Kiddo Kim Story? Splendid!

I've always been a bit... um... precocious.  There are some delightful stories in my family of my antics as a child.  Some of these stories are relayed to me from my parents and other family members, while other stories are actually memories I have.  For example, I remember getting in trouble on two particular occasions for name calling.  Once I quoted Back to the Future to my brother, asking him "What are you looking at, butthead?"  I was also reprimanded whilst watching the Today Show with my parents once for calling Bryant Gumbel a "pompous windbag," a phrase I picked up watching Disney's Cinderella.

I couldn't have been more than 5 here. Look at that sass.

The desk I used as a child (well, really, until last month) was the desk my mom grew up using.  Sharing a room with my younger brother throughout our early years meant that we shared a lot of things, but we didn't really share that desk.  That desk was my little corner of that room.  I loved reading, writing, and coloring as a kid, so I spent quite a bit of time at that desk.  Long before I was writing essays in school, I remember wanting to write "S.A."s (I was sounding it out) at home.  Because that's what big kids did.  And I desperately wanted to be a big kid - a 16 year old to be specific.  For some reason I thought that when I was 16, my life would be awesome, and I would magically be treated as an adult.  I blame Disney's The Little Mermaid for this one.  I practiced writing all kinds of words... even the bad ones.

This little project was discovered years later.  Don't ask me why my parents were looking underneath my desk drawers, but they were.  And under the center drawer, they found my dirty little secrets scrawled in brown crayon.  They also found a note on the inside of the drawer that said "This was Kim Lareau desk." I couldn't fit the apostrophe and S on my name, because I was trying to write this in the upper right corner of the desk.  This particular note was written in a nice teal color.  This little tag was done because I had it in my head that someone would discover that note decades later, and it would make a great story for them.  Seriously, that's what was going through my head more than 20 years ago.  I'm sure I was reprimanded and flogged accordingly for defacing the family heirloom.

If there's any moral to this anecdote, I'm certain I don't know what it is.  It probably has something to do with explaining to your kids that if they want to be remembered, the best way is probably not through obscene words scrawled in a desk with a crayon - even if it is impressive that a 3 year old is dropping F-bombs in writing and mastering that tricky "tch" spelling.

"Hell" looks like hell, but the others look pretty good.

It's my Birthday? Splendid!

I LOVE a good birthday, especially one that belongs to me!  Anyone close to me knows that I try to justify celebrating for the whole month of March just for an excuse to do awesome things in the name of a special day.  Also exciting is the fact that my boyfriend's birthday is the day before mine.  I think it's exciting, because it's another excuse to celebrate.  He tends to think it's less exciting because sometimes I hijack his day for myself.  I like to joke that my birthday is my birthday and his birthday is our birthday.  For some reason he doesn't find this as amusing.  I wonder why...

Anyway, sometimes that my parents seem to enjoy giving responsibilities as gifts.  When I turned 16, I was taken to the local bank to open a checking account.  I needed the checking account because my birthday gift was my very own phone line!  With a monthly bill I had to pay!  And also doubled as the modem line for the computer!  

For the last few years I've used my birthday as an excuse to buy myself a gift.  Usually it's an article of clothing or something other people didn't know I wanted.  This year it's a real doozy though.  The biggest gift I have ever given myself.  It's the kind of gift that keeps on giving (not a Jelly of the Month Club membership), that will make me happy for years to come, and that falls into the category of responsibilities.  See, when I was getting ready to graduate college, my parents helped me buy a car.  They helped me with payments for a few years with the understanding that I would take over the payments around the halfway point of the loan.  I've been making monthly payments on this car for years now, and I hadn't really been paying attention to how much longer I had left to pay until a couple months ago.  I thought the car would be paid for in September, and I was really happy about that.  Then last month I realized that I was 6 months off.  That meant my car would be paid off in March!  On the 18th!  Which happens to be the day before my birthday!  So this year for my birthday, I'm buying myself a car!

Of course, I've been driving this car for 5 years, so it's not like it's a brand new present for myself.  It is, however, another step toward being a real grown-up.  Which, I have to be honest, is both awesome and terrible.  I'm happy to be responsible and everything, but it makes my inner child pretty sad that paying a bill is an acceptable birthday present to myself.

