Geri's Thoughts On Transitions

I miss doodling. The funny thing, I am convinced that if I didn’t work as an artist or studied fine arts – I probably have more paintings and drawings, I would have probably been more prolific. It’s ironic really. Why? I think it has to do with taking art too seriously because of having to live up to the title of being an artist, having higher standards, being more critical that it ceases to be just something one enjoys doing. It’s difficult to just enjoy the process because there will always be some changes needed to the end product.

But yesterday I needed to doodle. Evan had a birthday party to attend to and I just forgot about the gift wrapper or gift bag. I hate buying those because they usually cost around $3-$4 and the celebrant could hardly care about it. It’s $4 thrown away. And there’s the birthday card too. I usually buy the cheapest ones at $1. However, I found old tissue paper which I used to wrap the toy box. For the card, since I didn’t like the idea of going to the store just for that, I remembered a lot of handmade birthday cards (made by children) at previous parties that I thought I thought, hey why not make it instead. Sometimes I forget what I can do.  I usually have cardstock lying around and Evan has hundreds of markers. So this is how it turned out:

Evan was only too excited to write inside it (he recently discovered the joy of writing a few days ago). When we arrived at the party, we just placed the gift inside the box but it caught the birthday celebrant’s mom’s eyes. She loved it.

Which gave me another idea. The next day was Evan’s teacher’s birthday. I was thinking having Evan give her a chocolate rose but I ended up making this instead:

People usually spend money to have caricatures drawn of themselves, so I am hoping she will like this. The boy is Evan of course. It was Evan’s idea to include his Cars hat. He was impatient to give it to her this morning but I told him to wait until they were in the classroom.

I should be doodling some more. I forgot how fun it could be.

Since Tom has a big family,  around 30 members and with our place being small, I didn’t think we will be hosting Thanksgiving. Not to mention cooking that dreaded turkey! But we did this year. I also figured that since half of the family members can’t come, it’d be an opportunity for me to practice.

The Thanksgiving wreath I made using stuff I bought from Salvations army (wreath and fruits), crafts from Michaels (pine cones, glitter and ribbons) and fallen leaves Evan helped me pick up from around the neighborhood.

The cooking part was not too bad, really. In fact I had a beautifully cooked turkey complete with garnish which I had wished I had taken a picture of but was too shy to do with guests looking on. If there were things I would do differently was to cook it an hour later (it was cooked early partly because I had always thought our oven was 30 minutes delayed everytime I bake whole chicken) and omit garlic salt on the skin since I had brined the turkey.

Crumbs and croutons from bread for the stuffing and graham cracker crumbs for the pumpkin pie crust.

What was hard was the shopping for extra plates, bowls, accessories and ingredients. It took me a week to assemble everything. By the time Thanksgiving came, I didn’t want to step inside a store anymore. I had probably visited 14 stores in all (Target, Pier One, Walmart, Asian market, filipino store, 2 Albertson’s,  Michael’s, Ikea, World Market, Whole Foods, Krogers, Marshall’s, Trader Joe’s). I was telling Tom, of all the holiday parties he volunteered hosting, he had to choose the most traditional one that would require a Turkey, turkey platter, turkey roasting stuff, gravy boats etc. – something we would probably use once a year, granting his other siblings don’t host it in the coming years.

I traveled 6 miles to get this lemongrass for the turkey.

But Thanksgiving is probably good too, because during Christmas time, for one thing, there would be gifts to contend with which would without exaggeration would take up half of our living room.

Another tricky thing about Thanksgiving is that it has to have it own decor. Like a lot of americans, Tom’s family is pretty traditional that it is a major faux pas if Christmas decors are used for Thanksgiving. I never had decorated during Thanksgiving before so I had to come up with a few accents for the occasion.

Evan helping me make graham cracker crumbs for the pumpkin pie.

It occurred to me to buy the food already cooked but I wanted the experience of cooking traditional Thanksgiving food, yep including the daunting turkey. But as a precaution we also had baked ham on the menu just in case of a turkey fail. For appetizers I made lumpia shanghai (filipino springrolls), cheese & crackers platter. For side dishes I cooked stuffing, mashed potatoes, habichuelas (my family recipe made of northern beans and chorizo bilbao), salad greens, with the cranberry sauce and gravy. For dessert I baked fluffy pumpkin pie, made filipino buko (young coconut) fruit salad and my sister-in-law brought cupcakes, cookies and date bars.

