Lisa Cho's blog

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Banana oatmeal cookies

Banana oatmeal cookies, make substitutions as you will!

2 1/2 bananas
1/4 stick of butter
a cup or so of oats
a cup and a half of flour
some baking soda
sea salt
some cinnamon
pinch of allspice
some ginger powder (optional, I actually used galanga powder because that is what I have)
(i used splenda for my dear diabetic sister) 1/2 cup of some kind of sweetener, sugar, honey, whatever
2 eggs
dried cherries (cranberries or raisins would be great too)
some pecans (walnuts would work too. I bet cashews would be great)
a couple of dashes of ground flax meal (totally optional)

350 degree oven, 10-15 minutes depending on your oven - you want them to be just slightly browned.
makes a bunch of delicious and nutritious cookies

peanut butter or chocolate chips would be a delightful addition, but I omitted them for my sister this time.

Leaving the batter in the refrigerator for an hour or so would let everything meld together and the oats and flour to thoroughly moisten.

Cabbage

The other day I bought half a head of cabbage with the intention of making a simple side dish. Lately, it seems every food writer has been extolling the virtues of the cheap and nutritious cabbage. I sliced it up thin and threw it in a big pan with a few splashes of rice wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, sesame oil, worchester, and a few pinches of salt, pepper, whole fennel seed, red pepper flakes, and cayenne powder over low heat. I walked away for a few minutes, and then found that the massive pile of cabbage had softened and shrunk down. I used tongs to mix things up a little and kept the flame low. I probably had the heat on low, returning to stir things around every few minutes for about half an hour. The end result was a tangy and refreshing kind of slaw, still slightly crunchy, but mellow and soft too.

I served it with roasted broccoli (tossed a (defrosted) frozen package in the oven with salt and pepper, 400 degrees, half an hour) and sweet potatoes, sliced up into small wedges (roasted in the oven with salt and pepper, drizzle of olive oil, 350 degrees for an hour). There were also leftovers from my parents' ridiculously awesome Chinese New Year meal - soup with 800 ingredients, and tofu skins.

Erik suggested that kielbasa would be a nice addition to the cabbage, and since there was still a huge pile of cabbage left over, the next day I sliced up some packaged kielbasa and tossed it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, with the tiniest bit of oil and a splash of water. I then turned the oven off, added the cabbage on top of the nicely browned kielbasa along with some cherry tomatoes and slid the whole thing back in the oven. About half an hour before we were ready for dinner, I turned the oven on to 275 degrees just to warm everything through thoroughly.

I also toasted a piece of sourdough bread and made an egg over easy. Erik joked that I like my eggs cooked by showing the egg the stove. I do like my egg yolk slightly runny but firm. It was a magnificent dinner - the tangy cabbage and the salty kielbasa paired with the sourdough and the richness of the egg and the sweetness of tomato - I liked it so much, I had it again for dinner.

It's a very low maintenance meal. The most work you have to do is slicing up the cabbage, otherwise it is pretty much turning on and off flames, and waiting. It's also fairly nutritious, ignoring the salt and fat content of the kielbasa. You could theoretically substitute the kielbasa for something leaner, but if we believe the rumor, cabbage is so good for you, it cancels out the salt and fat.

mayonnaise free tuna salad

Erik doesn't like mayonnaise, so I used hummus instead!

2 cans of tuna (packed in spring water, drained)
lemon hummus
scallions cut up into tiny pieces
one small red onion cut up into tiny pieces
one yellow bell pepper cut up into tiny pieces (I can't eat raw peppers, so I zapped it in the microwave for 1 minute to cook it a little)
1/4 of a cucumber cut up into tiny pieces (I ate the middle part to avoid the tuna salad getting watery from the seeds)
some capers, rough dice
parsley
dash of cumin
dash of cayenne
salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes to taste
lemon zest
half the juice of the lemon (You can use the other half to clean your microwave, just wet down a paper towel and put the lemon half on top in the microwave, zap for 40 seconds or so and wipe down the microwave. Or you can make some nice tea.)

Combine in a large bowl, and enjoy. I suggest serving on a slice of bread that will soak up any stray liquid. It was great fresh, and great the day after.

Who is the most unpopular person out there?

