Good Day!

Howdy howdy. Sooo busy this week! I am balancing cleaning my apartment with attempting to put together a plan for summer and fall, attending fun graduation events, finishing up some important work, spending time with friends, doing lots of fun new york stuff, catching the series premiere of Glee last night! (Who doesn't love Jane Lynch? She is so amazing. I hope the show is a lot about her.)

Today, I get my degree! And a certificate in international law, which is kind of less useful now that I'm pretty sure I don't want to do international law, but at least I've got that as a little feather in my cap since there are no real "majors" in law school. There was a graduation this morning for everyone who attends Columbia, which I skipped since my family's not here and it sounded kind of boring. My fam gets in tonight in time for dinner at my favorite greasy Chinese place.

ALSO today I found out that I have been offered a totally awesome job for fall in Boston, which is great but kind of confusing because I reallyreally want to go to San Francisco but I'm not sure I'll hear from SF jobs before tomorrow when I have to respond to this offer. OH HARD CHOICES WITH INADEQUATE INFORMATION. It makes me a little nuts, but at least I know for sure that I have at least one really good option available. I will have work!

And then I made black eyed pea and quinoa croquettes from Vegan with a Vengeance. Because I cooked the peas and the quinoa yesterday and couldn't really think of when I'd make them if I didn't do it this morning.
These are made just like veggie burgers, by mashing beans and grains together, adding some spices, and dredging them in breadcrumbs. Then they're baked for 40 mins, but they could also be fried and might be better that way because of the added richness and crunch from frying.

They were . . . meh. I didn't have the dried basil or the paprika that they called for, so I subbed in rosemary and a dash of cayenne along with the thyme, soy sauce, and olive oil. They were just kind of too spicy, in the sense of too many competing flavors. And the recipe calls for serving them with a sort of mushroom gravy, but I don't like mushrooms. I tried one dry to try to figure out what I'd want to dip them in, and settled on marinara sauce (Newman's own roasted tomato). This was a reasonably good combo, but I want to play around with this recipe and try to make it into something I actually really like. I just love croquettes and I love the idea of making them with beans instead of salmon or tuna.

And, since I probably won't have much to report for a couple of days since I'll be busy graduating, here's an old photo I just found on my computer: Pierre, the peep with a beret, courtesy of Jacques Torres. And that's my little brother there in the background on the left cultivating his internet addiction on my netbook.