I know I'm not the only person in my age group that gets excited about this kind of victory.  My roommate, for example, student taught 40 miles away for an entire semester at the end of college.  Because of the commute and the fact that she couldn't work too many hours (though she worked way more than she should), she ended up putting all her gas on a single credit card for the semester.  It was just what she had to do at the time.  It ended up taking her more than a year to pay off that card, but it was the same kind of feeling for her.  A step toward true adulthood!  I have many friends who are burdened with many student loans from their educations, and a few of them are right on the cusp of paying some of them off.  Even though most of them have multiple loans to pay for many years to come, the joy of paying off even the tiniest one gives them a deserved sense of accomplishment.

For a long time, I thought that becoming an adult meant I would have my life together.  That I would feel stable and comfortable.  I would know what I was doing and understand my responsibilities.  I definitely thought that by now I would have my life all figured out with the husband, the house, and at least the thought of a child on the way.  It's taken me a long time to realize that adults don't actually have everything figured out.  That they are scared and unsure of things.  On one hand it's kind of worrisome to think that these feelings might never go away.  On the other hand, it's really nice to know that I'm not alone.

Keeping Busy? Splendid!

This new found free time is giving me a chance to spend time doing things I wouldn't normally get the opportunity to do.  In a way, it's like being on an extended Spring Break!

This week I'm spending a couple days helping my uncle at his company in the suburbs.  It should be a great experience since I'm supposed to be his Social Media Maven.  It would probably help if I really understood the business.  I'm excited to have a purpose for a couple days and learn more about the business.

Anyone who spends a lot of time with me, or any time with me during the first quarter of the year honestly, knows that my birthday is in March.  They also know that I like to celebrate it for the entire month.  Because I'm a princess.  My boyfriend's birthday also happens to be the day before mine.  I think this is great because it's an excuse for extra celebration in March.  It's not so great for him because, as I said before, I like to celebrate for the whole month, including on his birthday.  Last year was a big year for him - one of those birthdays ending in a 0 - so I let him have his entire birthday to himself.  I'm awfully thoughtful, aren't I?  I am looking forward to our birthday celebrations this year, because between family and friends, we're legitimately celebrating over the course of five days.  BEST BIRTHDAY WEEK EVER!!!

Since my roommate is on spring break the week of my birthday, we have big plans to keep busy.  First of all, she has promised me that she'll start watching Doctor Who.  This alone could be her birthday gift to me.  I know that I'm going to be that annoying person watching her watch the shows to make sure she's having all the right feelings.  

We also have plans to go visit our college roommate, Rachel.  Rachel is an incredibly talented triple threat who is making her way in the Chicago theatre world.  She's wrapping on a show right now, so it's the perfect time for us to go visit before she starts rehearsing her next show.  If you have a chance to see Miss Rachel in a show, you should absolutely take that opportunity.  In fact, you can keep up with her on her website: www.rachelklippel.com

The Guilt of Being Unemployed

I feel like I couldn't exactly continue with the "Question? Splendid" title structure for this particular post...

The thing about unemployment is that it makes me feel guilty.  There's the guilt about being home during the day while everyone else is at least attending the job site.  This isn't helped by people asking "So, what do you do all day?" Personally, at least, I also feel it necessary to offer to tell people what I did all day.  "Today I got out of bed before noon, and then I showered, and then I went to the Apple Store to see about upgrading my operating system.  I was going to do laundry, but I figured I could do that tomorrow.  I had a strange lunch that consisted or random things found in my refrigerator.  Then I wrote a blog post."  This is typically in response to a theoretically innocuous, "How was your day?" question.  For me, at least, this kind of reply stems from wanting to prove that despite my lack of job, my life is still inherently important, even if I'm doing unimportant things.

There's also the guilt of not keeping my house spotless.  Just because I don't go to work every day does not mean I've suddenly become less lazy and more domestic!  The reason I haven't de-cluttered my room is not solely because I haven't had time.  It's mostly because it's not even a little bit of fun, and I have been avoiding it.  Suddenly having time to sort through a tub of shoes does not make it any more entertaining than it was two months ago.

