Waiting For Winter (AKA Friends Don't Let Friends Invade Massachusetts In The Winter)

There are a lot of things you can’t get in San Diego. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fabulous place, and when I’m gone I’ll look back on my life here with the same sort of marvelous nostalgia that aging baby-boomers feel towards Woodstock.* But much like Boston’s going to be lacking in some key elements that fill San Diego life with happy, sunshiny goodness**, San Diego’s lacking in certain areas too.

Like, for instance, snow.

Some would consider this a feature, not a bug. Case in point: my uncle, who, having visited NorCal/Stanford not long before I announced my intent to head over to MIT, called to inquire as to what I had against “perfect weather and/or happiness”, or something along those lines.*** I, however, am not one those people.

God, I feel like I’m writing a break-up letter.

“Dear San Diego,

It’s not you, it’s me. That’s cliché, I know, but it’s the truth. Girl Scout’s honor (what remains from my K-3rd Scout exploits, anyway). You’ve been more than good to me—through you, I’ve become quite well-acquainted with our neighborhood flaming ball of hydrogen & helium. And while that, too, was a good relationship, I just need something different. It’s your weather, San Diego, your weather and my sudden distaste for its…niceness.

I’ve found another place, San Diego, a place where the temperature comes in more than pleasant, warm, hot, and Oh, My, We Appear To Be On Fire; a place where shorts and tank-tops are by no means all-year attire, and where the pangs and chills of winter (bottoming out at a frosty 60° here) won’t be thwarted by a mere hoodie; a place where it rains, San Diego—in their language, they have no word for drought, because they do not need one! It’s wondrous. Apparently, they have something called Snowmageddon, which I’m quite curious about.

In conclusion, San Diego, thank you for everything you’ve been to me. I’ll never forget the good times we shared, and to be sure, I’ll visit. But it’ll be as a resident of a land where acts of God and/or meteorology cause snowflakes to rain from the sky—not ash, which, as you know, is decidedly less pleasant. Good luck with that firestorm issue, btw. Might I suggest the Governator to help with that?

Sincerely,
Nate”

I’ll stop now, before the people in Minnesota, or Wisconsin, or Vermont, or any other state where the temperatures approach absolute zero during winter decide to form an angry mob armed with pitchforks whittled from pine trees and icicle daggers and the like. They shouldn’t, though, because come this winter I’ll commence being one of them, rosy-cheeked and frostbitten- limbed amidst the snowbanks, huddling in my twelve separate clothing layers and praising the MIT powers-that-be for the bitchin’ underground tunnels between classes.

Despite the fact that I’m ecstatic to be heading somewhere with, you know, seasons, there are those who have expressed doubts as to my ability to cope with said seasons. And when I say seasons, I mean winter. And when I say those who have expressed doubts, I mean everyone I know. Apparently I don’t exactly inspire confidence when it comes to handling a Massachusetts winter, something probably exacerbated by the things like having to wear mittens and a hoodie 82% of the time I was at MIT for CPW in April.

However, I’d like to issue a rebuttal to the people (most of whom, despite drinking a little too much haterade re: winter, I love very much) who are convinced I’m a delicate sun-bunny incapable of toughing out an east coast winter. When I was a kid, I would spend every winter at my grandparents' house way up in Northern California (specifically, Nevada City), which is home to legal lake-swimming, forests for miles, and Tahoe. I’ve been skiing at Squaw Valley and Sugarbowl, and ice-skating on the top of a mountain. So I do, in fact, have plenty of childhood experience with frozen water molecules. Arguments, I render them invalid.

But wait! Pics or it didn’t happen, you say? Of course. I’ve come to the internet prepared. And since I don’t have any recent pictures of me in snow, and because I happened to be an adorable child from ages zero to nine, I decided to upload some of our family pictures.

That would be my brother and me. Apparently I was one of those unlucky children who lost both front teeth at once, then repressed the memory of it.

D’aww, mountain sledding with the whole family. :D

Getting the Christmas tree! I know, I’m Jewish, but my mom’s family is Christian, and there would always be a tree at their house.

My brother and me again. Per what I’m sure was my mother’s insistence, I’m swathed in enough layers to make my look like an exceptionally flamboyant Michelin man.

See that cut on my nose? I was standing in line with my family to buy a lift ticket, right behind a guy holding a snowboard loosely by his side. Right after he got his ticket, he turned to leave, and because of my littleness I got whacked in the face with the edge of his snowboard. Which was exceptionally not-awesome. What was kind of awesome, though, was my little brother running up to the guy and yelling “you hurt my SISTER!!!” at him in his little squeaky voice. Family: sticking up for you when you unexpectedly get a faceful of snowboard.

Learning how to ski (and, more specifically, “the french-fry”).

Sledding! :DDD

Snowman-making? Camera-hogging? Who knows.

Maybe my past experience with snow will help me brave the coming Massachusetts winters; maybe not. But that’s a chance I’m willing—nay, ecstatic!—to take. I want rain, and snow, and sleet, and hail, and all the other forms of weather mentioned in the post-office pledge; I want to ice-skate, maybe on the Charles, if that’s even remotely possible.**** I want to take eight million pictures of the frozen campus and city, excitedly Skype my mom to squeal about the weather, and revel in winter in general. And sure, it might suck at times. But I’m fully okay with that. So here’s to my first winter in Boston, and having a hell of a time.

*Except, you know, I was actually there.


**Like, er, year-round sunshine. And proper beaches. And Mexican food. Oh god, and Mexican food. Hopefully my mother will follow through on her promise to overnight me California burritos on ice.

