Hello, friends. Today’s VEDA topic is hangovers. Because I’m tired of watching myself and in case you are too, I had 4 other faces help me out. Brittany, Deesh, and Bing let me tape them in their home last night. And Neville from Nevblog.com (Great blog! Email me for my favorite blog posts, projects, and stories from him. I have a whole slew of them.) contributed a clip.
How’s this for a random skill: how to make pop up cards! I know how to make 3 different kinds (cake, heart, frog). I show you how to make the frog in today’s VEDA vlog. Enjoy and we’re almost half way done with the week! 3 cheers!
I saw this tweet from Ryan today and it reminded me of an interaction I had with someone in my life this weekend. This prompted me to share my list of three questions to ask yourself before you ask someone a favor.
I use the term friend to mean whomever you are asking a favor of. Hopefully you should know better than to rely on an enemy.
If I’m asking a favor of Mary Ellen or another super close friend, I wouldn’t feel out of line if I just jumped right into it and asked for the favor. We are close enough to stay in communication routinely so I hope that she understands that her friendship is valuable to me and I do not see her as just an end to my means. If you’re not close to this friend and haven’t talked to them in a while, please approach with more care and tact. Realize that you’ve neglected this relationship for whatever reason and to not at the very least inquire about his or her life is off putting.
There is someone in my life right now who texted me this weekend. Before even reading her text I knew she needed something and groaned. I think I even put off opening her text message. I came to this accurate prediction because she has developed a consistent pattern of only speaking to me when she needed something. I cannot remember the last time we hung out and caught up on each other’s lives that was not initiated by me. I ended up texting back an avoidance of her favor. It worked out that I was honestly busy and am working both my jobs this week. However, I doubt I’d honor her favor even if I did have the time.
There’s an analogy in Stephen R. Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that I think is pertinent. View your relationships with people as individual bank accounts. Have you made deposits in the relationships? Cashing in a favor is withdrawing from your bank account. Doing a favor or being a friend is equivalent to depositing. Is your relationship account balanced? Are you overdrawn? Ask yourself this before making your request.
Do you know what’s going on with your friend’s life? Do you know how his work/personal/extracurricular life is going? What did he do over the weekend? If you haven’t the slightest clue what he’s up to in the last 6 months, you probably have no business trying to cash in a favor. Again, if this person has no idea what’s going on with you and the first thing you do is ask if he or she can fix your router or debug your website’s php code, more than likely, you’re watering some of his resentment.
1. Share your orders When I went to Gourdough’s last week, I hardly knew 5 of the 6 other people there. One of guys announces that they’re all foodies, so they “know how to eat.” What he’s talking about is sharing and tasting your company’s order. We discussed how some people get a little possessive and snobby about sampling from other people’s order or vice versa. That’s fine and all but to truly be a foodie, you must get down and dirty with your friends. Share! The point is to try as much as you can. 2. Talk to the owner whenever possible I always try to chat up the owners whenever possible. It’s a treat to see the faces behinds the great ideas. One of Gourdough’s owners (there are two) is Ryan, pictured above in the photo. Commend them if you had a great experience and introduce yourself! We all said hello to Ryan and gave him a few recommendations for new donuts. (We jokingly suggested he make a Papa John’s donut.) There’s no real purpose for this rule except etiquette and gratitude. 3. Roll with the misadventures If you’re out in the field long enough, you’re bound to get shot by the bad luck sniper every now and again. Restaurants closing down before you get a chance of trying, food poisoning, trying something you don’t really like (for me it was octopus), throwing up because you ate so much (not me, but my opponent in an eating contest, hehehehe), or GETTING FARTED ON! That was such a bizarre moment for Kim and me. We were eating brunch at Backstreet Cafe, when a man (pictured above with his back to us), lifted his butt and let one rip. We were aghast! We could almost taste it!! Ug. I’m gagging as I relive this. The point is though, we didn’t let it ruin our experience at Backstreet. Don’t let the snags deter you from your pursuit of great food experiences. Yuck. That fart. Do you have any foodie rules to add? |
As stated in Part One, Bánh Cuốn (directly translates to “rolled cake”) is rice crepes rolled with minced pork and wood ear mushrooms. Apparently, it’s traditionally eaten as breakfast food but I could eat it any time of day. You dip it in a special dipping sauce and it’s usually garnished with cilantro and sauteed crispy scallions. Part One was my mom making the sauteed scallions. Here is the second and final part. Enjoy the video.
Editing and annotating the video has given me a craving. I guess now that I know how to make these crepes, I can try… OR I can just be a lazy daughter and wait til I go home to Houston next. Hee.
Another coblog with Mary Ellen. Read her version here.
Last and first coblog we did: 10 more rules to live by (me) | 10 Rules to Live By (her)
Having something to look forward to helps with maintaining happiness. Even when you’re in the throes of deadlines and sickness and other life stresses, having a rainbow waiting after the rain will put our problems into perspective, that is, it lets us realize that the bad will pass and something good is coming.
Let your curiosity do some leading and you’ll make wonderful discoveries that are both little and grand. There’s something fun about following your curiosities as there’s no telling where they may lead you.
Hunger, like curiosity is a force of motion. Having a dangling carrot ahead of you tempting you with desire is quite motivating in terms of setting you into action. It’s not enough to just simply want success, life experiences, happiness; be hungry for it. There is an urgency in hunger that is important not to lose; our time here on earth and with our people is very limited.
