I got off work at 9:30pm tonight. That's already pretty shitty if you think about it, but I don't mind, because I do it every week. So I take the bus home and the best thing about it was I bumped into a friend with whom I had a interesting conversation with that made me actually very happy.
Then everything was shot down when I got a phone call from a certain family member that tried to guilt trip me into going home for the weekend to go to my grandmother's birthday. For the record, she doesn't even recognize me, nor does she remember that it's her birthday, so I said that I could come home next weekend but this weekend was too busy. That wasn't good enough. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
So I gave in and looked into train tickets. Meanwhile, I had club issues to deal with. I texted a colleague at 8:42pm to remind her to send me information in a document that I needed to distribute to people that we were working with on Sunday. However, I did not receive a response so I texted again at 10:43pm. I got a phone call, to my relief.
But my colleague tells me that, rather than upholding our plans to work on Sunday, letting down everyone else in our organization as well as forfeiting my own words to these people that we were working with, she needed to go to church and thus couldn't make the event after all.
We just had a meeting at 5:30pm to plan this event. Tell me again, why did she not tell me then and there that we shouldn't plan everything for that time? Why did she not have church then, but had church now? Why is it imperative to even go to that particular church sermon? Since I'm not religious, I'll let her answer that last question, but as for the rest, I don't understand.
We're already behind schedule in our project and I refused to drop another week. I had specifically told her everyone's free time a week ago so that we could plan ahead. Obviously this didn't work out. To make up ending our workday early, we will also be starting earlier, I decided.
I check my email and realize that I have a leadership meeting at 5pm Friday, which means that the earliest train I can take leaves at 6:30, which means I won't be at my grandmother's until past 8pm. And I'd have to get back home the very next day because I had a multitude of things planned already.
I still haven't received the document I requested from my colleague to send to the people we were working with. However, I can send an email to our fellow colleagues about our organization working with the other people on Sunday, and the time changes, so I go ahead and do that. After all, it's not fair to them that we change things last minute.
I phone back about going to my grandmother's birthday. Finally, someone throws me a bone! I promised to return to my grandparents' place next week because it's simply not worth it this time around. It works. My commitment has been delayed.
My hopes slightly up, I go to email the people my organization has to work with to tell them about the slightly changed schedule. I had argued with my colleague over the phone all this time in order to be able to work things out. Lo and behold, I find an email sitting there from four hours ago.
It says that one of the people we were to work with is no longer free on Sunday, and would Saturday be better?
...
THE DAY JUST FINISHED, IT'S MIDNIGHT, I'VE WASTED ALL MY TIME WITH THIS CRAP, I HAVEN'T DONE A SCRAP OF WORK FOR MY CLASS TOMORROW, I HAVEN'T TAKEN A SHOWER YET EVEN SO I STINK, AND I PROBABLY JUST CUT MY LIFE SHORT BY TEN HOURS FROM THE STRESS AND SOON-TO-BE LACK OF SLEEP. F. M. L.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Iron Chef: UCSD
MASA vs. CKI epicness, with veteran chefs from MASA against the amateur CKI team (in which I was one of the sous-chefs.)
I'll recap the event first before providing more "insider" info on what was going on with our cooking team!
RECAP:
CKI President was the chef. The secret ingredient was "coffee".
We thought we were supposed to make an appetizer, entree, and dessert. At 11:30pm the night before the competition, we found out it was 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 1 dessert. Of course, we panicked.
Stayed up until 4 am that night getting prepared.
So Monday, 4:30pm, the chef, the other sous-chef, and I lugged our materials to the UCSD International Center and got ready to face off. The actual cooking started at 5:30pm and lasted until promptly 8:00pm. Three judges critiqued our food with 3 criteria: visuals (how pretty it is), originality (use of secret ingredient), and taste (yum?).
In the end, MASA won...the trophy was a lazy suzie with the competition details painted on it! I think we all did a great job but MASA's past experience with the Iron Chef competition definitely lent them an edge, as well as fancy materials.
Blenders...electric mixers...fancy plates...quite frankly, CKI mixed and mashed everything with a fork and spoon, and as for plates--we were happy we could find 3 plates that looked enough alike to present to the three judges for each of the 5 dishes! I mean, that's a total of 15 matching plates! MASA's dishes were already matching and beautiful without even having any food on it...
What we made:
1. Coffee-Kahlua sweet potatoes
2. Classic Meatballs with Coffee
3. Java Chicken Wings
4. Coffee Pork Loin with Jasmine Rice
5. Kahlua Brownie Explosion with Cappuccino Frozen Yogurt
Stuff they made (not sure exactly what they were, and some of these ingredients are within the same dish): steak with asparagus, yams, mahi-mahi, scallops, and a layered cake. I'm not sure how they afforded all of this, seeing as how our reimbursement budget was only $50...
