this is turning into a mediocre food blog

Trying to be more healthy has quite a few advantages.... I make more balanced, nutritious (according to a very biased source, delicious) meals. Home-made meals makes your wallet heavier (if you want to tip, you can tip me), and you eat more with less calories or consequences, because they are not deep fried or full of sodium. Hooray for cooking at home.

Made some grilled chicken drumstick and my favorite type of pasta (fettuccine) yesterday (or was it Tuesday?), tossed in the drumstick juice, sun-dried tomato and parsley. And yeah that is corn on the obligatory afterthought (salad, veggies, etc.). Corn makes everything so much more awesomer. To this day I refuse to acknowledge the "shepherd's pies" that are made without corn.

garlic spicy pork

new and improved

Made some yummy dinner last night. V's favorite dish from back when he was a wee disciple of Waterloo, from this dingy Chinese restaurant. He had insisted that I try this magical dish and drove me there twice in hopes of getting his nostalgia dish. Twice we went and twice they were closed... anyhow, I finally got to try it last week. Typical fast food Chinese stuff, pork was a bit dry but the flavor was good (a tad salty, being typical fast food Chinese).

Anyhow, that challenge was accepted! I thought I could reproduce it with a few improvements so I tried making it last night... and tadaaaa. It was pretty darn good! I had used a better cut of meat so it was yummier.

with fried rice and afterthought vegs

Anyhow here's the recipe for those who want to make it, it's really a simple 4 step process.

1 - Marinate cubes of pork tenderloin in salt, sugar, pepper, garlic powder, crushed garlic, soy sauce, bit of lemon juice, chili powder, for > 20 minutes

2 - Coat in flour (2/3) and corn starch (1/3)

3 - Pan fry with slices of garlic and crushed chilis till golden brown

4 - Garnish with green onions and feast!!!

the grind

I made some serious kickass beef stew last night and it just made my lunch-eating-at-desk a lot more bearable.

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On my walk to work today I was pondering about the reason why I ended up where I was - walking to work and dreading the arrival. It is hitting me more now due to my daily dealing with wealthy individuals heading into their retirement. It's obvious that people think success is how high you climb up the ladder and how much you end up with in your pocket... and success is synonymous with happiness. I think we're all just aiming to one day be the envy of other families talking about us during their dinner, and we're convinced that to achieve that you have to pay your dues now. One day one day.

One day I'll wake up 40 years old, as an upper-middle-management, and still complaining about the same shit as today. I have no idea what happened to my ambitions - I hate the rat race, the sucking up, the face times and the optics. It looks like everyone else hates it too and yet we're all attending networking events and talking to the douches (as my friend A says, those that go "Hi I'm Reginald from Merril Lynch").

What I could was to get into this rat race and safely earn moolah, which I did, as most sensible people. What I wanted to do (freelance graphics or something other artsy-fartsy or techy stuff) will in no way guarantee me income or success or happiness.

I have no solution whatsoever - having a stable income provides me with the basic needs of food and shelter, and a certain lifestyle, I can't go back to learning the fun stuff and going entry-level. In the mean time pride pushes me along - you get there just because you don't want to be left behind when all your friends move up.

I think this is how those Bitter Female Managers came to be.

on those wacky lists people come up with.

So as part of my job deals with people who are in their 60s – 70s and that have been married for a gazillion years. One of things we do is that we look up how many years they’ve been married and congratulate them or something, you know, year 25 is the silver anniversary, year 40 is the ruby anniversary and the like, and people are supposed to give each other rubies and stuff.

So I’m looking up this one who’s in their 44^th year and what do I see as “modern gifts”? Groceries. REALLY?! Fourty-four goddamn years and all you get is a bag of rubatagas? How do you go from ruby to groceries... apparently a bunch of jewelers or librarians came up with the list. They must be pretty drunk at number 44.

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Speaking of groceries, I dreamt I was in the world's most luxurious buffet ever last night. Live seafood everywhere you can choose from and fresh mushrooms you pick from the tree trunks. Clams from as small as a penny to as big as my head with pearls that come with it. I woke up before I got to eat anything though :/ 

Countdown to Asia and Miscellaneous

I caught up finally with my bro Alex after not seeing him for more than a year (case in point of how horrible I am at keeping in touch). What did he ask me when we sat down at the pub? "Hmmm by the way... what's your boyfriend's name?" It's just one of those wow, who the hell are you kind of moment - like he's close to me, but I've not seen him for so long that he seemed like a stranger.  Anyhow I miss the good old days when we used to hang out together a lot more, in Montreal.

My next job, I'm going to make sure I'm not working with Asian females. They are loads of fun and the nicest people, but they're also reeeeeally hardworking. I want to be the one with the most work ethics in my group, goddammit.

I bought a curling iron the other day, meaning to try and curl my hair up all pretty and nice. Little did I know it takes patience (my genetic defect) and involves some thought process around how to part your hair to best uniformly curl it. So I do what everyone does when they need to learn something nowadays - I youtubed it. And there I was, taking advice from some ditzy chick who doesn't speak proper English and a lady with a trailer park accent and guess what? It worked! Never judge a book by its cover, aye, aye.

I don't know what to wear for my birthday party tomorrow. I don't want to wear the same things I wore before but that's all I have - didn't have time to shop. Meh I wish I was skinny and fit so I can throw on any tshirt and just wear bling. Ahhh steak and bacon, how I love thee, how I loathe thee.

I found the perfect pooping stall at work the other day. It flushes for like 5x longer than the normal toilet... so you just flush it when you're ready to go and when it finishes flushing you're done. Automatic and continuous courtesy flush. So clean, so elegant.