Some recipes, as requested by Alice and Summer:

Pickles (Try these, even if you don't like bread and butter pickles, you might like them. I made them for the first time today and they are amazing!)

10 pickling cucumbers
1 large onion
2 green bell peppers (I like to use 1 green and 1 red for color)
5 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup salt

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp celery seed
1 Tbs mustard seed

First you need to sterilize the jars that you will be using. Do this by leaving them in boiling water for a few minutes.

Then, Cut the cucumbers in thin slices and slice the onions. Chop the garlic and the bell peppers. Don't chop the peppers too small because they taste really good after pickling!
Mix everything together in a large mixing bowl and add the salt. It seems like a lot of salt but it drains the cucumbers of all their water leaving them extra cruchy. Add ice cubes or crushed ice to the mixture, I think this makes the cukes cruchier as well. Let the mixture sit for three hours.

After three hours, drain mixture. Then rinse with water (because the pickles will be really salty if you don't!) and drain again.

In a large saucepan, mix together the vinegar, sugar, tumeric, celery seed, and mustard seed. bring to a boil. Once it boils, turn off the heat and add the cucumber/vegetable mix into the sauce pan. Mix everything together. Pack the cukes and veggies into the jars and then ladel in the liquid. Seal the jar and chill in the fridge. Place the jars upside down so that the pickles are soaking in the juice and as you eat the pickles, the juice will soak the pickles at the bottom. You can either store the pickles in the fridge for a month or months or eat them instantly!

Empanada dough (I learned this recipe while working at a pizzeria/empanaderia in Chile)

4 cups flour
3/4 cups vegetable oil
1/4 margerine/butter
1 cup water
1 tsp salt

Mix everything together, knead it with your hands, add more flour or oil if it is to sticky or not stretchy enough. Roll out until dough is very thin, less than one cm. use a bowl to trace out circles with your knife.

And if you are not a vegetarian, you should try making empanadas de pino. These are the empanadas we made at the Pizzeria and they are very good.

Filling:

1/2 pound ground meat
chopped onions. You want to chop a lot of onions so that you have at least twice as many onions as meat.

First, fry the onions until they are translucent. Then move them to a large mixing bowl. Add Sugar, cayanne pepper, black pepper, parsley flakes, cumin, salt. Add a lot of each of these spices

Stav: I Feel It All

"to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free"

This song is so good for dancing.


Take care,
love,
Stav.

Leslie: Mumbles from the National Gallery

This is an excerpt, beyond the Stav poem, from my travels earlier this semester. I hadn't gone back through and read it until just now. Since no one had really written about art, I thought I'd include it, a wider glimpse into the strange mind that makes its home in my body. 

At the National Gallery of Art again in my own universe. A heaven. I am my own best friend. Wearing clothes I wore all day yesterday and through the night, yet I feel fresh. Fresh in the middle of a traveler's high. Headphones on again in an art museum, one of my favorite things to do. Like being in Prof. Mary Brantl's class at good ol' StEdwards. Yes. One word, StEdwards. With other people I find museums boring. Maybe it's because I can't get lost. I have to be WITH them, out of my little space. Here I am, alone in D.C feelin' warm again.
In front of me are two paintings, one familiar the other new to me, but familiar. Thank you Mary Brantl, Modigliani and his Nude on Blue Cushion from 1917 with her coy and confindent gaze. The rather ugly maroon tone over the background would bore me if it weren't for that gaze of hers. Big tits with sizeable aereolas, just like mine. She seems to be telling me with that face, "go on, be proud of your curvy, healthy frame". Ok I say.

Aaaand here she is. Aereolas and all. 

I'm not going to say he's my favorite artist but I love what Toulouse Lautrec does. In 1897, or something like that, he uses oil on cardboard! That badass Toulousse LauTrec.

 Who says you need to be painting on canvas to be high art? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle indeed. These cardboard works of his always leave some memory of happening with me. The man in a white sport coat stands with his back to me, painted in what seems like a split second, but gracefully done. His lady friend, almost grotesque, leers at someone, maybe me or this flash camera little girl beside me. The leering lady, a little ugly and full of life. I love it. 

Little girl with windup disposable camera taking pictures of paintings. Just for the joy of doing so. These paintings inspire me to do more cardboard art. Such texture, such "fuck it-ness". 

Hm. This is the Chester Dale portion of the gallert...Whoever this Chester Dale guy is, he was loaded. What did he do? How is there someone with so much money? 

ha ha ha ha ha. Stream of Consciousness indeed, eh? If you don't engage in this type of writing I highly encourage you to do so. It really pulls out the creativity and rawness that we all possess. Thanks for reading and I love you all! 

