moisture management

Today I figured out why I don't like the southern climate. One is definitely the humidity, but second is because it's warm. But let me explain.

I'm definitely a wimp when it comes to weather (and many other things), and I am very prone to catching a cold when I feel cold.
Which is what just happened.
So back in Toronto, I know it gets cold so I bundle up the second I feel a little chilly. I remember back in high school when Janice and Kelly were wearing shorts and I was in long pants plus a cardigan. No problem here.

But in Atlanta, it's suppose to be warm, and I'm deceived into thinking I should feel warm. Right now it's usually around 10 in the mornings & nights and mid 20s during the afternoon. So I'm still dressing for the afternoon temperature and throwing on a coat just for show (aka not zipping it up in the wind, frankly negating any warming).
It's also goddamn freezing in the office and even at home, where I spent 90% of my time. I have no idea why it's so cold at home when I don't have the a/c on, it can be mid 20s outside and I am not at a comfortable temperature even with wool socks and a hoodie.
I long for the day that heating will be turned on...hopefully they have heating down here.

Point is: Atlanta is freezing indoors. At least it's warm inside in colder climates.

isles

Aside: today's been a rollercoaster kind of day.

Brie and Parmesan are my gateway cheese, but cheddar is definitely the start of the slippery slope. The one I have is creamy and salty mmm. All I've had are supermarket quality ones, it would be wise to keep my standards low. Publix did serve it with some apple and peach preserves on a thin cracker, how could I not buy it after tasting that? It turned out to be an expensive grocery trip with this and the falcons sub.

ray

It's always nice when good weather greets you on Monday mornings. That and donuts. Today's donut count is 4.5, only surpassed by LP events when we were trying to finish off boxes and boxes of Krispy Kreme.

crop factor

I'm dipping my toes into the world of interchangeable lens cameras. It's a a deep rabbit hole, much like how I felt when I first began exploring tea and teaware.

Interlude for today's tea: Eco-Cha's heavily roasted dongding, but brewed in my dragon kyusu.

It was a little weird during the first two brews, there was an obvious savoriness or almost fishiness to it. But that disappeared and the subsequent brews returned to normal.

Interlude back to camera: I should stop using my phone to take tea photo, the quality is really bad unless there's abundant lighting. But it's so convenient to post-process with vsco cam.

So how the camera exploration started is from me revising my NYC trip plans last night, and decided to add B&H to my list of places to go. Then it moved onto deciding between Sony a6000 vs Fuji X-E2. I quickly discovered that you're not just picking a camera body, you're picking a systems of lenses to stay loyal to. Picking lenses then led to finally figuring out sensor sizes and equivalent focal length.

As of this night, the shortlist of lenses include:

• Sony Zeiss 24mm f/1.8
• Zeiss Touit 12mm f/2.8  
• Sony FE  28mm f/2 and E 16mm

The 3 options come out roughly the same price range if I get the Zeiss ones used. Currently leaning towards the Touit 12mm since it has the widest field of view because I anticipate being in amazing locations if visiting Tibet & Yunnan works out next year. Not sure if it would work well for shooting street / stills / food in dimly lit restaurants. Any advice is very welcome.
Though the choice will likely come down to how cheaply I can buy them for.

snout

I ate almost a full week of vegan food unknowingly.

• Breakfast: avocado toast, aka the greatest lazy breakfast ever.
• Lunch: roasted vegetables with lentils and rice. I forgot to mention that my new favourite seasoning for lentils is star anise + bay leaf, very earthy.
• Dinner: african peanut stew with rice

Did I miss meat (or eggs, or dairy), no not really. I didn't even realize until this morning while eating the last of the avocado.

Actually this isn't entirely true. On Tuesday Chick-Fil-A had a free chick mini promotion (chick minis are nuggets of fried chicken in a bun that's the closest to a chinese bao) which made me crave fried chicken hard so I ended up eating their fried chicken sandwich for lunch on Thursday when I was running late to my site visit. Actually this isn't entirely true either, I was craving the bao part more so than the chicken part, would have been perfect if I could get my hands on Bahn Mi Boy's fried chicken bao... *u*

The point is, no I was not actively missing meat until I had it again. To paraphrase a quotation from Nana (woah how many years ago did I read this? I bought quite a few issues of Shojo Beat from the Chapters at Bayview Village), you don't appreciate what you have until you lose it and see it again.

