Winter quarter officially ended on Friday at 3pm, when I finished my final final (Animal Biochemistry and Metabolism). The last month has been a little hectic - mostly because I had to learn a lot about vitamins in a short amount of time, but also because of some fun things:
A trip to Portland to visit my parents, brother, his g.f. Bri, and my cousin-once-removed Kay. Beautiful sunny weather, a big family breakfast on Saturday morning Chez Kay, some modern art, a Japanese garden, a delicious Lebanese dinner, a gorgeous service at First Presbyterian, a trip to Oregon City (the western terminus of the Oregon Trail) and plenty of quality time with the fam. Nothing like cramming six adults into a tiny rental car!
Some great performances at the Mondavi Center: Les Ballets Trockadero (hilarious & unexpectedly graceful), Joshua Bell (gorgeous tone & good selections of modern music) and Del McCoury (infectious).
Our semi-anniversary! Six months down. Many, many, many more to go.
Lots of quality study time with my classmates. The work gets stressful, but I've really enjoyed bonding with my classmates this quarter.
Settling into spring break now. Scott's parents are here for a laid-back visit. We'll do some hiking and see some local attractions (like an alpaca farm!) but it's pretty nice to sit around and chat and not have too much of an agenda. We welcomed them in last night with a big batch of fish head soup.
Ingredients
1 enormous fish head (5 pounds?) from the Sac farmers market
Random vegetables - we had onions, cabbage, mustard greens and dried black fungus on hand
Salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, pepper, etc.
Tamarind paste - this is the most important ingredient after the fish head. It adds a nice sourness.
I added a little kim chi to my bowl.
We threw everything in our stock pot and let it boil for an hour or two. Amazing how much meat (and other stuff) came out of the head. The bones all fell apart, and we ended up picking them out of our spoons & mouths - not the most elegant dining, but delicious!