Funny stuff about the food:
1. We almost made the same steak that they did, instead of our pork loins. Our sous-chef found that exact same recipe online. And at the grocery stores (we went to trader joe's, ralph's, and vons) NONE OF THEM had the right pork loin...we actually bought the wrong kind, and we almost switched over! Good thing our chef decided not to do that!
2. One of our main ingredients was Kahlua, for the yams and the brownies, maybe something else too but that's what I remember. None of the CKI chefs/sous-chefs were over 21 years old, so someone else had to buy it for us!
3. Our sweet potatoes were made primarily by me. Funny thing is, I'm slightly allergic to sweet potatoes, so I never found out what they tasted like; when taste-testing, I'd have to call on someone else! Everyone tells me they were really good, though.
4. The frozen yogurt is Golden Spoon's--where our chef works at!
5. Originally, we had planned to make the chicken wings as appetizer, the pork loin with sweet potatoes as the entree, and the brownie explosion for dessert. When we found out we needed 5 dishes instead of 3, we split up the pork and sweet potatoes and added rice to the pork, and a new dish of meatballs largely improvised by our chef!
6. We had contemplated making our meatballs Mickey-Mouse head shaped, but ultimately decided against it. Seeing as how one of the judges said the meatballs looked like poo, maybe we should have done it after all.
7. For all of our dishes aside from the brownies, we had the same garnish: shredded carrots and different parts of the celery! Why, you ask? Our reimbursement budget was only $50, and we were over as it was! We got very, very creative though!
In the end, I got to spend a lot of time with the chef and got to know her better...and it was a lot of fun even though I'm sleep deprived this entire week so far...I'd love to do it again! But no coffee, please. That was sooo hard to do!
I'll recap the event first before providing more "insider" info on what was going on with our cooking team!
RECAP:
CKI President was the chef. The secret ingredient was "coffee".
We thought we were supposed to make an appetizer, entree, and dessert. At 11:30pm the night before the competition, we found out it was 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 1 dessert. Of course, we panicked.
Stayed up until 4 am that night getting prepared.
So Monday, 4:30pm, the chef, the other sous-chef, and I lugged our materials to the UCSD International Center and got ready to face off. The actual cooking started at 5:30pm and lasted until promptly 8:00pm. Three judges critiqued our food with 3 criteria: visuals (how pretty it is), originality (use of secret ingredient), and taste (yum?).
In the end, MASA won...the trophy was a lazy suzie with the competition details painted on it! I think we all did a great job but MASA's past experience with the Iron Chef competition definitely lent them an edge, as well as fancy materials.
Blenders...electric mixers...fancy plates...quite frankly, CKI mixed and mashed everything with a fork and spoon, and as for plates--we were happy we could find 3 plates that looked enough alike to present to the three judges for each of the 5 dishes! I mean, that's a total of 15 matching plates! MASA's dishes were already matching and beautiful without even having any food on it...
What we made:
1. Coffee-Kahlua sweet potatoes
2. Classic Meatballs with Coffee
3. Java Chicken Wings
4. Coffee Pork Loin with Jasmine Rice
5. Kahlua Brownie Explosion with Cappuccino Frozen Yogurt
Stuff they made (not sure exactly what they were, and some of these ingredients are within the same dish): steak with asparagus, yams, mahi-mahi, scallops, and a layered cake. I'm not sure how they afforded all of this, seeing as how our reimbursement budget was only $50...
Funny stuff about the food:
1. We almost made the same steak that they did, instead of our pork loins. Our sous-chef found that exact same recipe online. And at the grocery stores (we went to trader joe's, ralph's, and vons) NONE OF THEM had the right pork loin...we actually bought the wrong kind, and we almost switched over! Good thing our chef decided not to do that!
2. One of our main ingredients was Kahlua, for the yams and the brownies, maybe something else too but that's what I remember. None of the CKI chefs/sous-chefs were over 21 years old, so someone else had to buy it for us!
3. Our sweet potatoes were made primarily by me. Funny thing is, I'm slightly allergic to sweet potatoes, so I never found out what they tasted like; when taste-testing, I'd have to call on someone else! Everyone tells me they were really good, though.
4. The frozen yogurt is Golden Spoon's--where our chef works at!
5. Originally, we had planned to make the chicken wings as appetizer, the pork loin with sweet potatoes as the entree, and the brownie explosion for dessert. When we found out we needed 5 dishes instead of 3, we split up the pork and sweet potatoes and added rice to the pork, and a new dish of meatballs largely improvised by our chef!
6. We had contemplated making our meatballs Mickey-Mouse head shaped, but ultimately decided against it. Seeing as how one of the judges said the meatballs looked like poo, maybe we should have done it after all.
7. For all of our dishes aside from the brownies, we had the same garnish: shredded carrots and different parts of the celery! Why, you ask? Our reimbursement budget was only $50, and we were over as it was! We got very, very creative though!
In the end, I got to spend a lot of time with the chef and got to know her better...and it was a lot of fun even though I'm sleep deprived this entire week so far...I'd love to do it again! But no coffee, please. That was sooo hard to do!
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