do talk to strangers?

I was at the BART station the other day when this cute, stylishly dressed older lady comes up to me to ask me for directions. She was very sociable and it turns out that she was a international doctoral student at Cal (from Chile) back in the 60s and 70s. Crazy, huh? She was headed to the North Berkeley station so we had a nice little chat about Berkeley as it is now, and we even bonded over anthropology--her field of study. It also turns out that she was a research assistant/translator for one of my anthropology professors, Professor Laura Nader. We had a nice little chat about Professor Nader, controlling processes, and the work she did with Professor Nader in Zapotec Country in Oaxaca, Mexico. We talked a bit about her own work too. Her doctoral research focused on refugee women in the Bay Area.

I usually don't talk to strangers (partly because I'm shy, and secondly because mama told me not to talk to strangers), but I'm glad I was able to have a nice conversation with this lady. She was full of life, experience, and all sorts of interesting.

Let me root, root, root for the home team!

"Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd!" Spring training is upon us and it'll be baseball season before we know it! These are some older photos from long long ago 2008. I was going through my computer a while ago and found these gems hidden in an obscure little folder amongst my documents. Weird. Anyhow, I  had uploaded these to flickr a while back and I just started going through these just moments ago trying to remember as much as I could about these games. Oh the memories--good games, and good company.

Oh, and it is confirmed: The brother and I will be attending a game in late April. Hooray! Now to get tickets for the Dodgers v. Giants homestand series on the weekend of my birthday... (:

Long Week.

It's been a really long week. I had my first chemistry midterm on Monday and that didn't end up going too well. The rest of the week was spent catching up on readings and drafting two papers. I'm glad that I was able to go out for a bit on Thursday night though to take a little break and get away from all that is school related.

Having my favorite Thai dish, Pad Kee Mao, definitely cheered me up. That and good company of course! Okay, that's enough of me sulking around (:

ridiculously cold & pork chile verde!

It's ridiculously cold and windy here in Berkeley! I think there was a freeze advisory warning last night if I remember correctly. We turned on the heater, but I had to bundle up last night! I really can't wait until it gets warmer. It's weird how it can look really nice out in the Bay Area with sun and blue skies, but it's also super cold and super windy at the same time. Oh the Bay, what a love-hate relationship I have with thee.

Anyhow, weather like this calls for nice warm, hearty meals like soup or in our case, pork chile verde. We made this a while ago, but looking through my photos from the day of the meal has me craving for more, especially in this cold. I just recently received a subscription to Bon Appétit and I am loving it! We've been trying out a couple recipes here and there from their February issue and it looks like the pork chile verde came out the best! The recipe is definitely a keeper! Recipe can be found here: Pork Chile Verde.

Sometimes I feel like this blog is becoming more a "food blog" than anything else...I'm such a piggy. And yes, we college kids cook with salad servers/tossers (we call it the pitchfork) instead of spatulas.

for the love of cheese board!

We like going to Cheese Board every once in a while. My first impression of Cheese Board probably about 2.5 years ago wasn't all that great. I really didn't think the place lived up to the hype so I concluded that I'd rather have something like Domino's over this fancy stuff. Oh, but times change and people change. It's a bit unexplainable, but I guess with time, I've come to really like this place!

Vanessa and I had been craving pizza this whole week. We finally decided to get our butts out of the apartment to get some. Today we had a zucchini, onions, mozzarella and feta cheese, basil pesto pizza. It was absolutely delicious! I feel that sometimes I take all the delicious food we have here in Berkeley for granted. I am such a lucky girl to have access to all these amazing eats (:

enchiladas suizas with the roomies

I love cooking with my roomies! It's not very often that we have time to cook delicious meals, so when we do have the time, we go all out and make it a feast. This entails every one of us pitching in and helping with the preparation of the meal. It's a really fun process actually. We all work very well and cooperatively with one another, which makes meal preparation go smoothly and quickly. At the end of all of our hard work in the kitchen, we get an amazing home-cooked meal!

This past week we made enchiladas suizas. We've made enchiladas rojas before, but that was usually just semi-homemade (using sauce from a can). This time though we actually made the sauce ourselves! Liza and Vanessa patiently charred the Anaheim peppers on our electric stove...haha...to make the sauce. The whole apartment smelled super fragrant when they were doing this. Charred peppers smell really good! Wendy made a delicious chipotle-jalapeno bean dip. The rest of us chipped in here and there--boiling the beans, making the Mexican rice, and shredding cheese. It was a delicious meal!

bye bye break...

Aww, winter break is coming to an end. By 8:00 am tomorrow I'll be in my first class of the new semester. My winter break was well spent. I probably ate more than my daily stomach capacity, I probably slept more than the average baby, and watched hours of my beloved General Hospital. The new storylines have been really interesting--especially the Michael and Abby stuff! General Hospital in 2011 kicked has kicked off to an awesome start.

Perhaps the most important and productive thing to come out of my break has been getting my driver's permit! I guess at the age of 20 I just felt some sudden urgency (and maybe even necessity) to get licensed. All I need to do now is practice driving! Ekk!