Girl Anachronicles

¡Tan dramática! Pero no miento: el “abismo” es ese hoyo negro llamado “maestría”, la cual comienzo este semestre que viene. 30 de agosto: esa es la fecha en la cual la academia me va a tragar.

…aunque ya me tiene tragada. Hacía tiempo no actualizaba en el blog, y la única excusa (mala) que puedo ofrecer es que he estado más pendiente a los asuntos de la matrícula que otra cosa. Ha sido un poco sobrecogedor por las siguientes circunstancias:

- Yo recibo exención de matrícula gracias a que mi pareja trabaja en la UPR

- La fecha límite para someter la solicitud de exención para el próximo semestre era a finales de julio.

- La fecha en la cual yo habría de hacer mi matrícula sería el 10 de agosto – esto debido a que soy estudiante de “nuevo ingreso” en cursos graduados. Nos recibieron con orientación y toda la cosa, y obviamente con recomendaciones acerca de los cursos a tomarse en el primer semestre. Podía hacer mi prematrícula, pero no necesariamente iba a hacer el mejor escogido.

- Intenté orientarme con el personal del Departamento de Traducción, y me dieron un ‘la’ acerca de los cursos que debía tomar. Intenté hacer prematrícula antes de la fecha estipulada, y ¡claro! de los 3 cursos que quería tomar, uno salía cerrado. El detalle es que todos los cursos que voy a tomar deben aparecer prematriculados cuando voy a someter la solicitud de exención. Si no aparecen en la pantalla whatever-they-call-it, no otorgan la exención. Si sometía la solicitud con cursos de más (preemptive strike), tampoco me otorgaban la exención. Estaba en un impasse con el sistema.

- Pero hablando se entiende la gente: la oficial de Beneficios Marginales en el Departamento de Recursos Humanos me dijo que, dado mi caso, llevara la solicitud de exención tan pronto lograra hacer mi matrícula, que ellos la trabajarían con prontitud.

De todos modos, la incertidumbre (que ha lugar, porque el sistema administrativo de la UPR ha demostrado ser de todo menos eficiente) me tenía los nervios roídos. Asistí a la orientación, me pompié con el prospecto de empezar el camino hacia mi nueva carrera, solicité matrícula para los cursos que había escogido… luego llevé la solicitud de exención … y “color me surprised”, ¡la exención bajó en cuestión de un día! Tengo todos mis cursos y no tuve que pagar sino cuotas de mantenimiento y tecnología. ¡Hurra!

Así se ve mi programa de clases:

Voy a estar tomando Sintaxis de español, Conceptos Básicos de Traducción, y Semiótica … la última es la que me tiene especialmente nerviosa. Sé lo que es la semiótica, y sé que una clase equivalente (en la facultad de Comunicación) logró reducir a Ezequiel a las lágrimas (casi … sí, exagero un poco).

De todos modos: ¡9 créditos! Whoohoo! Voy a estar hasta las cachas en lecturas. Lunes, miércoles y jueves han sido arrestados por mi deseo de hacer una maestría. Wouldn’t have it any other way…

Ahora, hay poco wishlist para este semestre (aparte de la costosa Gramática Española de la RAE, que cuesta un ojo de la cara y abarca dos hermosos volúmenes. Y un carnoso diccionario de etimología, sólo porque sí). Pero lo que me tiene la cabeza comida es esto:

Un nuevo bolígrafo de Sharpie: Liquid Pencil. Espero que no sea tan mierda como el Eraser Mate de los ’80… pero si escribe tan bonito como un lápiz (lo que me enseñan en la foto es más o menos eso) … bueno, definitivamente está en mi To Shop List. Sólo falta que salga. (Tanta cosa por un BOLIGRAFO)

BTW:

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!

¡Aprendí a hacer arroz! Para aquéllos que me conocen bien, probablemente les corre un “¡Por fin, puñeta!” por la mente. Pues les cuento que efectivamente, por fin. Y aparentemente, me queda muy bueno. Ya he hecho arroz con cebolla y tocineta (ése fue el primero, con la ayuda y guía de Eze), arroz blanco, arroz con coco y arroz jasmín. ¡Enhorabuena!

…yyy, para mi familita que en ocasiones vive en nostalgia por las artes culinarias de mamá (y que todavía no nos ponemos de acuerdo a ver quién se aprende cuál receta), les cuento que también hice hoy, por primera vez, el fabuloso bizcocho de ron. Yup, Bacardi Rum Cake, que acaba de perder – a mis manos – todo el caché de los ’60 porque lo hice con Ron Barrilito y Palo Viejo. ^_^ Bizcocho de ron pa’ la recesión del nuevo milenio. Luego les cuento cómo quedó.

Sunday mornings are something you lose after you stop being a child: the carelessness, the feeling of freedom, the anticipation of a day filled with games and fun. Saturday mornings were cool too, but not in the same way: Saturdays were the days Mom would stuff you in the back seat  early in the afternoon and would take you shopping for groceries. Fun, but not the same kind (plus sometimes you’d get a good berating for having too much fun in the fruit section).

Ahhh, the time is ripe for mischief. Banana stand: have at you!

My Sunday mornings were all about Dad. I’d gently wake him up at 6 am – …let’s be honest, I poked away at him, starting at 5:45 am. He’d begrudgingly wake up (although he would never admit to being bothered by it) and he would make me breakfast. Breakfast by Dad was a special thing. Dad didn’t know how to cook – he still doesn’t, unless nuking a cordon bleu chicken breast counts – so the options were limited. But he got creative, I think he barely ever went with the cereal-and-milk option. The usual would be far more delicious: sweet bread rolls with butter spread, sliced salchichón, and sweet cold coffee w/milk. Unhealthy as hell, but completely addictive, to the point in which I’d be glad to have that breakfast again today.

