It is inevitable that if you are a person who knows how and likes to cook or knit or craft or woodwork or whatever, at some point you will become that annoying person who looks at something nice in a store and say, "eh, I can make that better myself." Usually you will be right. There are few things in this world that are for sale that could not be personally made cheaper or of higher quality in your home. The trick, however, is knowing which things are worth your time, because unfortunately, everything you make yourself, be it flaky tender pie crust or a handknit computer bag, takes way longer than buying the same product of inferior quality in the store. For example, I can make both homemade rolls and homemade pasta, but in the complicated quality versus precious time formula (similar in format to the quadratic equation, except with more swear words and heart shaped doodles) buttermilk rolls are totally worth it and gluey homemade fettuccine just isn't that great compared to the fancy pasta I can buy at Pike Place Market.

Recently, I was inspired to make homemade instant oatmeal. Ridiculous, right? Hear me out. For most of last year, I would hurriedly make homemade oatmeal on the stove every morning before work. It can be done in about ten minutes, is a truly delicious and filling breakfast, travels to work and reheats in a tupperware beautifully, and is entirely worth the time investment. Oatmeal is wonderfully adaptable to whatever add ons you happen to have already in your kitchen: almost any fruit- fresh, dried or jammed - nuts and seeds, it all works. Nevertheless, despite one's best intentions, ten minutes before 7 am is still ten minutes, and it can be hard to work up the motivation or speed up the morning grooming process enough to make time for breakfast preparation. The obvious and widely used solution to this problem is instant oatmeal which is available relatively cheaply at virtually every grocery location. And I'm not here to knock store bought instant oatmeal, but it just has never really blown me away or become a fixture in my morning routine. Besides which, it's generally full of sugar and preservatives, which I won't pretend that I don't consume with vigor, but when possible, I like to save those ingredients for my daily intake of food pyramid items cupcakes and goldfish "fishy" crackers. I came across some instructions for homemade instant oatmeal not too long ago and decided to jump on that potentially time and calorie saving train.

To start, you're going to need:

7 cups oatmeal
1 box powdered nonfat milk
Salt

Also necessary:
"Fixins"

For this batch I used what I had in my pantry - dried cranberries, sunflower seeds and toasted slivered almonds. Clearly, most anything would do to the trick here. Like apple cinnamon oatmeal? Use dried apple bits and cinnamon. Like peaches and cream? Dried peaches. This isn't rocket science, yo. One blogger I read even said that he mixed maple syrup into his and it worked well, but I can't quite get behind that.

The only fancy tool you'll need for this is a food processor. I unfortunately, do not own one of these. For this project I made the mistake of borrowing my grandmother's food processor and received daily heckling phone calls asking for it back immediately thereafter. At one point she even asked me if I broke it and the was the reason I hadn't returned it to her yet. Why? Who really knows? My grandma is crazy. A few summers ago she accused me of stealing a pink towel and red plastic bowl from her apartment while she was in Greece. Then again, at this very moment, she is very kindly hemming several pairs of dress pants for me because I feel to busy/lazy to deal with it myself. So I'll give her a break, I guess. Temporarily.

Take two cups of the oatmeal and pulverize it in the food processor until you have oatmeal powder. Dump it back with the non-pulverized oatmeal and add the dry milk. If inclined, you can think deep thoughts about the oatmeal to powdered milk ratio, but since I'm not really interested in having half empty boxes of powdered milk hanging around, I find that a whole box (you know, the one about the size of a hardcover novel) is the right amount for 6 to 7 cups of dry oatmeal. If you make your oatmeal with salt, add a few teaspoons at this point. Add the aforementioned "fixins." Bam. You have enough instant oatmeal to make several dozen breakfast bowls. I put the entire batch in a gallon ziplock bag and keep it in my bottom desk drawer, spooning it out, half a cup at a time into my "work bowl." Look at me, saving the environment too. If you're more of a single serving type person, you can premeasure your servings into ziplock sandwich bags while you contemplate your resource consumption and wasting all that plastic. Whoa. Sufficiently high and mighty for you? Yeah, me too.

