u/yashen14

Dinner: Schnitzel and mushroom gravy, served with pan-fried spätzle

Bonus Picture: Détour mortel, a book by K. A. Merikan.

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I can't believe it. I mean, I can, because I've cumulatively spent many hundreds of hours learning and practicing over the years. But I actually got lost in a French-language novel for the first time ever last night. By which I mean, I got so engrossed in it that I didn't realize I'd accidentally stayed up until one o'clock in the morning 😅

That's a huge milestone for me, because it means that I'm finally at a point where I can read French literature with enough ease that (depending on the reading level) it's almost effortless. I'm not agonizing over the grammar or the vocabulary anymore. I'm so thrilled.

(The book was Détour mortel. It is a dark romance about a man who is abducted by a crazy ax murderer and then toxically falls in love with him.)

ALSO!

I ran into an old acquaintance earlier today! Can't believe it. She's an old coworker of my mom's. I hadn't seen her since, like, middle school. I grabbed her Facebook details and I'm hoping to see her for lunch this weekend so we can catch up!

Pictured: Ground beef flavored with thai mushroom sauce, garlic gai lan, rice, served with a side of seared shishito peppers and kimchi.

Bonus picture: Sealed fermentation jars. Yard-long beans, ginger, sichuan peppercorn, carrots, bird chilies, saltwater.

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Traveled all the way to Atlanta only to get an email stating that French government policy has changed and now I can turn in my documents for my visa application online. So the whole trip was for nothing.

EXCEPT that I got to go to some absolutely killer international markets and nabbed me some crazy hard-to-find ingredients (well...hard to find in my little corner of the world). I even managed to purchase a cacao pod! So I can fulfill my bucket list item of tasting fresh cacao fruit.

Also, I'm trying fermentation for the first second time! So that's fun. Hopefully the fermentation works. It's supposed to take 7-10 days. Maybe if it works I'll give tsukemono another try. (The last time I tried to make tsukemono I didn't succeed in creating a perfectly airtight environment and I made myself a bit sick.)

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Grocery List (for anyone curious):

chicken hearts

dried baby shrimp

gai lan

shishito peppers

garlic scapes

burdock root

yardlong beans

shimeji mushrooms

king oyster mushrooms

dried nameko mushrooms

dried kombu

kinako

sichuan peppercorns

ripe mango

cacao pod

winter melon

dried yangmei berries

marinated kombu

fermented yellow soybean paste (huangjiang)

savory dashi

lao gan ma (fermented soybean flavor)

thai mushroom sauce

kalamansi and honey drink concentrate

coconut cream

Picture 1 (cooked by me): Linguini with seared ground beef, scorched onions, bell peppers, and onions, tossed with an egg sauce and flavored wiith ras al hanout and rosemary.

Picture 2 (cooked by my husband): Chocolate cake with layer of raspberry jam, topped with blackberries and basil

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I guess that's it. I'm not in my 20s anymore. And I guess it's different for religious people who believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or whatever, but I don't. So for me, this is the only life I have. There's so much I want to do and I literally do not have the time because 70, 80 years just isn't enough time to do it all. And I'm not where I want to be in life. Fuck. I'm supposed to have a house by now. I'm supposed to know whether or not I want kids. I'm supposed to have stable residency in a new home country.

I feel really horribly existential about all of this. Now that I'm past my body's prime, I'm gonna start having more health problems. I know it won't start getting more serious until I'm in my next decade. I know that. But I'll never have the health I had in my 20s again. It's gone.

A lot of people tell me that it's silly to have these kinds of thoughts when I'm "so young," but all I can think about is how my clock is ticking down.

The cake was delicious.

Pictured: scrambled eggs, seared asparagus, bacon, with juuuuuust enough pork fat to make the rice pleasantly greasy

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It was a good day today. I've been trying to open a bank account for ages because they keep asking for more documentation before they'll help me, and the last thing that I need FINALLY came in the mail today. I'll finally be able to open a bank account. You don't know how annoying that whole thing has been.

I'm sitting here rocking to some baller Chinese pop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW-MXFF37TA) and thinking, you know what, I had a good day at work today, too. I feel like I really connected with my students. I feel so lucky to have them in my life. Isn't that kind of weird? It's so rewarding to watch them grow.

Also, after a bunch of shenanigans with my husband's bank account, my workplace was FINALLY able to deposit my first check. My second (long overdue) paycheck is set to follow ASAP now that we've cleared stuff up, and it's a pretty decent chunk of money.

I'm a little nervous I won't have all of the paperwork I need in time for my visa appointment with the embassy, so I might need to reschedule, which would suck. But I think I feel genuinely optimistic. Things are looking up.

Pictured: Egg, mushroom, leek, and cucumber stir fry, flavored with lao gan ma, doenjang, dou ban jiang, and a small amount of mushroom soy sauce.

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I used to say I respected my MiL, but hoooooo boy, not anymore. Fuck that bitch. I thought this was a case of "people grow and change," but NOPE! Tried to go visit with her some weeks back and she immediately conspired with my BiL to make my husband and I second-class citizens in her own home. (They wanted us to pretend we weren't married because "think of the children." "It'll confuse them." Also, the entire family treated me like a leper, but that's a whole other ball of yarn.)

Yeah, so anyway. This cunt is one of those ladies who says "I love my son so much" but guess how she's showed it to my beautiful man over his lifetime?

• She didn't try to make a safe space for him at home when he was growing up, where his dad and brothers regularly made disturbing comments about gay people ("they should be shot" etc etc).
  • She also did not privately extend herself as a lifeline to him, even though she knew he was gay, and my husband knew that she knew, and she knew that my husband knew that she knew.
• She didn't fight for him when his dad evicted him after finding out he was gay.
• She didn't in any way support or help him when his dad pulled literally all of his college funding out from under him, not even emotionally, as far as I can tell.
• She took such little active interest in his life that she didn't even realize he'd moved to Europe until SIX MONTHS after he did so
• She has never once apologized for any of this, and in fact I suspect she doesn't recognize any of it as a problem. She had the audacity to tell me she'd "always been there for him"

After we got kicked out of their house at the recent visit (I'd let her have it for how she and her family were treating us. She didn't like that), I knew she hasn't changed one bit.

Now I've gotten a birthday card from her. "Happy birthday!" it says, cheerfully. "Thank you for loving my son," it says drily. Yeah, fuck you too, bitch. How fucking dare you, after everything you've helped put him through. I hope you get stomach ulcers 🖕

Technically what I was hoping for was a 片刀，but this 打折骨刀 will do just fine! It's got some SERIOUS heft to it, and the blade is razor sharp. I can't wait to get busy in the kitchen with this bad boy.