I wonder if there is a way to find out the most unfriended person on Facebook , etc.

Federal Jury Duty

Well, today I reported to the Brooklyn Courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza East for Federal Jury Duty. I am very proud of myself for having not gotten lost, although I probably did take a long way around. It's a nice-looking building (if a bit boring), all very modern, huge ceilings, lots of space, and everything looks like it is made of a very light colored wood. I got to the Courthouse about 20 minutes earlier than I needed to appear (8:30am), and there was no line at the xray machine/metal detector. I got through without a problem and then surrendered my cell phone. The Jury Assembly room on the 2nd floor was spacious with individual cushioned seats (instead of the old wooden benches like in the Queens Courthouse in Jamaica), a big reading room sectioned off, and bathrooms nearby.

I brought along The Story of Edgar Sawtelle to help pass the time (thanks for the kind-of recommendation, Katie), and spent about half an hour reading before a jury clerk, Melissa, came up to address us. I am not sure how many people were gathered - it was definitely over 100 people, could have been over 200 people for all I know. Clearly, Melissa had spent plenty of time getting yelled at, because she spent five minutes explaining that she and her fellow jury clerks were not responsible for the schedule or selection of jurors and to please not yell at her.

Evidently, state and federal courts have absolutely no way to communicate with each other - there is no system in place to identify people in any way. If you serve in your county jury, you are excused for 6 years from county jury duty. But federal jury duty is every two years. The only exception is if you already served in a jury of any kind in the same year (or I guess 12 month period), because the courts do have a heart, and "understand that jury duty is an imposition." However, since the courts don't have a unified system, they have no way of knowing if you already served on a county jury that year already, so you have to provide proof and then you can be excused. That got big laughs, Melissa stating that it is a court, so they can't do anything without evidence. After warming up the crowd a little, Melissa became quite the comedienne, earning several chuckles with her wry explanation of rules and procedures for jurors.

Compared to what I remember from going to my county court a couple of years ago, the Federal Court system seems much friendlier. Everyone, from the clerks to the security guards were warm and friendly and polite. I do not remember feeling that way from the county court in Jamaica. Possibly, one of the reasons for this politeness to the jurors was another point that Melissa emphasized - that Federal Court was made up of several counties, and the computer selected people from those counties at random, with no regard for distance from the Courthouse. So some poor people were dragged in from Long Island and the far reaches of the other boroughs. No matter how much people complain and/or volunteer to serve in a jury at a court closer to home, there is nothing that could be done about it - it is all through random computer selection. Melissa also made it seem like it was much easier to get excused from jury duty than I remember from my county experience. She told us all to simply tell the judge if serving would be a hardship, including childcare issues, problems with conflicting appointments, or what have you.

So, Melissa explained at length, about the $40/day everyone gets for serving. I gather they have a lot of issues regarding this, because she explained it several different ways, giving specific examples and scenarios. Unless you are a federal worker (with the exception of being employed by the post office), you are given $40/day for each day you serve jury duty, plus transportation fees. The check is mailed directly to you and your home, and not to your employed. You are not to give the check to your employer, nor should you send the check back to the courthouse should your employer also pay you for the day.

She spoke for about half an hour, and then told us that they were just waiting for the courts to be ready to receive jurors for voir dire. We waited for about half an hour, forty minutes, and then another clerk came and started announcing names to go to various courts. I was totally paranoid that I was going to miss my name so I tried paying rapt attention. Of course, the more I tried to pay attention, the more I found my attention wandering. My name was eventually called to go in for a civil case, so I followed the line of my fellow jurors out the door, to the elevators, and to the 6th floor, where a ridiculously cheerful young woman named Irene was waiting to lead us into the courtroom.

Now, this was not a courtroom from Law & Order or anything. This was all polished and light and modern (practically the entire ceiling was made of lights). The prosecution and defendant sat at tables that were parallel to the jury box, so the  plaintiff looked directly at the jury, and the defense was behind them, also facing the jury. I thought this was interesting, because the plaintiff could not look at the guy she was suing unless she completely turned around.