I'm learning that one of the things about loving books in a heartbursting way is coming to terms with the fact that there is no possible way I can read everything good and worthwhile being published, nor can I hope to ever consume the entire cannon of past amazingness. And that is ok and normal. Obviously, this is going to be especially important to keep in mind in September when I start grad school and will have to stop sleeping and possibly forgo casual pleasure reading altogether. The great news is that because I can't know everything in its immediacy, I will continue to discover "new" writers for the rest of my life, and each time I will sigh as I drop the completed novel and feel as if I am looking at the world in a slightly different and more complete way.

The newest author that I'm embarrassed I've only been reading for two months is Jhumpa Lahiri. My mom and I had the nicest drive back from Idaho in June listening to The Namesake on cassette tape in my little car. 369 miles from Cottonwood to Seattle only got us about halfway through the story so I rushed out to bookstore back in Seattle to pick up the novel and, oh my god, I loved it all so much. I don't know if I connected so fully with that book because the immigrant, ethnic experience in America makes me imagine what it must have been like for my Greek grandmother to move to Seattle in the 50's or if it is just because The Namesake is seriously that good. Shortly thereafter I devoured The Interpreter of Maladies, and have Unaccustomed Earth on my hold list at the library, but there are still 342 people in line in front of me, so I'm thinking I'll probably just break down and buy it.

This week I watched the film version of The Namesake, which I thought was pretty good. It's difficult to give an opinion of an adaptation of a book you love, because obviously the book is able to do so much more than the movie. You lament the places where nuance and backstory were sacrificed because it is entirely impossible to shoehorn all that into two hours, and yet you love the screenwriter and director for knowing how good this work of fiction is and desiring to give it a face. This book is so anecdotal and the sheer 30 year breadth is just so staggering that the entire time I was watching the film I was wondering if anyone who hadn't read the book would understand the leaping in years and perspectives, and realize that as a whole, the facets of stories actually fit together seamlessly and poignantly. Kal Penn's performance earned him a slot on my list of crushes, and his role in the film was unique from the other (excellent) actors in that his portrayal of Gogol Ganguli brought something new and sharp to the character that didn't exist or wasn't as fleshed out in the novel. Incidentally, I admire Mira Nair's adaptations of novels. I was one of the few people in the world that didn't hate her film version of Vanity Fair. I thought it was clever, pleasurable to watch, and didn't abandon Thackeray's main themes while shifting the focus and tone. Similarly, with The Namesake, I can't really imagine a different treatment of the material that wouldn't have turned the wonderfully complex and convoluted story into a trite, feel-good cliche.

I generally don't worry about the cashiers in the checkout stand at grocery store judging me by my purchases, but that is probably because I usually buy sensible and non-remarkable assortments of groceries. Fruits and vegetables and 10 kinds of yogurt and sundry dry goods that do not become magical and fabulous until I take them home to my little cubby of a kitchen and squirrel them away in my pantry to eventually be turned into soups and casseroles and baked items. I'm getting to a cranky point in my 20s where I'm tired of most of the restaurants I used to love and nothing will please me like my own cooking does. I sometimes worry that that means I am slowing turning into my yiayia, which is obviously a terrifying concept.

So, the majority of the time my grocery basket looks like the shopping list of an old lady, albeit one who really likes seasonal beer, and I don't think that is anything to cause me considerable shame. However, last night, I must admit I was a little sheepish as I went through the checkout line with a little under a pound of asparagus, three tomatoes, a can of chocolate slim-fast powder and a box of red wine. I wanted to stop and reassure the cashier that I wasn't going to make a slim-fast shake for dinner to wash down my asparagus and wine, but of course that would have called even more attention to the combination. I guess all that means is that I am still firmly planted in my twenties and not in any danger of premature octogenarian status.

Close call, that one.