Now to cook some roast meat for lunch next week.

Later edit:
I tried the falcons sub for lunch. For those too lazy to click on the link, it's basically exploding with fried chicken, and some bacon, peach preserves, and sirracha mayo. Quite tasty, would be better if it was toasted for a bit.

Also sprouting some mung beans after watching Maangchi's video. I had an eureka moment to substitute a steamer insert in a pot for her flower pot & bowl set-up. I feel quite clever, like those dorm hacks that you see with people straining pasta over a tennis racket.
On the topic of sprouting, I've switched to soaking my black rice after watching Peaceful Cuisine's video. Both my mom and dad has previously complained about the hard grains of black rice when they've ate my cooking (they were never impressed).

As always, weekend tea:

Dian Hong from the Joseph Wesley sample pack. I don't care too much about this one, it's more bitter compared to other Dian Hongs that I've had, and only a loooong brew brings out the familiar sweetness. The wet leaves did smell exactly like dark chocolate though.

seasoning

My weekend revolved around the cast iron cookware in my kitchen.

Apologies in advance for the lack of photos, because my tiny kitchen has shitty lighting and after this whole ordeal, I was not in the mood to make the effort to take decent photos. 
Anyways.

The bulk of the time was spent babying my skillet according to these instructions (flax oil + 500F heat), which had solid sounding science according to how little biochem I knew. Additionally, I was a try-hard and sanded off the factory applied finish, which isn't great according to the collective wisdom of the internet.
The results were not bad at all after 6 cycles.

All of this prep was so that I can roast a big batch of fall vegetables. Again, I felt like putting in more effort than usual and followed these instructions (Series Eats has all my trust when it comes to food).
Again, the results were great. The potatoes are indeed the best I've made, crispy on the outside and creamy within. Thank you cast iron for your heat retention capabilities.
(psst. Amy if you're reading this, roasting carrots with cumin is amazing)

So what went wrong was roasting vegetables in a virgin cast iron skillet. It wasn't a good idea to first roast the sweet potatoes since the sugar (while it caramelized beautifully) is guaranteed to stick. To compensate I added more oil with the remaining vegetables. The thick layer of oil formed a crappy layer of half polymerized seasoning...which I had to scrub off. It was a pain to remove too, it took the combination of soap + vigorous salt scrubbing to completely remove. And along with it went my first layer of good seasoning.
Back to square one.

Oh well, cast iron is like nice work boots, they'll age nicely by just using them.
 

...

I also made some African peanut stew in the dutch oven.
Notes for future iterations:

• Chunky peanut butter is the way to go. Good texture from the larger chunks of peanuts.
• Thicker consistency is good for mixing with rice. Would be better if the stew was pureed a little before adding the leafy greens.
• Would benefit from herbs & drizzle of good olive oil, but this applies to all soups. 

As for the roasted vegetables, the end product is some mixed bowl with lentils and black rice, accenting with some quick-pickled onion. This is my lunch for the week, and I go through great lengths to reheat the 3 components separately because I ain't ruining my crispy vegetables after all that trouble. Thankfully the office kitchen has both a toaster oven and a microwave.
 Notes for future iterations:

• Par-cooking saves so much roasting time! My old method for roasting sweet potatoes is literally throw them in a hot oven when I get home from class and forget about them. 
• Either pickle the onions for much longer, or just use pickles. I do like a sour element.
• Would benefit from some sauce, thinking of either the Tibet hot sauce, or maybe some sriracha mayo? Another route would be a herbed yogurt like a raita, or a sweet yogurt.

turtle

The convenience of online shopping coupled with general laziness has resulted in cardboard boxes making up a good portion of my furniture. Currently using three big boxes as end tables and countless others for storage.

Heck they way outnumber my actual furniture, which consist of dining table, 3 stools, side table, mattress, lamp and a drying rack. This is about the bare minimum that I can comfortably live with, except I'd like to swap a stool for an actual chair and add a full length mirror. Otherwise it's great living with so little stuff, less to clean and less clutter. Though I can't resist a fully stocked kitchen, kitchen gears are my kryptonite to owning less stuff (way more so than clothing or cosmetics, though these 2 areas require some restraint as well). I need to come to terms with the fact that I can either have a fantastic kitchen...or I can relocate more often. Or the third option is to have both and pay insane amount of money to ship my gear durr.
I should make it a life goal to have only as much stuff as I can move with a sedan.