Chicken Sudado: Adventures in live-blogging!

Because this is what happens when I'm left alone in the apartment for 48 hours with nothing but a dog to keep me from falling into the abyss of my new laptop... I am going to a potluck in T minus 2 hours 21 minutes, and I have a paper due on Tuesday for which I've written nothing but a meager outline and a thesis statement.

One of the 30 things I want to do before I turn 30 is perfect my mom's chicken and rice, which is really a misnomer because it's actually an awesome Colombian chicken stew-type dish that must be served with white rice. It was my favorite dish growing up and I've only made it a couple of times as an adult. Last time was 4 years ago, and let's just say that night was infamously affectionately dubbed the "Night of the Salsa de Plastico".

So, without further ado.... #3: Perfect my mom's chicken & rice: LIVE-BLOG FORMAT!!!

3:15 - I walk to Whole Foods feeling totally blessed to live only a block and a half from Whole Foods Market. With weather this cold, it's awesome that a trip to the store is just a skip, hop and jump away.

3:25 - After spending $8.38 on hydroponic tomatoes (p.s. wtf are hydroponic tomatoes??) I feel slightly less blessed by WFM.

3:30 - Sidestepping vomit in the alley on the walk home, I just want to be back inside.

3:40 - To E (the dog): "Let's live-blog this biatch!"

3:51 - Trying out the Emeril dutch oven for the first time. Had been waiting to season it, but I just decided it must have come "pre-seasoned" because this is the only pot big enough to hold 10 thighs and 5 drumsticks. Yes, that's way too much chicken. I don't care. I only make this every 4 years!

4:00 - Chicken is cooking in dutch oven on medium heat, covered, liberally sprinkled with salt. One chopped up large yellow onion and two chopped up large tomatoes are stewing in with it. Also added 2 T. of olive oil. I can hear the juices stirring. Sidenote: "sudado" means "sweaty" which is exactly how the chicken cooks - in its own sweat. Yum!

4:02 - Last time I cooked this dish, I was dancing around the kitchen to bachata. Not much room to kitchen-dance in this place:

But I can still sing along to K95 country. "Hell yeah! Turn it up!"

4:13 - Emergency phone call to Mom: "Do you peel the potatoes?" Mom says yes. Damn. I guess striving for perfection has its costs.

4:23 - All in! Roll call: 12 thighs, 6 drumsticks, 4 yukon gold potatoes, 6 carrots, 3 tomatoes, 1 onion (should I add more, I wonder?)... and 2 T. of olive oil. Now to let cook, covered, on medium heat for 30 minutes or so, before I stir it some more...

4:29 - What's worse than your dad nagging you to clean up? Your husband nagging you to clean up. What's worse than your husband nagging you to clean up? Your husband adopting your dad's catch-phrases to nag you to clean up. What's worse than all of the above? Hearing your husband and your dad nag you (in unison!) to clean up when you are completely alone in the house. "Clean as you go!" they nag. I know, I know...

4:41 - Panicked and added another half an onion. E apparently took advantage of the crisis to sneak a chunk of potato from the kitchen to his spot in the living room. Then decided it wasn't cooked enough for his tastes. What a snob.

4:42 - Back to work on my immigration paper. Good-bye, country music.

4:47 - Nevermind. Dog is whining. Can I take the dog outside while the chicken is cooking without burning down my entire building, I wonder? Or if I feed him, will he leave me alone so I can write?

5:06 - Dog let me feed him and left me alone. I've written 375 words. A 2,000-word limit is a lot less than I thought. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, the smell of that chicken is making it harrrrrrrd to concentrate.

5:45 - Chanced a trip outside with the dog while the chicken simmered on the stove.

5:49 - Returned to find the apartment happily still in tact.

5:50 - Started the rice. Listen people, this is how you make good rice:

1. Put a pot on the stove and dump in a little oil (1/2 - 1 T is probably enough).
2. Heat up the oil on medium-high
3. Put in the rice - say 1 cup.
4. Shake the rice around a bunch until its coated with the oil.
5. Add twice the amount of water as rice - in this case, 2 cups.
6. Shake salt into pot liberally to taste.
7. Bring the water to a boil over medium-high heat (or high, if you like a little burned rice on the bottom of your pot, like my dad).
8. Let it cook, UNCOVERED, until the water is boiled down to the point where you can't see it and there are holes in the surface of the rice.
9. Reduce heat to low and cover the pot.
10. Cook 20 minutes or until fluffy/done.

6:02 - Just tried the chicken it is AMAZING. Added more salt. Per mom's instructions, I am now letting the chicken cook uncovered for the last 20 minutes, to allow the sauce to thicken up.

6:07 - How the hell am I going to get 7 blocks on foot with a giant dutch oven full of chicken, a pot of rice and Taboo? Is this one of those tricks with the fox, the chicken and the bag of corn?

6:17 - Uh oh. Here's something I didn't expect. I'm falling asleep...