The judge was very charming, and also friendly and took pains to explain every step of what was happening. He first asked all the prospective jurors to take an oath. And then the first 16 people, randomly chosen from the list of the 30 or so prospective jurors that were randomly culled to go to this courtroom, were told to sit in the jury bench (nice, big black chairs that might have also been swivel chairs). I was not one of them, and I was kind of sad about it. It all seemed very interesting, and the judge said right away that he didn't think the case would take longer than a week, and it was probable to end before the end of the week. The judge explained the very basics of the case, and then introduced the plaintiff and her lawyers, and the defendant and his lawyers and asked if anyone thought they might know of the case of the people involved. He then asked each of the 16 prospective jurors to introduce themselves, say where they worked, where they lived, and if they had ever served on a jury before.

There were 3 people who had concerns that they wouldn't get home in time for the Sabbath on Friday but that judge assured them that case would not last that long, and even if it did, they would not have a problem getting home early on Friday. I would say a good half of them had served on juries before, with one person who had been on juries three times before. One guy was a part-time teacher who had a class that night at 6pm. He didn't seem concerned about being late for class, but the judge ended up dismissing him to make sure he wouldn't be late. The judge let the lawyers discuss amongst themselves for about ten minutes, and then excused a few of the 16 and told the rest of us that we could go back to the jury room. So I was all done before 11:30am.

So I have to call at 5pm tonight, and every night for the next 2 weeks, to make sure I don't have to go back to the courthouse. I am fairly confident that I will not have to, but it is a pain to not be able to make any plans for the next day until after 5pm, or be able to make plans in advance.

Oh well. From my experience today, I would not mind having to go back. It was really a very nice place and the process is quite interesting. It is fun being able to see the legal process when it hasn't been through the dramatized and fictional wringer. What really struck me was that it was all very orderly and for the most part, quiet. If the judge or a clerk wasn't talking, the whole room was silent. And maybe because the rooms were so large, even whispering between lawyers or people couldn't be heard.

jury duty

I wouldn't be so worried about jury duty if it weren't for this sentence in the brochure: "Thousands of people travel each year, without incident to perform this important obligation of citizenship."

Um.... So how many people travel with incident?

jury duty

I wouldn't be so worried about jury duty if it weren't for this sentence in the brochure: "Thousands of people travel each year, without incident to perform this important obligation of citizenship."

Um.... So how many people travel with incident?

The Sci Fi Channel

So until Erik moved in, I never had cable at home. I had the basic kind, that let me watch NY1 and TBS and the Food Network, but that was pretty much it. But Erik very definitely wanted his Sports channels. SO, we got an actual cable package which, happily included TNT and USA so I could watch Law & Order on even more channels.

Something I could not have foreseen, was my newfound addiction to the Sci Fi Channel. Now, on weekends and some days, they have theme days - like all the movies will be about vampires or Satanic cults or killer weather! Today's theme was zombies.

I tuned in right in the middle of Dead & Deader, in which Dean Cain is a half-zombie soldier. So there's this scene with Dean Cain, struggling to fight the zombieness in him. The bad guys throw in his girlfriend, after cutting her arm open to further entice the bloodlust. After a valiant struggle, he finally loses control and lunges at her. And so the intrepid and feisty girlfriend throws him into a dead body which he promptly starts chowing down on. And then his mind clears up
and he's like, duh, what happened? And she's like, you just tried to eat me. And he looks at her and is all like, oh, sorry. Well, you know the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. And there's a cheeky smile, and they go off to fight the bad guys or whatever.

It was that wonderful kind of so terrible, it's awesome.

This movie was followed by The House of the Dead 2, with this (should be) classic line towards the end - "There's time for tongue acrobatics later."

City Chase USA

So my birthday present to Erik this year was entrance into City Chase USA. The New York one was on September 13. It turned out to be great weather for it, and it was more fun than I expected it to be. I'm not the most athletic of people, and the idea of City Chase, is that you... well, it's a race.

The winner gets to go to the National City Chase championship in New Orleans, and the winner of that goes to the International one in Morocco. So really, most people (Erik and I included) were playing for the fun of it. There were over 20 different challenges you could choose to complete, and the object was to complete 10 of those challenges as quickly as you could. Erik and I ended up completing 9. We came just shy of 10, because we were getting close to the finish time.

The challenges were kind of in riddle form, obliquely referring to locations and/or the possible tasks. When I find the clue sheet again, I'll transcribe some of them.