This is especially helpful to me in terms of relationships. Most trespasses cannot be taken back so why mull and suffer over something that cannot be undone? Growing up, my dad always asked me whenever I’d cry about a broken friendship or relationship, “Are they crying over you right now? …No? Then why are you crying over them?” In the spirit of Richard Fish from Ally McBeal, “Bygones!”
This can be achieved simply by being aware of the consequences of your actions.
There are infinite things to celebrate: Health, accomplishments, love, youth, wisdom, the color purple. Possibilities are endless. The act of celebrating and honoring something forces us to step back and appreciate. Blowing out the candles, shooting the fireworks, clinking champagne glasses, dancing to a good beat, these actions in themselves are joyful. Make your life a party.
When we reflect back on what we have as opposed to what we don’t have, it’s really hard not to be happy and see that we’re all very blessed.
 Balloons waiting to be written on Every year at aroud New Year’s for the past 3 years, Kim and I, inspired by an article in O magazine, release balloons. We adapted what Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife did (she released balloons to symbolize things she was letting go) and we write on 2 balloons. One with the things we want to let go from the year prior, the other with things we desire and hope for in the year to come. It’s an extremely girly thing to do but we enjoy it tremendously and look forward to it when a year draws to an end.  Each balloon gets a quotation.  Our quotation chosen for our wishes, desires, and hopes balloon  Our regrets and letting go balloon  Kim adding to our wishes and desires for 2010.  A glimpse of what we hope for  More things we’re hoping for  Things to let go  More things we’re letting go   Video of our balloon releaseCheers to 2010! |
I’m a bad Vietnamese girl and do not know how to read or write in Vietnamese. I was telling my mom about how I was talking to Kym (who is a literate Viet), about how Anthony Bourdain seems so carefree and in love with life. What really captured what I was trying to say is this Vietnamese phrase that directly translates to “in love with life” (but it means so much more than just that). I was having a hard time communicating to her the phrase so I tried to phonetically sound it out for her. However, it didn’t quite land. Here’s the snippet of our conversation.
Kym: what vietnamese phrase?
me: um
i cant spell it but it directly translates to “in love with life”?
Kym: oh man. i don’t know
me: ew duh
Kym: i’ll have to ask my parents now
me: like “love world”
Kym: i want to know
me: love life
Kym: OHHHH
HAHAHAHAHAHA
me: its suppose to mean like a personality trait. someone. who is enamoured with life/full of life, dreamy
Kym: i think it might be yêu dời.
EW DUH I LOVE IT
I shamefully told my mom about this conversation. She was so embarrassed by her daughter, she gave me a mini lesson right then and there. She demonstrated what all the little accents and squigglies do to pronunciation. A common assumption is that all Asian languages are comprised of funky characters instead of script, but Vietnamese is actually all script, save the accents and “squigglies.”
I totally would have taken a class in college but UT didn’t offer the classes til after I graduated!
I know this may be obvious as I’m a Vietnamese American girl, but I really enjoy Vietnamese cuisine. I don’t get to eat it enough. Austin has an abysmal selection of Vietnamese restaurants in comparison to Houston. I think my personal appetite for Vietnamese food has finally pushed me to start learning how to cook Vietnamese dishes. As of right now, the only Asian recipes I know are Chinese and Chinese American. I wanted to start off with something pretty easy something, something I crave often, and something not easily found in Austin. Bánh cuốn appears to satisfy all three requirements.
Bánh cuốn (directly translates to “rolled cake”) is rice crepes rolled with minced pork and wood ear mushrooms. Apparently, it’s traditionally eaten as breakfast food but I could eat it any time of day. You dip it in a special dipping sauce and it’s usually garnished with cilantro and sauteed crispy scallions. Over Thanksgiving, my mom agreed to let me video her teaching me how to make bánh cuốn. Here’s part one. She’s showing me how to make the crispy sauteed scallions. I can nibble on these delightful crisps on their own. They taste like the fried onion crisps you top green been casseroles with.
My mom’s speaking in Vietnamese in the video and I’m translating. I apologize if I mumbled a little. I had just woken up.
To be continued here.
I’ve been meaning to make these Oreo truffles after reading about them on a few baking blogs. I kept forgetting about them until Jordan Reid blogged the easiest recipe for Oreo truffles I’ve seen. I made a day out of it on Saturday. No joke, it took me 4 hours to make them and about an hour to clean up. It’s easy but just time consuming. I made a batch of Oreo truffles and used the same recipe to make Nutter Butter truffles.
Here’s the recipe taken off of Jordan Reid’s blog.
OREO TRUFFLES
What you need:
1 package Oreo cookies, finely crushed
1 8 oz package cream cheese (no reduced fat stuff, please…we’re talking truffles here)
2 packages (8 squares each) semi-sweet chocolate, melted (in the microwave is easiest)
What you do:
1. Mix 3 cups of the cookie crumbs with the cream cheese until well-blended.
2. Shape cookie/cream cheese mixture into 42 1” balls.
3. Dip balls in melted chocolate (use two forks and sort of roll them around until evenly coated; allow excess to drip off) and place on wax paper.
4. Sprinkle over remaining cookie crumbs and refrigerate at least one hour before serving. Store in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator.
These make great holiday gifts and taste luxurious, just how truffles should taste!
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