6:26 - And... DONE! (The picture doesn't do it justice, but I had to take a closing shot!)


Buen provecho, ya'll :) Let me know if you like it!

1/2 way to what?!?

Full disclosure: I am drunk.

I went to our school-sponsored party for 2Ls. It's a celebration of our being halfway done with law school.

Since T went down to VA without me, I figured I would attend the party with one of my girlfriends. On account of my recent chest cold, I decided to cab it up to her place. The cabbie and I discussed my evening plans:

"We're going to Mc....something..."

"McFaddens?"

"No..."

"McGlinchy's?"

"No...."

"Finn McCools?"

"No...."

And on and on... We got into a conversation about drinking and bootlegging in Greece (his home country), and eventually snagged my girlfriend. Then off we went.

Okay. Going out is fun. It's nice to socialize, there's no doubt about it. I like getting to talk to the girls in my old 1L section and gossip and generally get the facetime in. But I missed T. Everyone wanted to know where my "man" was. I only put it it quotes because, literally, everyone used the same word. I liked bragging on him and talking about our wedding with people I've hardly had a conversation with all year.

In the end, however, it was more of the same. I went to another bar with some of my friends. I called T from a restroom stall and asked him to talk to his friend in VA about having kids and what that's like. I am pretty sure I laid all my cards on the table for his buddy, as T repeated back to me my request, apparently in front of his friend. Then I went back to the bar and told my good guy friend V about my faux pax. He said: "So you want to have a baby." And I didn't really care that he put it so bluntly, because just an hour earlier, he had come out of the closet.

And that, my friends, is law school. A whole bunch of self-induced drama, mixed up with some alcohol and black letter law.

The Deposition Queen

Tonight, I am full of myself. Why? Because tonight, during Trial Advocacy, I did my first deposition. I only had 20 minutes, and was assigned a mere portion of the case to cover with the witness. But I KILLED it! And henceforth, I have dubbed myself the Deposition Queen.

Cocky, I know. I'm indulging myself.

Seriously, though. I loved it. Doing a deposition felt like going on a scavenger hunt or playing 20 Questions or being an investigator. Instead of getting to read through an employee file (this is a sexual harassment case) I actually get to pick the brains of one of the key characters! I told my classmates I had a lot of practice cross-examining witnesses when T & I were dating. (Who am I kidding? I still grill him for info on a daily basis...)

I was supposed to go to Virginia with T this weekend. Instead, I am staying in the Big City so that I can attend a tax clinic training and work on a paper for my Crimes & Immigration class. Ugh. A paper for class. And a class taught by my legal writing professor at that! I'm having bad memo flashbacks... I guess this is what I get for not doing a journal. Since I'm stuck here though, I will be able to do a couple things. 1. I can go to the "J party" (1/2 way to JD celebration) in which the school pays a bunch of money for 2Ls to drink free beer, further cementing the co-dependent relationship of the legal profession and alcohol (I'm starting to think there's some kind of secret marketing agreement between law schools and Budweiser, like how all the public schools have Pepsi machines). 2. I will be attending a friend's potluck on Sunday and cooking my grandmother's recipe for chicken & rice (chicken sudado), so I can hopefully check off another of my 30 before 30.

Anyway, I am just killing time until T comes to bed so we can watch Supernanny or Modern Family on Hulu. He's walking the dog, but I should probably brush my teeth before he gets back. I'm being a bad laptop owner and sitting in the bed with the computer. Breaking my own rules. Oh, well. I suppose the Deposition Queen can do as she pleases.

The return of the Hour

OMG I'm posting from school! I got a laptop for Christmas and have been bringing it into school on some days. I really don't like having it here. Like, really. My notes are scattered between notebooks and the computer, and I'm checking out facebook profiles during class. But on the other hand, I am able to go to private areas of the library instead of being tied to the public computers, and I can get more work done here instead of waiting til I get home.

Four days into this steroid medication (which is just prednisone, even though I am making it out to sound like I'm wandering around with 'roid rage and ripping off t-shirts and everything) I feel a gazillion times better. I can sleep without coughing myself awake every five minutes! And I feel much more energetic. So much so, that I demanded (unsuccessfully) that T submit to an arm wrestling competition on our floor last night. He refused, saying he was scared he'd lose. Ha!

We went on a date this weekend, where we recommitted to the whole spending an hour a day together thing that we were doing a while back. Even though T laughed at us for continually turning to the same bag of tricks, I love this concept. Despite eating dinner together most nights and watching Hulu or Netflix movies regularly, we really don't automatically get in the quality time for connecting that was a regular part of life pre-law school.

The rules of the Hour are as follows:
1. We take turns picking what to do.
2. No complaining about what the other wants to do.
3. Television, movies and chores don't count as part of the Hour.