Let's not forget the guilt of not applying for every single job that is hiring.  But you know what? This one is especially unfair, because sometimes you just don't have the right background or work experience for even the "easy" jobs.  I learned that the hard way right after college when I was interviewed and ultimately rejected at a pizza place.  A pizza place run by burnouts from my hometown.  That was rock bottom for me at the time.  Knowing that I wasn't qualified to make and/or serve pizza with a bunch of stoners was really a hit to my self-esteem.

So here's my question: is this guilt something I conjure up myself, or does it stem from others projecting their disappointment on me?  Have you felt the same guilt of unemployment (or underemployment)?  Seriously, I would love to know what you think about this in the comments.

This time around, I really am trying to look at everything in a more positive light.  I've actually had real jobs this time around!  Jobs that I was quite good at and taught me a great deal!  Jobs that look good on my resume!  References from those jobs who are willing to say nice things about me to potential employers.

As I wrote in my last post, I really am open to new adventures this time around.  What do you think I should be when I grow up?  Right now my wish list of professions includes wedding planner (and officiant! I'm internet-ordained!) and rock & roll backup singer.  (You should see my sweet step-touch dance moves and my terrific tambourine talents.) Of course I'm looking for legitimate job openings, but I'm interested to see what other people think I'm capable of doing with my life.  Leave suggestions in the comments. 

Looking for a New Adventure? Splendid!

Do you think I’m fairly great with numerous talents and a sparkling personality?   

Is there a job in the greater Champaign-Urbana area that you think I would perform fabulously?  

If so, send me a link, because I am on the hunt!   

It's been the question on my mind and the minds of many others over the last few months, and a decision has been made.  I will not be returning to the theatre when it reopens, and I am ready for a new adventure.  I enjoyed my time at the theatre and the park district, but I really am open to trying something new.  As a guideline, I would absolutely prefer to work full-time at an organization that offers typical benefits like paid time off and health insurance, but if you know of a really sweet part-time gig for me, hit me up!

Valentine's Dinner? Splendid

Valentine's Day may very well be a holiday perpetuated by retailers, but I do love an excuse to tell people how much I love them.  My boyfriend and I went out for a fancy a fancy Valentine's Day dinner the first year we were together.  He was still trying to woo me, after all.  We went to a local Japanese restaurant to enjoy a fun meal prepared on a teppanyaki grill.  Of course, as one might imagine, the restaurant was incredibly busy that night, and there were at least 16 of us crowded around a table meant for 12.  The couple to one side of us bickered the entire time, and the couple on the other side didn't want the food typically prepared on the grill.  They ordered chicken teriyaki or shrimp tempura or something.  While we made the best of our meal, the ambiance certainly left something to be desired.

Not only did that experience turn us off to going out for super romagical (it's a word we invented) Valentine's dinners, but our anniversary is in late January, and both of us have birthdays in mid-March, so we have plenty of reasons to celebrate in the first quarter.  So now we go out for fancy dinners for our anniversary and take turns making dinner for each other for Valentine's Day.  We're slightly adorable.

This year was my turn to cook, and I started planning very early, as I'm wont to do.  I started searching my BFF, Pinterest, to come up with recipes for a Valentine's Menu.  I finally settled on stuffed mushrooms, spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, smoky pork pappardelle, and blackberry swirl pound cake served with vanilla ice cream.  Anyone who knows me relatively well is probably wondering if there were planning spreadsheets involved.  Yes, of course!  In my defense, there was only an actual spreadsheet involved for the grocery shopping, with every ingredient needed listed by meal component and section of the grocery store.

It was also a pretty busy week around here, so I knew that I wanted to serve the meal on Saturday, and I knew that I would need to do a lot of prep work during the week.  This is how I broke down the work.