These are the challenges we completed:

At Christopher St. Pier, we had to come up with an original cheer and perform it, including some specific terms, and a kick, jump, cheer, and something unique with a pom pom.

At Pier 40, there were two different challenges - one was kayaking around in a large circle. Erik did most of the rowing, as my lack of coordination and lack of strength didn't do very much. That was a lot of fun, and something I want to do again. At the other end of the pier, was to roll a die, and you had to eat something corresponding to whatever number you rolled. Erik and I both rolled a 5, which was just some wasabi paste. The other choices we didn't get were live crickets, anchovies, live mealworms, and two others I don't remember.

We then went to the Fat Cat bar on Christopher St. for a ping pong challenge. Each team played another team, excpet one teammate had to hook their arms through their other teammate's arms (that teammate had to keep their hands on their hips). Erik and I had an advantage in that he could see over my head easily, but he had to kneel a little to put his arms through mine. We lost our first round, but won the second. The first couple we played had to play 4 different teams before they finally won.

After that, we went to the magic shop on 21st St (which I remembered from the times the Bookspanners went to bars on that street). Our mission there was to learn a trick and then perform it for a bystander. The hard thing was finding people who were willing to stop and watch. I messed up my trick, but Erik did his pretty well. There was a very nice couple of men who stopped and watched us.

We then headed to 34th st for a clue that had a typo in it. It indicated a spy shop on W.34th street, but they meant  E.33rd St, I think. After a futile look at the J&R annex in Macy's, we decided to give up on it and head to the Joshua tree for our next challenge. (We were only allowed to walk and take the subway, and many places were several loong avenues away from any subway stops).

At Joshua Tree, we were given a Palm and a sheet with 6 different photo ops we needed to take. We had to get 5 of them in 30 minutes or less. They were things like, take a photo with a non-participant giving you a piggy back ride, take a photo of two non-participants giving one of us a kiss on the cheek at the same time, etc. At first it seemed hopeless, but we stuck with it, and got it in plenty of time.

We then headed to another pier, like 80-something, for what ended up being a tandem-bike riding challenge. We just had to ride the bike in about a 10-minute loop. It was quite fun, with Erik doing most of the work.

We were on our way back to the subway station from it, when we happened to pass another challenge. It was a wall-climbing thing at the Manhattan Plaza Health Club. I hated it and I wanted to come down from the wall but the very patient instructor and Erik kept urging me on. After several tries, I begged to come down, and they finally let me down. We still got the point despite the fact that I didn't make it all the way up the wall.

At this point, we had 9 points (We got a point just for getting the clue sheet). So we headed back to the finish line (Webster Hall), and were hopeful to swing by another challenge place (Kaplan, where there was a grammar test rumored to be the challenge). But it was getting late, and my legs were threatening to give out on me.

The after party was actually quite nice. They had huge platters of actual food that they kept refilling - chicken and steak and pasta salads and veggies. It was very tasty (although I wonder if it was really that good, or if it was only that good because we were so tired and had only eaten protein bars all day). The drink tickets were only good for Amstel Light, white wine, and Drambuie. Erik and I had never had Drambuie before, so we tried it. It was terrible, horrible, disgusting stuff. It was sickeningly sweet, and tasted kind of like cough drops mixed with licorice mixed with evil. We stuck to white wine afterwards, but we headed out pretty early, since we were so exhausted. The 8th place finishers did 10 challenges in just over 3 and a half hours. Erik and I only managed 9 in just under 6 hours. Although there were ways to get two points before the race even started - collecting money for charity beforehand, or completing ten items in a small scavenger hunt that was printed in the Metro giveaway newspaper on Friday. And everyone got a point just for getting the clue sheet.

So, at the end of all that, Erik calculated that we walked (and kayaked and biked) about 9 miles. I am so sore.

But that was a pretty fun day. And all the places that lent their locations and/or services were very smart - Erik and I will totally go back to half the places we had to travel to - kayaking, Fat Cat, tandem biking, the health club (it's beautiful). And I liked that we were forced to visit areas we normally would never have gone to - especially in one day's time.

And how many other people can say that they went kayaking, played ping pong, went tandem-bike riding, performed magic tricks, and climbed a wall, all in the span of six hours?