It sounds kind of silly that most of our hours have been spent playing Boggle or, in the case of last night, Chess. But when I am sitting there with T, and we're finished playing but still have time to spend together, and we start actually talking... I learn things about him that I didn't know. Maybe he mentions something that has been bothering him. I start to feel things I might not have felt. Maybe he says something to make me laugh. Suddenly we are closer. Then next thing you know, it's the middle of the afternoon, and I'm at school thinking about how I can't wait to see T again and wondering what we're going to get into tonight.

The trick is to keep it going, amidst the reading and the happy hours and the guys' nights and overtime and general fussiness of everyday life. Well, in any case, I'm happy for the return of the Hour.

Deoxygenated

I went to Immigration Law at 1:30 p.m.

Then I went to the Work Study Office to make sure I'd get paid for my work at the farmworker program this spring.

Then I decided that since I was still on campus on a Friday, I might as well go by the school clinic. See about this persistent cough...

Turns out? My respiratory tract is closing up. Turns out? I'm not getting enough oxygen into my blood stream.

So now, I'm on steroids. I'm starting the prescription tomorrow "before 9 a.m." My alarm is set.

I'm so sick of being sick. This is just annoying.

Theraflu makes the heart grow fonder

Why I have a wonderful husband (the "I'm sick" version):
- He made homemade golden cheddar soup & skillet cornbread for dinner on Sunday!
- He brought me soup & goldfish crackers in bed on a tray for dinner last night!
- He played four rounds of Boggle in bed with me last night!
- He encouraged me to sleep in instead of going to class today!
- He went out in the cold and rainy nastiness to buy me Theraflu!
- He walked the dog for me in the mornings as well as at night!
- He pretended not to hear all the gross sick noises I made at night!
- He offered to put away my laundry for me (my least favorite chore)!
- He didn't mind that I went several days without changing out of my long underwear!

And that is why I am working as hard as I can to stop being sick. I'm ready to start attending classes regularly, going to work, making dinner for T, getting back in the habit of doing chores, feeling attractive and generally interacting with the world again.

It all starts with a single shower. I guess you could say I'm off to a good start!

Who is JE Guide to Life?

I never used to understand why people posted about their blogs being boring. I've always just done a blog to do a blog. To have a place to put down thoughts, and secretly entertain the thought that Someone Out There cared. (Someone Out There typically being my future self.) But lately, I can't shake the feeling that my blog is just plain boring.

Maybe that has something to do with my recent obsession with other people's blogs. Just to give you an idea of how obsessed I've been with blogs, I'm going to link every word of this paragraph, starting now, with various blogs I've landed upon over the past week or so. I'm just pulling them out of my history.

Lately I've been reading a gazillion blogs about newlyweds and new families (i.e. "we just had a babyyyy!" blogs). I am interested in these blogs because they show a different life than the one I have now. These are blogs centered entirely around the matrimony or the wedded bliss or the TTC journey. These aren't blogs of women (or men) who happen to be married or mothers. These are people who choose to center their online identity on their family status. I am thinking a lot about that.

What is my online identity? Do I even have one? Amongst the many law school blogs out there, I think mine does not stand out, largely because I'm not really writing much about law school. I'm not a mom so I'm not a MILP. Law school is not my primary identity. I'm married, but even though the engagement, planning, ceremony and honeymoon all happened over the course of the past blogging year, it barely registered a blip on JE Guide to Life. I didn't write it all down here, largely because I didn't feel compelled to. I own a dog, but he's not my Fur Baby and I don't have much to say about him either.

What do I have to say? Maybe nothing much. I don't like to post my deepest thoughts and feelings on this blog because I tend to be a private person, and I have no idea who from Real Life is reading. (Thanks for staying on the DL, by the way, Real Life friends :) I prefer to control who knows what I'm thinking and why and when I'm thinking it. Unfortunately, that makes for a boring blog.

Sometimes, funny things happen in my budding marriage that make me want to write them down in here. Sometimes, I look at the dog, smile and feel like I should say something about him here. Sometimes, bad things happen and I want to talk about them. Sometimes, school gets the better of me and I must vent or explode. But mostly, I guess I'm just gazing at my own shoes, being not that interesting, and hoping that as the posts add up, they'll paint the picture of my life.

And for posterity's sake... Today I had a lovely meal with a couple of out of town friends, including our friend who married us in August, at a really fancy restaurant for prix fixed Restaurant Week lunch. Was late to immigration after already having skipped a class, five days into the semester. Go me! Logged on to find the last of my grades awaiting me... an "A" in political and civil rights... WOAH! YAY! A "C+" in employment law. Fuuuuuuuuuu.... Dammit. Thought to myself: "So this is why they don't give us our grades until the new semester starts. To keep us from drinking ourselves into oblivion during the winter break." I got home intending to walk the dog briefly and crawl in bed. (I'm sick.) He dropped a gross watery something into the grass, and when we got home, retreated immediately to T's office. I followed him to discover a foul-smelling pile of goo on the carpet. I am waiting for T to come home with the papertowels so I can clean up his mess. Yuck. I have a ton of Civ Pro reading to do, and my Corporations book hasn't come in. Can I take my Theraflu yet?