Stav: Double Standard

I've been spending an increasing amount of time in coffee shops working on stuff (or not) and have noticed the following trend: when you order just a cup of house coffee which usually costs between 1 and 2 dollars, and then you take out the ol' credit card to pay for it, a lot of the time, the person at the counter will just give it to you for free. I assume this is because it costs more money for the coffee shop to pay the credit card companies etc... then the buck fifty that the coffee is actually worth. This happened to me again not 20 minutes ago. I came home to enlighten my housemates (all male) about this new discovery. When I told them what had just happened they responded with "THAT NEVER HAPPENS TO GUYS!" In conclusion: girls, we have to start insisting on paying for our coffee! This double standard shall not stand!

With sisterhood solidarity,
take care,
stav.

Leslie: A Poem for Stav

During my two day train expedition from Miami to D.C to Ann Arbor, Michigan I had such expansive time to think and oh how I reveled in it. Getting onto that train gave me a two day drug-free high. It was just me, the gently rocking train, and other travelers circling about me, coloring my journey. My favorite memory of being on the Amtrak is simple: me sitting in the cafe car gazing at the moving scenery, coffee in hand, typing, typing, and typing whatever was to come my mind's way. I looked through my sentimental mind and recalled all my beautiful friends throughout the 6 years I lived at Pearl. Very naturally I thought of you, Stav and how much you brought to my life, in a very subtle, gauzy sort of way. This is not to say that I haven't poems for the other patrons of this blog whom I lived with my dear Summer, Claire, Andrea, and Chett...I really cannot explain why I found myself writing a poem to Stav, I just felt all lovey and happy on that train and wanted to share it. So here is the very poem I wrote, stream-of-conciousness, unedited and raw. *a bit of an aside first, in this ditty, I refer to Stav winning something and I cannot now remember exactly what that was, but I remember the big feeling of pride for you. ha ha ha. Ah, typical me. Enjoy.




I write to all my kindreds, but this one's for you , my Stav 
I want to remember your spirit forever
Crowned Freshman of the Year...which year was that anyhow? 
scrawling Bob Dylan into the wooden chair on our smoking, talking balcony 
Your long, honey brown hair wavy 
getting in your face 
your big glasses 
and only you-ness
I love you, friend, for I'll never know anyone like you 
Pete Seeger, Townes, Kinks on shuffle never cease to draw happy in-motion images of you 
To hold onto you riding your bike into the Pearl dining room, long hair about your face 
cool vest-wearing, my friend Stav 
mutually loathing Dallas, but maybe that's the town that made us cool? 
Your Lesbe, giving me some of the most legendary best friendship hugs of all time 
There was a contest and you won
I'm so proud of you 
a beautiful sister I never had 

Stav, pretending to be Chett. <3

Leslie: To Stymie or Not to Stymie

Sorry I've been MIA on this here glorious blog....no excuses really just had cases, yes many cases, of writer's block. Someone really ought to find a cure for that.

My purpose today is to promote the use of this amazing word, stymie. I was listening to All Things Considered(ahem) on my way home from babysitting my nephews the other evening and heard it. I've heard it and read it before but never appreciated it. I think Barack Obama used it to discuss this past week's election results that will further stymie his political goals. Poor guy. I've been trying to use this word whenever I can, sneaking it in while dancing it up at bars with old Dallas pals. Like last night we went to this supposed hardcore Hip-Hop bar called, The Slip Inn and I declared, while looking as bored as possible, "This Top 40 dance mix is really stymie-ing my efforts to "drop it like it's hot" to hard core gangsta rap." 

Yeah. 

So are you with me on promoting the use of this oft-forgotten word? 

Love, 

Les

Claire: part of a dialogue with a student

So glad to hear from Summer and Stav! This is just a quick entry that I'm copying and pasting before I crash into my bed. I'm poo poo pooped! I envision a thoughtful entry in the very near future........... 

----

its yust a soundtrack
and i understand not anything
but i what the lyriks are, everything!!!
=)

it is a joke for the movie 
but i think the song shows us the situation of oure (the amercan) musik buissnis :
the woman should be very sexy and she should say horny thing an so on. ist a musikbuiniss fore stupid people. but the problem is that the most people are stupid. so you have to make this musik to become famous.... its so stupid 
but its funny ^^

Stav: Back From a Long Sabatical

Hello all! Thank you for still being here when I decided it was time to check le blogue after maybe a month and a half. You guys are the best...

