Oscars, sushi and dissertation: my life the past couple weeks

Life overall

Spring break is here and I’m at my parent's home to spend about 6 days with the fam. I have a pleasure reading book: Why women should rule the world to read. It’s written by the first female press secretary, Dee Dee Myers. I’m also hoping to finish the third Dexter book Dexter in the Dark, by Jeff Lindsey. I've gotten through the first few chapters of 'Women' and I'm really enjoying it. She's talked about how both she and other women in academe, business and politics are held to double standards and a lot of her personal experiences are both interesting and depressing at the same time.

I haven’t posted for awhile mostly because I’ve been working diligently on the dissertation. I hope to propose in a couple months. It's great to be at the stage where I can have concrete goals about my writing progress, but also a little demanding too. ;-)

Sushi Update

I’ve had my sushi kit for almost two months now (holiday gift) and for the past week I’ve started experimenting with riceless maki/rolls. Rice just has so many calories, such little nutritional value and is one of those things I have a hard time not overindulging with.

Not that I won’t sometimes treat myself, but I needed to find ways to make sushi rolls without the rice. I really love the basic ingredients of rolls without rice: fish (cooked, smoked or raw), avocados, maybe some may, prawn (shrimp), crab….and of course wasabi and soy sauce!!

So far I’ve managed to come up with some great combos. I really like omelet (scrambled egg) rolls. I’ve been using Egg Beaters. Kroger carries an organic, cage free form of “egg beaters” that I love.

I’ve also made Philly rolls, and various combinations using cucumber, steamed or salmon, mayo, and crab. Mayo is a great way to hold the rolls together without sticky rice.

In other sushi news, it’s fabulous that I also got a great Kitchen Aid knife set over the holidays. The serrated and slicing knifes are great for cutting the roles and slicing the ingredients. Without the right knife the ingredients of the roll are just pushed out when it is cut. I’m excited about how my sushi skills have developed over the past couple months. I know how to cut the cucumbers now to get really thin slices and just how much to lay out on the nori (seaweed) to make a good size roll. :-) Not that I’m an expert by any means, but if ya have any questions about roll making feel free to comment. I’ve also made a few combos not in roll form (sans nori) in case anyone isn’t into that.

The other night I tried cous cous instead of white rice - it was great and didn't fall apart! I took pictures and will try to remember to post them.

The Oscars

The bad: the night was a little montage crazy. Remember the montage to binoculars and periscopes? :-) I can understand that was necessary because of the writers strike lasting up until 2 weeks before the show. I enjoyed Jon Stewart's opening routine ("Does this town need a hug?....Thank god for teen pregnancy.") I saw most of the musical numbers before I got bored of the whole thing and really loved the numbers from August and Enchanted.

The good: I found three movies I think I want to see (The Enchanted, The Savages and La Vie en Rose). I recently saw Laura Linney in Breach and Mystic River (which I happened to see the day of The Oscars for the first time). I'm really starting to like her work.