First up was making the sauce for the pasta.  I used the Smoky Pork Pappardelle recipe from Food & Wine Magazine as my guide.  The recipe was very simple to follow, and I made three deviations from the original.  Despite the "smoky" moniker for the dish, I did not use smoked salt.  This was purely because I already have 3 varieties of salt on hand, and I really didn't feel the need to buy any more.  Along the same vain, the recipe calls for champagne vinegar.  I used red wine vinegar because it's what I had on hand.  Also, when the pork and sauce are done cooking, the recipe says to strain the sauce and gently push on the solids.  I wanted a really creamy sauce, so I used my immersion blender to mix it all together.  Once the sauce was blended, and the pork was shredded, everything went into the fridge till Saturday.  On Saturday, I started reheating it on the stove about 45 minutes before I wanted to serve it so  I could bring the temperature up slowly.  I waited till right before I served it to add the mascarpone cheese.

Sauce in three phases

Preparation Day 2 was strictly for the Blackberry Swirl Pound Cake from Martha Stewart.  After getting in a small domestic disturbance with my food processor, we were in business.  I didn't want to run out of puree in the middle of the loaf, so I was conservative with the amount I used in the middle.  That was unnecessary, because I have a lot of blackberry puree leftover now, which is fine.  I served the pound cake with vanilla ice cream, and we drizzled more blackberry puree over the top of the cake and ice cream.  When eating the leftovers, I've taken to nuking the cake for 20 seconds or so.  It's awesome.

Preparation Day 3 was really just about an hour I had before we hit the road to see Scott's friend direct big annual band concert in their hometown.  Since I knew I didn't have much time, I used that to prep the Stuffed Mushrooms from Delicious Meliscious (who got it from Ina Garten, according to her blog).  I cut the recipe in half and made 8 mushrooms.  There was nothing too surprising in the recipe, but it came together beautifully.  The stuffing is very flavorful, and using panko instead of regular breadcrumbs gave it a great texture.  My only note would be to lower the cooking time by a few minutes.  Mine turned out okay, but they could have come out of the oven a few minutes earlier.  I didn't take a picture of the mushrooms before cooking them, and the only picture I have shows the well-done final state, but in the interest of honesty, here you go.

This picture does nothing for the mushrooms.  They were good!

Preparation Day 4 was also Saturday.  The day I served all this food to my beloved.  Once we got home from Scott's hometown, I got to work.  Well that's not entirely true.  First I went out to buy "emergency fancy pasta" in case my plans didn't work.  Then I came home and got down to business.  It's been years since I made fresh pasta (hence emergency pasta), and the last attempt didn't go especially well (dysfunctional Kitchen Aid mixer).  Now armed with a new(er) mixer (Kitchen Aid customer service was excellent), the pasta maker attachment, semolina flour, and this recipe for fresh pasta from Got Mixer?, I set about making the dough.  I cut the original recipe in half, and I'm glad I did, because it might actually make a metric ton of pasta.  I certainly made more than enough.  (Also, holy parentheticals, Batman!)

We made pasta a few times growing up, and I remember having a blast making it together with my family.  We used a manual roller that clamped onto the table and had to be cranked by hand.  It was not really a one-person activity.  Using the Kitchen Aid roller was so helpful.  This part was definitely time consuming, but it was also by far the most rewarding part of making this meal.  A pound of semolina and AP flour, three eggs, and a few Donna Noble episodes of Doctor Who later, I had a gorgeous tray of thin fresh pasta cut into wide ribbons of pappardelle.

 

All that was left after the pasta was the spinach salad and warm bacon dressing.  I didn't really take any process photos of this dish, because there wasn't much to it.  I cooked the bacon, boiled the eggs, and made the dressing while I was waiting for the pasta dough to rest.  I used a recipe from Flavors by Four for the dressing.  I didn't have prepared honey mustard on hand, so I used dijon mustard and added honey.  I'm glad I went this route, because I felt like the sauce needed to be sweetened up a little, so I added more honey during the cooking process.  The finished product was delicious with the crisp spinach and bacon, and the nice contrast with the mushrooms and eggs.

Everything came together really well for the meal.  I'm very proud of it, and Scott said it was probably the best complete meal I've made for him.  That's pretty high praise, I would say.

Not pictured: Poundcake

Scott was such a good sport as I made him wait to eat so I could take pictures.  I promised him I wasn't going to become one of "those people", but I was am proud of the meal, and I knew I wanted to blog about it.  Because honestly, how good does this look?  Seriously, I spent a lot of the meal talking about how good it was, which earned me some teasing, but it was SO GOOD!

