shokufeh is…home

I love a meal that’s quick and tasty. Recently, I remembered a meal that I used to make quite often and have recently rediscovered. In fact, I’m making it tonight. I don’t know why I stopped making it (maybe overload), or where I first found it, but just in case you’re interested:

Scrambled carrots and tofu with sesame

Put rice on to cook.

Toast a handful or so of sesame seeds in a dry wok or skillet. Once your sesame seeds are toasted, let them cool on a plate while you cook the carrots and tofu.

Crumble a block of firm/extra firm tofu.
Throw several carrots in the food processor, so they’re finely chopped. (I aim for about equal amounts of carrot and tofu.)

Heat a tablespoon or two of oil (I use olive) in the wok. Add the carrots and let them cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add crumbled tofu and cook for a few more minutes. Add soy sauce or Bragg’s to taste and cook for a final few more minutes. Remove from heat. Add sesame oil to taste, along with the toasted sesame seeds.

Serve with rice. Mmmm. Even the meat eater in the house likes this dish.

Update: There turned out to be a very good benefit to posting this here (other than providing you with a new meal) – Sam used it as a guide to cook dinner, while I felt sorry for my left buttock. I should do this more often, before I cook something.

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Today, in an email, I got a little video that shows how to fold a shirt. It looks like magic. I must practice. I found it on another site and recommend you check it out:

How to fold a shirt

Or do all of you already fold your shirts this way?

Update: Success in the field! Visit Tina*:) for a helpful hint.

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I like a good kung fu kick just as much as the next person. Maybe even more than the next person.

Yesterday, Sam and I were in the elevator at Macy’s (on the way to the bathroom, of course) and, inspired by the elevator’s hugeness and our aloneness, I decided I needed to kick. No, I didn’t pee my pants (just in case you thought the parenthesis above was a form of foreshadowing).

I got my leg about halfway up to my goal height and then cringed in pain and grabbed my back and butt. I forgot that, of late, all is not normal in my structure. It seems that for the past few weeks, Bean has taken up residence on a nerve that leads to the left side of my posterior. I’ve thought maybe it is my sciatic nerve, but something I read last night made me think maybe not – something to bring up at tomorrow’s prenatal appointment.

Anyway, Sam and I had a good laugh over the pregnant woman who couldn’t do a kung fu kick, but thought she could. Probably not funny to those of you weren’t in the elevator with us.

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and growing!

This weekend, I hit the halfway mark of 20 weeks. I like to think my belly has done more than half of its growing, but I suspect that is not the case. It’s amazing how much it’s grown in the past two weeks (see my Week 18 belly). Week 19 found me rubbing my belly in hopes that it would expand and relieve some of the tight/crowded feeling. As you can see, the rubbing worked.

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So, I’m happy, blah, blah, blah, that Brennan Hawkins was found safe and sound. Sorry, that no-stress state I mentioned some time ago seems to involve tuning out some news – it’s just easier to focus on Lindsay Lohan not letting the Simpson sisters into her party, than focusing on a child getting lost, because “Oh, my gosh, that could happen to our child one day!”

But, anyway, one lesson I take home from this incident is to teach my children that there are some shades of grey in the world, and don’t act like a dimwit when you’ve been lost for several days. Sometimes, you’re going to have to make a judgement call on whether someone has your best interests at heart, and the sooner you cultivate such skills, the easier the road of life will be. So, hiding in the woods when people are looking for you after you’ve wondered off? Bad idea. Take the risk of talking to someone, because your alternative may be dying at the claws of bear.

Brennan’s mother, Jody Hawkins, suggested that her son may have been avoiding searchers by following his father’s advice.

“He had two thoughts going through his head all the time,” she said. “Toby’s always told him that ‘If you get lost, stay on the trail.’ So he stayed on the trail. We’ve also told him don’t talk to strangers … when an ATV or horse came by he got off the trail … when they left, he got back on the trail.”

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There are many miraculous things about pregnancy. I mean, there’s a creature growing inside of me! And if she’s a girl, she now has six million eggs! But one of the things I continue to marvel over is that, during pregnancy, a sneeze is so much more powerful. A sneeze used to make me focus on my nose, hoping that snot wouldn’t fly out. Now, a sneeze makes me focus on my nether regions, because, as I said, the sneeze is powerful. Even if you’ve just emptied your bladder, a sneeze has the ability to find that drop of pee that was content to stay in some forgotten crevice of the bladder. And not only that, it transforms that drop into something much larger as it expels it from your bladder. Power.

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I really like these pictures of Ashton Kutcher and Lil’ Jon that MSN used – it’s cool how they look the same with their facial hair and glasses, but opposite in colors (top of head, glasses, skin, clothes).

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Sam’s had quite the stressful week, but I think that today is making up for it. By noon, he’d talked to his best man, seen Bean , eaten fried green tomatoes and beignets at the farmers’ market, and had a Darth Vader slurpee. Now he’s spending some quality time with the X-Box. Really, what more could a guy ask for?

Happy early Father’s Day, My Love!

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Whenever I think of Scientology, I think about Beau. So, with all this talk of Katie and her minder, and my working down the street from a Church of Scientology, Beau’s been crossing my mind a lot. I first met him in the summer of 1996, back when a trip to New York was an annual neccessity. I was passing through for a few days on my way back to China, and hung out with some of my friends from when I’d lived there, and he was friends with them, so we hung out…. He then escorted me across town to where I was staying and dropped me off and then we spent the next few days together, just walking the streets and talking for hours. Over the next school year, me in China, he in New York, we wrote to one another, our letters brimming with our deepest thoughts. The following summer, on another one of my trips to New York, we resumed where we’d left off – walking and talking, from morning until night. I, again, was staying with a friend who was generally busy, so had no social obligations. He was basically homeless, crashing on the floors of friends or on couches in busy hotel lobbies. So, we’d meet up, usually with no specific plans, and get to know each other while crisscrossing Manhattan on foot. He was different from most guys I’d fallen for in the past – a little grimier, a smoker, an artist…. Also unusual, I never discussed with him my smitten state, though it was apparent we both felt enough of a connection to spend days in a row with each other.

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Last night, for the first time, a stranger recognized me to be pregnant, without the clues of maternity clothing. (Some weeks ago, a neighbor asked us if we were expecting, but we were standing next to each other in the elevator, and more obvious than my belly was the stork emblem on my shirt.) Last night, I was just wearing one of my all-time favorite dresses: I made it about 12 years ago, out of a terracota-colored, super-stretchy knit fabric. Over the years, it’s served me well and is still in good shape. Anyway, its hugginess meant my belly was apparent, even though it doesn’t look like a maternity dress. So, this woman stepped away from her table, and ours, to have a cigarette, saying she was doing so because of my pregnancy. Not only was it considerate, it was a milestone for me. Now I await someone offering me their seat on the bus.

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