My office's kitchen boasts one of those space-station lookalike single serving coffee machines that create mediocre, nondescript, brown water fresh for you in less than a minute! Usually I avoid the Keurig machine like a a girl who sucks down triple shot Americanos and lusciously sludgy french press coffee with a gleam in her eye and a twitch in her leg, because, well, I am that girl. Other times, however, my credit card bill exceeds my monthly income and I start to contemplate different ways to save money. It is probably pretty bourgey of me that one of the first things that comes to mind when I try and tally up extraneous expenses in my lifestyle is espresso coffee drinks. I was pleased to see last week at Tully's (which was, as my grandmother likes to remind me, founded by a Greek here in Seattle) that they produce little coffee pods for the Keurig machine for a very reasonable price. Suspending disbelief for a moment, and hoping against hope that the sub-par quality of previous coffee made from this machine was due to the cheap pods and not the intrinsic abilites of an electronic thing that claims to be able to make tasty beverages from mysterious-plastic-pod-cups, I decided to give the Tully's brand pods a shot.

Verdict? Still totally gross. Sigh.

Two Springtime CakesMegan called me at 4pm yesterday inviting me to a six o'clock barbecue at Seth's house, giving me my choice of salads, drinks or desserts to bring and share. I thought about throwing together strawberry shortcake, but had used all the rest of my strawberries on Cheerios eaten on the sun dappled patio that morning. Pie was also briefly entertained, but would have required a trip to the grocery store. My pantry already had all the ingredients for this Velvet Spice Cake from The Joy of Cooking, even the cup of plain yogurt and cream cheese for the frosting. I recommend this recipe. It is very moist and fluffy, though I might double up on the spices next time. It was quite mild and with thick cream cheese frosting (my own improvised recipe) so mellow that you could barely discern hints of the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

I decorated the cake with icing tips #67 for the ruffled leaves and #107 for the cranberry colored drop flowers. I brought the big cake to the barbecue with me, barely two hours later, and delivered the smaller bundt to my grandmother on the way home. I made one extra little bundt cake for my lunch today which was not frosted so prettily, but tasted delicious when I ate it out of tupperware just an hour ago.

Greek Easter

This weekend, due to discrepancies between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the date of Passover, the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrated Easter. I also celebrated in this holiday. Saturday afternoon my friends came over to my house and I cooked Greek food. I woke up at 6 am to clean my kitchen and grocery shop. I made moussaka, spanakopita, fassolakia, and a huge horiatiki salata, all served with yummy crusty bread. Serendipitously, this weekend also marked Nitsan's brief return to Seattle, so between him and many of the regulars, we passed the afternoon happily. The day was warm and and sunny, and I sat on my patio with several ladies, sipping ouzo and gossiping.

I had spent the entire previous week trying to conceive of a not-gross cocktail using ouzo, so that I could name it something disgusting like "Greek Passion" or "The Freaky Greeky." Alas, inspiration would not come to me. Kevin succeeded where I failed, however, by combining ouzo with Dr. Pepper to create the "Dr. Papanicolaou," named after the inventor of the Pap Smear who is also from the same village in Greece as my ancestors. The drink was surprisingly delicious.

Sunday afternoon, my yiayia and I went to her friend Clara's house for lamb Easter dinner, which was mostly pleasant. Clara is a fantastic ninety-four year old woman who is sassy and independent and I deeply believe that she is one of the few sensible forces in my yiayia's life. Clara's grandson just had twin daughters last fall, so two 6 month old babies were also a point in the awesome column. Slightly less good was the dinner table conversation which started with someone soliloquizing about how "Religion is a pyramid and there are lots of different ways to get to heaven", and an old Greek lady from Walla Walla said "What?! You mean the Muslims too?!"

Uh, yeah. Happy Greek Easter to me!

My grandmother had a bridge and three teeth removed from her mouth this morning, and seeing no alternative that wouldn't make me feel neglectful, I volunteered to driver her to the oral surgeon. Overall, it was much less of a major production than the catastrophe I envisioned in my head, and the procedure was completed before I even returned from the pharmacy where I picked up her vicodin prescription. On the ride home, her mouth was filled with gauze, hindering her speech, and I was surprised at what a disorienting experience it was to have her be completely silent for a 15 minute stretch of time.