Prospect Park

Cool wire bug sculptures on a random building.

The Williamsburg Bridge

Algebraic equations on the ground?

My first Sonic visit, en route to Ohio. Banana cream pie milkshake. I was not a fan of banana-flavored drinks until I tried this. AMAZING.

An obscene chili pepper

I think this is one of the grossest things I can possibly imagine eating. Thoughts, anyone? Has anyone actually tried this?!

Wherever I go in this world, my

Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki comes with me. (I just bought a bottle today, realizing how incomplete and boring my life was without it.)