Even cutting most of the recipes in half, I still have so much pasta left, and I am okay with that.  I will happily eat this for the rest of the week if necessary.  

Who wouldn't want to eat this for a week?

Just in case you're curious, this is what my kitchen workspace looked like last week.  I've been taping recipes to cabinets for years now, because it puts them at eye level.  Since this meal was prepared over the course of 4 days, I needed the recipes to stay handy.

So, yeah.  That's what I was up to last week.  That's why I was Facebooking about the patron saint of cooking.  That's what I made for my man to celebrate our tenth Valentine's Day together.  When I was in Kansas City last winter, we visited a Penzey's store.  As you checkout from the store, they have bumper stickers that pretty much sum up how I feel about cooking for people:

 

More Orange Kitchen Favorites? Splendid

I've already written about some of the orange items you'll find in my kitchen, but that list of three things is by no means exhaustive.

Besides the orange pasta pot and drainer, Stacey also gave me a sweet orange knife for Christmas this year!  It's almost too pretty to use... almost.  It's lightweight, sharp, and it fits very comfortably in my hand.  Pretty color or not, I currently use this knife more than my santoku knife.

My friend, Ginny, bought me a couple of awesome orange melamine spoons for my birthday a few years ago, and I love them.  One is a slotted spoon, and the other is a solid serving spoon that's kind of squared off on the edge.  She bought them at a local store, Art Mart, and they don't have any markings on them, but from what I can tell, they probably came from Rosti Mepal in the Netherlands.  I love that they're heat resistant and sturdy, and if I take them to a potluck, everyone knows they belong to me!

Last December I "helped" (read: rode along with) my friend Matt move to Kansas City where he lives with my friend Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, being an exceedingly thoughtful gift giver as well as tour guide, took me to Pryde's Kitchen.  As she suspected, I was in heaven, and I would guess we spent more than an hour browsing all the nooks and crannies filled with Fiestaware and kitchen gadgets.  One of the best thing I stumbled upon was the orange happy spoon made by Zak! Designs.  It's funny because when Elizabeth lived in town, her roommate had the green happy spoon, and I had always loved it.  I had to have it.

Frank Sinatra once said "Orange is the happiest color."  I mean, obviously.  I have an orange spoon that is so happy it smiles at me!

For the record, as much as I want everything in my kitchen/life to be orange, I have quite a few orange kitchen utensils that I won't blog about because they're inferior products.  They're more like attractive people who aren't so bright: I just want them to sit there and look pretty.

The Fault In Our Stars? Splendid!

I’ve talked before about my love of reading, and my love of YouTube.  These two worlds came crashing together recently, culminating when I read The Fault in our Stars by John Green.  This is how it happened:

Step 1. Love Reading

Step 2. Discover Hannah Hart and My Drunk Kitchen.  Subscribe to her YouTube channels.

Step 3. Discover The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube.  (Yay Jane Austen!  Yay Pride & Prejudice!) Submerse myself in all things LBD: YouTube channels (including Lydia’s, Maria’s, and Pemberley Digital’s), Twitter accounts, Facebook page, Tumblr blogs, the works.

Step 4.  Start paying attention to the different YouTubers featured in Harto’s videos, including DailyGrace and Hank Green.

Step 5.  Realize Hank Green is one of the creative geniuses behind LBD.

Step 6.  Watch An Evening of Awesome video – a celebration of the 1^st anniversary of John Green’s novel  The Fault in our Stars, mostly because Harto and DailyGrace said they were in it.  Enjoy the reading performed by LBD actors Ashley Clements and Daniel Gordh so much that I downloaded the book for my iPad that night.

Step 7. Instead of rearranging all the new furniture and storage options for the house that currently reside in the living room, employ favorite procrastination technique: read a chapter in a book.  Start with chapter 1 of The Fault in our Stars.

Step 8. Become so enthralled by the beautiful writing that all other goals for the day fall by the wayside.  Devour entire book in approximately 4 hours.