…

Note to self: find a phrase similar to “California burritos on ice” that sounds less like an ice-show with figure-skating Mexican food.


***In a totally joking and supportive manner, of course. Love ya, Uncle Rob!


****When we got to Boston and actually saw the Charles, my boyfriend said something along the lines of “hey, think it ever freezes?” I answered in the negative (read: hell no, it’s way too big). Obviously I underestimated the forces of nature and/or ungodly cold.

Useful College Skills: Cooking

So, I made dinner tonight. And it was pretty damn delicious. And I have the recipe/commentary/all that good stuff! But first, a little more about me and my school.

I haven’t actually said which college I’ll be headed off to yet—perhaps due to the fact that, thanks to my mother, I’ve had more internet privacy lessons than your average CIA agent, or maybe because it just didn’t belong in the other posts—so here goes: come this fall I’ll be attending the postsecondary/inanimate love of my life, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Why yes, I did shamelessly rip this from the MIT website.

This is relevant because there is a 100% chance that I will be cooking for myself there. Not entirely, but a good bit, and because I want to, not out of any sense of need. However, because of the way MIT dining is structured (something I’ll go into in my next food post, because it’s late, and this post could quickly get very long if I try to tackle it now) there’ll be some students who will, in fact, need to cook, and need to learn to cook at that.

Which, if you ask me, is a great thing. Maybe not on the surface, but it seems like something that’d fall into the “blessing in disguise” category. On the list of Things That Are Probably, You Know, Pretty Good To Know In Life, “how to cook relatively tasty stuff that won’t send you to the hospital” is incredibly high up, or should be.

But! Because I promised, here’s the recipe, the commentary, and my initial thoughts on college cooking.

Chicken Cacciatore for the Culinarily Skittish

Ingredients:

Canola/Vegetable Oil (just a bit)
Flour (2 handfuls, or 1 cup)
Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (2)
Green bell peppers (2)
Diced tomatoes (one 14.5oz can)
Chicken broth (one 14.5oz can)
Garlic (2 cloves)
Oregano (2 small pinches)
Salt (to taste)
Pepper (to taste)
Pasta (1 package)

Mix flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Using your knife, butterfly* the chicken breasts. Coat them lightly in flour and pan-fry in a pan with oil on high heat until golden-brown, and just slightly undercooked. Take them out and place them on a separate plate temporarily.

Chop both bell peppers (making sure to discard the seeds and center) into small pieces and mince (finely chop) the garlic cloves (making sure to take the thin skin covering the clove off first). Add the garlic and bell peppers to the pan the chicken was in and cook briefly, stirring occasionally, until the garlic softens a bit. Put the chicken back in the pan, on top of the garlic/peppers, and add the can of diced tomatoes, the oregano, and half of the can of chicken broth. Cover (with either a lid or foil), turn the heat down to low or medium-low and let cook for thirty minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, bring a pot of water to a boil. Add pasta, stir occasionally, and drain when done.

Once the chicken is ready, take the pan off the heat, uncover, add to pasta, and voilà! † You have nomtastic chicken cacciatore in forty-five minutes. And without being too precise about how you go about it.

omnomnomnomnomnomnom

Chicken Cacciatore + Pasta + Italian Garlic/Herb/Cheese Breadsticks = Ultimate Happiness

Mmm…breadsticks…*Homer-Simpson-esque drool* I didn’t include the recipe because they took a good bit more work, but I could link to it if anyone wants.

Honestly, I think that’s one of the biggest problems when it comes to college students and cooking for themselves—that being the preciseness that tends to get associated with cooking. Unless you grew up in a family that heavily emphasized not only food, but also cooking and learning how to cook—and, honestly, even if you did—cooking for yourself beyond making a sandwich or achieving the perfect cereal/milk ratio can be on par with “trekking the Himalayas” and “safely landing a plane on the Hudson”. Sure, some people can do it, but that doesn’t mean you can.

I know. I come from a family like the one I described above, what with the food, and the cooking, and the teaching, and I still have to fight the urge to get bogged down by precise recipe details and Cooking, the capitalized, abstract, far-away concept only do-able by my mother, restaurant professionals, and Top Chef contestants situated comfortably in the magical world of television.

And that sucks! Because cooking is actually pretty fun, and way easier than people imagine. You could feed yourself lifetimes over with easy recipes before ever moving on to something more difficult, if that’s what you’d like, though I think the more likely scenario involves people gradually wanting to try their hands at harder recipes once they get a taste for the basics. (Hah! See what I did there?)

And cooking (unlike baking, which actually does take a certain level of precision) is very adaptable. For instance! That chicken cacciatore recipe used to have onions and mushrooms, but we didn’t have mushrooms (and I was too lazy to go out to the store), so out they went. As for onions, they’re one of the few vegetables that I really, really dislike, and so when I’m making dinner I’ll often leave them out. If you want to change recipes, it’s very easy to do so, and as you go.

So I guess this marks the beginning of “cooking is awesome, yo” campaign, and the near-beginning of my college culinary exploits. Stay tuned! ‘Cause yeah. More to come! At some point!



* For those not familiar with the term, “to butterfly” means “to split a piece of food down the center, cutting almost through…the halves are fanned open and laid flat to cook or fry…the fan resembles a butterfly.” Kudos to thatsmyhome.com for that definition, because god knows I’d mangle it. I’m like Justice Stewart and porn—I may not know how to define butterfly-ing, but I know it when I see it.

†I know, voilà is all inappropriate and French (l’horreur!), but my high school didn’t teach Italian. So there.