Category Archives: personal asides

I would say that the highlight of this summer has been the extensive amount of travel I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy. Both near (Chelan, Oregon wine country) and far-ish (Denver, Vegas)… and I’m headed to Texas next week for ACL. For someone who hates flying, I sure do get around.

Other than that, these past few months have been kind of a bust. I’m not sure how much rejection, both personally and professionally, a person is supposed to take, but damn. I’ve been able to stay remotely sane thanks to the amount of incredibly supportive and fun friends surrounding me. The only other aspect of my life that is guaranteed to inspire me is the fact that I have a true passion for the culinary world, and goals to reach within that interest. And my wonderful friends keep cheering me on – being patient when I have to take a million pictures of their food at restaurants, reading everything I write, feeding me wine when I need to celebrate or cry, paying for multiple rounds of Big Buck Hunter at the bar because I’m so mad I just want to shoot something – it is a great source of hope to know these people have my back.

Speaking of the people important to us, and appreciating them through the gift of food and wine – my mom’s birthday was a couple weeks ago, right before my brother Eric and his girlfriend Kim were headed off to France. They are both crazily talented people who just finished culinary school and scored the opportunity of a lifetime to intern together at a three Michelin-starred resort in Montpellier. I’m so jealous, yet so proud! We gathered a bunch of friends and fam to my family’s house for a huge dinner party to commemorate both Mom’s birthday and their going away, catered by Eric and Kim and sommeliered/served/bussed by yours truly.

So, enough of the sap, onto what everyone’s really interested in: food pics, of course!

First up: amuse bouche. Ratatouille stacks, brushetta with tomatoes from our family’s garden, and my personal favorite, steak-wrapped enoki with a ginger foam. (That’s Eric and Kim, who will someday cater every event I ever throw.) Continue reading →

Interested on the buzz from the world wide web this week? Check out what blogging bachelorette Emily Teachout has been gchatting about at work today:

Caroline just got finished volunteering at a camp for children stricken with serious diabetes.

me: I WAS THINKING ABOUT YOU THIS MORNING. I was like “Is Caro back? Is she at camp? What is she doing? I miss her!”
Caroline: i am back! and alive!. it was a really hard camp but no one died. thankfully! because i did have my doubts
me: Yay! Well I’m glad no one died. Although having your “doubts” makes me suspicious
Caroline: well my co counselors were unprepared so i was scared when they were on call. i was very concerned.
me: Wow
Caroline: so what was your week like?
me: Hmmm
me: Well to be honest I’ve just been partying nonstop

Danielle is doing a volunteer writing internship at a foundation that… somehow helps poor Africans. I’m not really clear on the exact purpose, but I know it’s a lot more altruistic than anything I will ever endeavor.

I just got back from a great birthday dinner for Jordan. The culinary aspect I will write about after this. Soon after this. But right now I am thinking about aging. It’s a very complicated and touchy subject for me.

So, I am 25. Compared to a lot of my friends I am “sooooo young haha!” but at the same time I am halfway to 50. YIKES! And 10 years ago I was 15, and honestly that doesn’t seem that long ago. I mean… okay. Let’s break this down.

Right now, everything in my life is so uncertain. Career, relationship, health, general ~future planz~ I mean who really knows?! Everything is so up in the air, it literally makes me nauseous to think about it too much. Because then I obsess and start overanalyzing about all the unknowns in the Life of Emily and my heart starts beating really fast and omg I might as well die NOW and… ahhhhh!

On the other hand. We were talking about funny/useful/HORRIBLE lady topics such as eye cream and wrinkles at dinner tonight. And I was like, WTF, am I supposed to be thinking about these things?! I thought 25 was young?! Have I just been living in a fool’s paradise these past few years? Should I be using wrinkle cream?!

I do not appreciate these thoughts.

Probably listening to melancholy Cat Power is not helping right now. But I feel like I am trapped in this limbo between young and old. Too young to know where my life is taking me… yet too old to disregard the looming, ominous threat of eye wrinkles?!?

Being a woman is stupid. Sorry, but we all know it’s true. There’s only one way to fix this issue: booking an impromptu trip to Vegas via Southwest.com’s $80 any fare anniversary sale. That classy city of dreamz will surely give me the life guidance I’m looking for.

So for the first time in months & months, I decided I might as well treat myself to Cancer Hot Box, aka tanning. Despite my extreme radiation paranoia, I’m just tooooo pale for my liking and something had to be done. I went to the Desert Sun near my apartment (I still got a package with 8 tanz remaining, holla!) and two disturbing things happened:

1. I had to wait for my elite bed!! And the woman ahead of me… well, the text I sent to Joe illustrates it all:
I’m waiting for my turn at DESERT SUN, tanning here I come! There is a fat lady dressed as a Mardi Gras witch sitting next to me, she better not be going in my bed before me.
True story!! Luckily, the witch went into a different room and I went into room 12.

2. The tanning bed “radio station” (anyone who has been tanning knows what I mean) I selected was supposedly the techno/rap one – OBVIOUSLY! – but as soon as I closed the lid on my UV-coffin, it switched over to a techno remix of the Cha Cha Slide! So technically, that does fit both requirements of said station: a techno remix of a bad rap dance song. But really? That’s the best you got, Desert Sun? No Nicki Minaj? No Deadmau5? Not even a bit o’ Kanye?! I guess my first mistake was assuming that a premade tanning radio mix was my own personal Pandora.

Besides those two bizarre factors, my tanning experience was quite pleasant. The funny thing is, I turn into 100% valley girl when I’m talking to the ladies at the front desk: “Haaaaaaay gurlz! How ARE you?!?!? Ohmigosh, okay, so I haven’t been here in LITERALLY months, LITERALLY – but I know I still have tans left, riiiiight?!?!?”
…it really is a spectacle. I turn into Elle Woods right before your eyes.

I did such a good job not going tanning at all this winter, but speaking of Mardi Gras, I need to start gearing up for my New Orleans/Caribbean trip in March, let the “base building” commence. Plus now I feel like I have the upper hand of attractiveness over all the other pasty Seattlite girls who feel they are above tanning. God knows at this point, I do not claim to be above ANYTHING.