Seriously, I spent about 4 hours on Sunday reading The Fault in our Stars from electronic cover to electronic cover.  It's a really great story about how two sick young adults find each other in a cancer support group.  But it's so much more than that.  It's about making the most out of the life you've been given.  It's about being honest with the people you care about.  It's about pain both physical and emotional.  It's about love, young love that is real and magical.

The book is considered young adult fiction, but as many of my friends and I know, that's where you can find some of the best fiction.  Do yourself a favor and read this book.  Also, follow John and his brother Hank on their YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers. They use the catchphrase, "Don't forget to be awesome," and that's something I think everyone could stand to hear more often.

200 Years of Elizabeth Bennet? Splendid

January 28^th, 2013 was the 200^th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice is one of the most ardently admired love stories in all of literature.  (See what I did there?  Mixing two P&P references in the same sentence…) 

I think it’s so incredible that this story written published in 1813 rings true enough with modern people that they continue to retell the story over and over.  In the last twenty years, there have been numerous versions of the story produced for TV and film.  Of course, three of them really stick out for me

 

The 1995 miniseries adaptation for the BBC starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet contained six episodes and one lake scene that viewers won’t soon forget.  This version really elevated Colin Firth to stardom, especially in the U.S.

Bridget Jones’s Diary, the 2001 film adaptation based on the novel by Helen Fielding.  Elizabeth Bennet, or in this case Bridget Jones, smoked, drank, had a vulgar mother and verbal diarrhea, but Mr. Mark Darcy liked her anyway – just as she was.  Colin Firth playing this newer version of Darcy didn’t hurt his image with the fans either.  I always found it amusing that in the Bridget Jones book sequel, The Edge of Reason, Bridget interviews Colin Firth about the infamous lake scene in the 1995 version.  The interview didn’t make it to the final cut of the second movie, but you can find it on the DVD special features.

For a lot of younger fans, when they imagine Elizabeth Bennet, they picture Keira Knightley.  The 2005 film brought the classic story to a whole new generation of fans.  It does not hurt the film one bit that Dame Judi Dench plays Lady Catherine, because who doesn’t love Judi Dench?  No one.  She’s amazing.

A few months ago I stumbled upon the YouTube series TheLizzie Bennet Diaries.  It’s a modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that takes place through a series of short vlogs.  The main characters are all there in some form, though the Bennet family is slightly different.  There are only three Bennet daughters: Jane, Lizzie, and Lydia.  Mary Bennet is a cousin while Kitty Bennet is, well, the family cat.  Lizzie is a graduate student making videos as part of her course work, and her best friend, Charlotte, does most of the editing.  The Bennet sisters and Charlotte make guest appearances in a lot of Lizzie’s videos.

Charlotte, Lizzie, Lydia, and Jane

One of the most unique parts to the web series is the “costume theatre” Lizzie uses to reenact conversations. 

Lydia as Bing Lee and Lizzie as Darcy

The viewer has yet to see Lizzie’s parents, but she and her posse tell the viewers everything they need to know through recreations of the scenes that took place off camera. 

Lizzie as Mrs. Bennet and Charlotte as Mr. Bennet

Reenactments are how the viewers initially get to know Darcy, though he appears in later videos.

Darcy portraying himself and Lizzie in episode 80

I really love that the creators of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries have gone beyond Lizzie’s own videos to create a whole universe for the characters.  In addition to Lizzie’s videos, Lydia has her own vlog.  I find this particularly fascinating, because you really see how Lydia’s character develops throughout the story.  The characters also have Tumblrs blogs and Twitter accounts.  You can see the characters interact with one another, so even on days when there are no videos, the story continues.

Despite the fact that many of the viewers and fans of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries already know how the story ends, the writers and actors have us riveted.  They have done an incredible job of updating the story and making it relevant for modern fans 200 years after the original.

Lizzie’s videos are updated on Wednesdays and Fridays and Lydia’s videos are uploaded Tuesdays and Fridays, all at 9am Pacific.  You can subscribe to their updates on Twitter.  For all other information, including actor bios and the story behind the project, visit the Lizzie Bennet Diaries homepage.