So, not much has changed since my last posting. I'm starting (eek!) my tenuous journey down the long road of graduate school applications. Currently working on my personal statement. I'm having a horrible time writing it. I know what I want to say regarding why I want to pursue graduate studies etc... but I don't know how to put it all together in a convenient narrative form. Bleh. If anyone has any advice, it would be appreciated :)

At the end of September I reached the ripe old age of 22! Alright! The event was celebrated with a medium-sized party at poquito hut. The theme was beer and cake. Funny story. I haven't thrown a party since I was 16 years old. I don't know why I wanted to do it this year, maybe because I'm finally living in a house with a porch. Anyway, on the Tuesday before the Saturday I decided it was time to call all the people I know (still living in Austin that is... wish you could have been there, and thank you to those who came) because I am afraid of making facebook events for nebulous reasons probably tied to my various neuroses associated with social networking websites. As I was calling the 20 or so people I wanted to invite a common conversational trope arose that sounded a little something like this:

Stav: Hi [friend], what are you doing this Saturday evening?
Friend: Um, I don't know. Why? What's up?
S: Well, I'm having a medium sized beer-and-cake party for my birthday and wanted to invite you.
F: Oh! cool, yeah, I'll come.
S: Great.
F: Is it on Face Book?
S: Err... No.

Which is why I eventually gave in and put it online. It wasn't hard. It was easy. It was helpful. IT'S OK TO PUT YOUR SHIT ONLINE (as I post details about my personal life on a public blog... ugh... see what I mean... but I digress). Anyway, when it was finally time for the party I got really nervous that people wouldn't show up. Then some people did show up between those purgatory party hours of 9:30 to 10:30. I put on some Fats Waller because I think 1940s jazz means partying as much as the next girl and set up a table on which to put the three different types of cake available. Then...everyone sat on couches, listened to music and talked quietly. It was turning into a sit on couches and talk quietly party!!! Nooo!!! Also since most of my close friends are women, at this point the people at my party were 8 of my girlfriends and one of their boyfriends. Awkward. Next to my stereo, there was a table laden with cake (with candles!), candy, and milk (provided by a thoughtful friend as a substitute to alcohol). Since all the beer was in the fridge, the party looked like a 12 year old's party. I started pacing the house, took out the recycling, and drank 3 beers in 20 minutes. I was so anxious I started breaking out in hives. This is funny in retrospect. Please imagine me frantically running around the house, kindof tipsy and very nervous. Really, very funny. In that Woody Allen kind of way that I love. The evening ended up being a success, but success isn't as entertaining as fumbling around.

Jeez. That was along anecdote.

Take care,
Stav.

Summer: KALIMA Shuck-ti-day...?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

It’s been a while ladies!

Early this week (last Sunday) my sister called me with an urgent request—my address!  Alright, whatever.  So, she calls me in the middle of the week demanding that I go to my mailbox.  At 11:30pm I remember that I need to go pick up that package or else risk the wrath of my sister, even though she is a few hundred miles away.  I grew up in fear, clearly.

This is what happened.

I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture—ie me in full regalia.  But, since I suck at taking pictures, this is what I found on someone’s facebook.  Yes, I am a RAINBOW FISH!  That mysterious package from my sister contained that wacked out hat, the glittery purple glasses (which provided UV protection, thank you very much) and the even more random pink, feathery boa.  Needless to say, I hung out at Goodwill and found a fantastic hand-crocheted teacher vest—in fiesta colors!  My skirt was made from wrapping paper (some people thought I was some sort of present). 

Anyway, I had a pretty good time at some med school-ish party.  There was nearly not enough dancing, but I danced with my friend Lilian anyway.  By the way—she is the Ninja Turtle.  My mom sewed that costume some 12 years ago.  Lilian was able to fit in the whole thing—including the one-sie jump suit!

So, this Halloween (and my secretly horrible addiction to Glee) brought me upon Rocky Horror.  So, I want everyone to get up, sing, and do the TIME WARP!!!!

This brings me back to Pearl St. Drag Parties!  LEROY!!  I mostly remember Tim on the floor to the meat-fridge in a floral print dress that, I think, belonged to Jenn's (Fey) mom.  This was pre-Tim&Jenn.  And, somehow four of us (unnamed individuals) tried a four way kiss.  Thank god that didn't pan out!  Those were the days!

In other news.  This is what we did in anatomy lab this past Thursday.

Yes, we took out the heart.  YES, it was absolutely AMAZING!  No, it is not as big as your fist…it is BIGGER!  Well, ours was.

Anywho,  I am well and I hope everyone else is TOO!

We need more posts.  Thank god for Claire--she is the SOUL of our blog.

Oh, and I would love to go camping over winter break sometime if anyone is interested!

Love you all,

Summer

(Claire) Bad music: the good kind