I'm amazed my blood health turned out normal after years of this.

After placing the breakfast dish in front of me and gluing me to the TV set, Dad would go back to sleep a bit longer, until the cartoon block was finished near noon and I’d go back to poking him awake. After that, it was usually game time: Dad would fill up the kiddie pool with the garden hose, and I would tow out all the barbies, water games, rubber toys, and other waterproof items. After that, dad would play with me for hours at a time, until Mom called us in to eat lunch. Those were the days.

Photo alteration of the 80s led us to believe that the whole family would fit inside these pools... we feel we've been had.

All Sundays… Father’s days …

... arroz y habichuelas ...

Food is always an issue in my household: Eze likes his rice & beans, pork chops and viandas; I don’t. I’m usually met with incredulous faces (complete with gaping mouths and wide eyes) when I admit that I don’t like rice & beans at all. If you’re boricua, you have to like rice & beans, sancocho, pasteles… in a case like mine, the kindest of remarks is that I’m “fussy with food”. I’ve even been told that I wrongfully believe that I’m not boricua (“te crees europea, es?”). I’ve tried by all means to understand why it is that there’s food that everyone seems to love that I don’t like at all: this is important to me becase most of that food is the food my husband loves, the food that is served at his parents’ house table. The easiest conclusion achieved is that I was brought up on an “American menu” (a.k.a. hamburgers, hot dogs, mac & cheese), but that is only partly right. I think I finally understood why it is much more complex than that…

Comfort food

(n) Defined as food that gives emotional comfort to the one eating it, these tend to be favorite foods of childhood, or linked to a person, place or time with which the food has a positive association.

For most people around me, such things as rice & beans, pork chops, bacalao, etc are associated with positive and happy times around the table with the family: the warm and loving mom that cooked this for you is the one handing you the plate with a smile. There’s no trauma to eating a plateful of rice & beans, right?

Well, in my case, I wasn’t so lucky to be born liking rice & beans, and the earliest memory I have of that dish is my Mom snarling at me to eat it all. Beans taste to me like force-feeding. It’s not comforting at all. I’m pretty sure these incidents were not daily occurrences: my mom also cooked mashed potatoes with hot dogs, cordon bleu, etc… these were the foods I associated with good times: sharing a chicken cordon bleu piece with my father … yeah, eating most of it because I didn’t like my own dish …

Comfort food for me? Sweet dinner rolls with butter, with a side of slices of salchichón. Instant mashed potatoes with chopped salchichas mixed in. Serrano ham with fried cheese balls. Arabian desserts. My grandmother’s turkey and relleno (potatoes, eggs, onions, almonds, raisins). Mom’s ground beef with rice. Colombian or Venezuelan arepas. Braunschweiger. It wasn’t so much what food I had most often, it was the food that I came to associate with happiness

Some things, I’ve learned to love as an adult: peppers, roquefort cheese, onions, cauliflowers, some viandas. Others, like rice & beans or string beans (or lima beans, or any kind of beans,except refried – because they’ve been killed and mashed) I associate immediately with frustration and almost being sick at the table …

So, dear loved ones: stop insisting on the rice & beans. It.Makes.Me.Sick. (and eating it certainly feels like a chore)

Thank you.

Today has been a bit weird, basically because I have this unrelenting craving for bandeja paisa, specially (and inevitably, only) the one Alvaro makes in his own little restaurant in Caguas.

I am usually not very fond of the rice-and-beans staple most Puerto Ricans use for their daily diet. However, as soon as it is included in a bandeja paisa, it’s all game. Then the ground beef, which is a total mystery as to how they make it. When you try it for the first time, it’s like they’re feeding you instant meat (all powdery, no juice). However, it becomes addictive right away. I guess it’s the taste. There’s a secret to this combo, though. All the meat juice is right in the pork rind: it’s supposed to be crispy, fatty and juicy … and BIG. Most of the times, they will also throw in some pork sausage as well. Clog your heart in one afternoon.

Then there’s the slice of avocado, which I usually avoid since I used to love avocado, but it hasn’t fully regained my trust since that one time it got along awfully with my stomach.

The rice is covered with a fried egg, sunny side up or easy over, which is a combo I wasn’t interested in trying until I found my love for the bandeja paisa. And to top it all off, a wonderful arepa (please see Antioquian Arepa, although the one I’ve known since I was a child was the Arepa Paisa, covered in crumbled white cheese and butter… yummmmm!).

So give me a holler if you want to try this exquisite platter, I’ll let you know how to get to Alvaro’s (it’s VERY easy!).

BTW: you cannot eat a bandeja paisa without chugging it down with some Colombiana soda.

Yesterday it was iced cupcakes & brownies. Had a lot of fun cooking it up with Tattiana and Chichi. Made a mess out of the whole house, mainly because we also received a visit from Pepe and his girl, but more importantly because the kitchen is so small, its activities bleed into the rest of the house.

The cupcakes ended up looking like a green, white, aqua and purple mess of icing, but I was told they were delish. The brownies … well … they came out REALLY fudgy. I’m hoping to try that again… with a more solid (i.e. darker) chocolate.

Today’s menu:
potatoes au gratin
churrasco (complete with chimichurri
fried amarillitos

Tomorrow?
More fried amarillitos, ‘cuz GAWD! mom gave me one too many plantains :-\