Cooking the habichuelas.

For next Thanksgiving I would just buy ready cooked mashed potatoes and stuffings. They were too much trouble, plus I never knew what a stuffing are supposed to taste like since I never liked them – just some mushy bread crumbs. Unless, I experiment with a non-traditional recipe. However, the cranberry sauce turned out to be really good – have to say it was the best I tasted, it went perfectly with the buttery mashed potatoes.

Cooking the cranberries.

Except for the turkey, I cooked everything the day before and what a difference it makes having clean kitchen! When it was time to clear out the table to make room for desserts, we had an almost empty counter to put them. Also we didn’t need coolers for the drinks because the fridge wasn’t overflowing.

Filipino buko (young coconut) salad.

It was probably my most well prepared party. Still there is room for improvement. I have figured out a way how to warm up food. After the turkey is done, I have 30 minutes to get everything to the table. So an hour before food should be taken out of the fridge. Once the turkey is out warming up can begin using the microwave, then transferred to the oven set in low heat (covered in foil) while other dishes are still in the microwave since microwaved food cool down pretty fast. Of course, there is the pot for dishes like stew.

The nice thing about having a party in a small place like ours is that, everybody get to stay and chat in one room. The teen-agers who usually have their own clique and go to another room to fiddle with their iPhones or play video games, stayed in the dining room to join the conversation. I even remarked to Tom that nobody was even watching tv. Which was remarkable and a nice change.

I was told by my guests that they loved the food and can’t wait to come back for our next Thanksgiving. It was exhausting, and there were mornings prior I thought I couldn’t get up because I was so tired but I honestly am looking forward to doing it again.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found this laying on the library chair on the most wanted section. “Most Wanted” books can not be reserved, can only be borrowed for 7 days and is a first come first served basis. After making sure that nobody else has a claim to it, I immediately checked it out.The only problem with reading this Steve Jobs official biography meant going through almost 600 pages. The last time I’ve read a book that thick was “Obama: The Promise” by Jonathan Alter, a year ago. But the Steve Jobs book was just as engaging as the Obama book and a page turner just like the The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo et. al. trilogy.

While reading the book I vacillated between being appalled by Jobs extreme rudeness to his employees and being awestruck by his brilliance. As someone who just recently started playing with the iLife apps, as someone who has been impressed at the ease of use of these together with other apple gadgets, the connectivity I enjoyed the back story of how it was developed and how Jobs was really, despite being the CEO, had a large role in all these, in the tiniest details (e.g. no power buttons). I have also been frustrated with the hassle it involved if mixed with none Apple products e.g. iTunes on my PC and how you can only view photos in Quicktime if iTunes is installed but the book made me understand how it was important for Jobs that hardware and software should be tightly meshed together to be more user friendly.

It’s funny how the frontrunners of the computer giants do not have normal personalities. It has been theorised that Steve Jobs is schizophrenic (he is either extremely nice to people when he needs something or extremely insulting to others) while Bill Gates has some type of Asperger’s. I think Apple wouldn’t be where it is now without Steve Jobs brutality because dispensing with niceness or compassion for other people’s feelings have made him keep only the best people who was as motivated as he was, there was no room for politics between departments (which was the downfall of Sony who could have pioneered their own iTunes store and iPods) and fighting with powerful board members who most of the time would rather play it safe and put profits first.

No doubt Steve Jobs was a creative and marketing genius, I would have given an arm for the opportunity to witness him work but it also made me ask would I have worked for him granting I had the talent and skill to be on his creative team? Sadly no. I have low tolerance for rudeness and insensitivity. And I also treasure time with my family. Steve Jobs tried his best to be a good father and husband but reading the book I came to the conclusion that Apple and its products were his first priorities and love.

I was very surprised how much I enjoyed reading this book, even the history about the computing world and all it’s players considering I am not a very techy person, but the writer did a marvelous job at putting it all together. However, when I was at Walmart and saw Steve Job’s book displayed, I couldn’t help but wonder what Jobs would have thought of that considering image was so important to him when it comes to his products.