very full Wednesday

Okay, want to know the reason I went so long without blogging?

Here’s the thing: Amy (who had been my immediate supervisor at work, the person who gave me all my training, the person who knew how to do everything, and also a cool person who ended up being my friend and whose travels through Europe- prior to heading to school to get an MBA- I am eagerly following) left. And I got her job. Whoo, promotion. Exceeeeeeeept… no one got my job. For three months.

So one me… one new job… plus one old job no one else was doing.

Plus participating for the first time in a new summer program which is generally really exciting- your tax dollars at work!- but a sh** ton of work in terms of administration, paperwork, training, site visits, etc., with a new leadership reorganization that makes me want to staple said paperwork to my face when I think about it too much.

Plus generally not knowing at all what to do with my life- more classes to move me towards my RD/MPH goal? Finally FINALLY move out of my childhood home and live as an independent adult? But with who? And gosh I’m stressed out so I think I’ll eat 100 cookies to help- etc. etc.

But… I’m dealing. My old job FINALLY got replaced with someone who is fantastic- sweet, conscientious, a quick learner. And everything else, I’m making it up as I go.

So here’s the day we had a work celebration saying farewell to Amy! Er, three months ago. I’ll also add that the director of our department just had a super awesome and cute baby last weekend. So we were celebrating that, a little, and also being all “Eesh, more stuff to do with Kendra gone!”

But hurray for working with good people, and hurray for deviled eggs.

 

In general work events, perhaps unsurprisingly when you remember I work at an organization with “Food” in its title, are kind of ridiculous.

Really surprisingly healthy too, minus the Doritos :) Mmm.

Kendra had a dope new patio, and her exceedingly nice husband grilled everything for us.

Mmm. 

More mmm.

Oooh, Michael’s cheesy thing just came out of the oven, mm!

Aww…

   

Lest you think I hadn’t had enough tables overflowing with food that day, I then had a family event! Two of my great aunts (who I may have never met?) were visiting my other beloved great aunt Rose, and she had a shindig to get the family together. It was in Silver Spring at night (an hour and a half during rush hour, eesh, but we love our family so!) held in the super nice clubhouse-type-space at the Leisure World where aunt Rose lives.

Sometimes Dena remembers she is a really good photographer and demands that we pose for family pictures at these events.

Aunt Rose looks great but the rest of us do kind of the Chandler Bing smile in front of cameras.

Anyway, the table was a tasty mix of stuff made by family and things catered by a great Greek restaurant nearby.

 

Legit Greek salad! No lettuce!

 

My oh-so-yummy plate. Freed from the tyranny of having to choose between spinach pie and squash pie.

So fun catching up with family. Also met new cousins who shared how their family had dealt with their first threat of a tornado after moving East from California (climbing into the bathtub wearing bike helmets… to me, this seems very practical).

Obligatory dessert. On the left was a Macedonian variation on Baklava that was somehow… wetter? Good stuff.

If your days are going to be crammed with huge amounts of work they might as well be crammed with huge amounts of food, eh?

the young professional

SURPRISE. (Part of) the reason I’ve been so disengaged from bloggage lately was that in addition to finishing up classes for the semester, I was also… interviewing for a big girl job! Amy is leaving (sob sob sob) but for an awesome reason (MBA!) and thus vacating the full time position (we actually technically held the same job apparently, which made the whole promotion process less complicated, but hers was full time and mine was part time).

Anyway, following a frankly slightly peculiar series of events (a “talk” which was actually apparently a “pre-interview” and then an “informal interview” and also a chance to “assess [my] personality”—my response to that? “Uh oh!”. And then after that the “official interview” which was with two people who aren’t my supervisors… Weird), I was offered the job.

A big girl job! Full time! BENEFITS! Holy cow guys, I have DENTAL. I also have possibly income to leave the nest (the entire college graduating classes of 2008-2011 are all hating me for this, I’m sure).

To celebrate, my awesome boyfriend gave me several awesome things.

This:

These:

(As a huge West Side Story Geek, the fact that I have the option to check off “someday”, “somehow” and “somewhere” makes me ecstatic)

 

And these (already gone :D)

My last part-time week I actually should’ve had Friday off, but went in for a birthday celebration for two of my coworkers and man, all I can say is that it’s fitting that these people work for  a place with “Food” in its title.

I mean really.

Hordes eating, along with David’s life altering mac and cheese (you may remember it from our inter-office competition).

For me, though, the highlight of the eats (and a wonderfully educating experience) was watching Beysith make authentic Venezuelan arepas.

You begin with mixing water into masa harina. Bottled water is not necessary; we just don’t have a sink in our entire building except for in the bathrooms, which is just kind of gross. So she used a bottle.

 

She mixed until it looked right for her (thinner than I thought it would be), and stirred it sort of by using her hand as a spatula; going around the perimeter.

At that point she grabbed kind of baseball-sized handfuls of the dough…

And made them into absolutely PERFECT flying saucers.

She dipped her hands in water to do that; then dipped her hands in oil to give them a sheer outer coating

At which point they went onto a hot griddle to cook til golden on both sides.

   

Then she split them and put on queso, crema….

… y frijoles! Wonderful homemade black beans.

To. Die. For.

My contribution to the festivities was in the dessert department: a chocolate peanut butter pie.

Choco layer, a slightly weird variation on my aunt Dena’s fudge pie (I was trying to use up semisweet chocolate and it calls for unsweetened; it was my own fault).

 

And on top, peanut butter custard, made from Bird’s custard powder with some peanut butter mixed in.

People seemed to like it but it paled in comparison to Adrienne’s STUNNING raspberry truffle cake.

Layer upon layer of chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, raspberry puree; and absolutely delectable raspberry buttercream icing.

It was a sweet (get it, get it?!) way to celebrate some great colleagues, and a kickoff to some serious excitement in my life! Hope to post more soon.

highs and lows and hunger in America

I am on my Spring Break. I am also on my couch. God bless Spring Break. (I do still have to go to work. But then I get to go home after.)

Last week’s highs:

At church yesterday, I held a baby. A cute, warm, good smelling baby. As I sang in the choir. Then she fell asleep in my arms. So. awesome.

On gorgeous sunny Saturday, Steve and I parked at Gravelly Point and strolled all over DC. We walked back to Virginia over Memorial Bridge (the bridge directly next to the Lincoln… Memorial, thus the name) and I discovered an astonishingly gorgeous stretch of grass, trees, and blooming daffodils between lanes of traffic. We walked in the balmy weather as the sun set. It was the best.

In my chem class, the professor couldn’t get the overhead projector to work. He gave it a look and kind of wiggled his fingers. I said to my friend, “He looks like he’s doing a Jedi mind trick”. My friend, not missing a beat, wiggled his fingers and went, “Those aren’t the chemical equations you’re looking for.” Humor in chem class is very very necessary.

Last week’s lows:

Getting talked down to. In work and academic situations. Even if I were stupid, would you increase my productivity or learning by treating me like a stupid person?

Enough about that.

Here’s something AWESOME that I got to do through work:

 

There is something called the Hunger Free Communities Network that does… many awesome things.

Including assembling us in the hunger-fighting business do to some learnin’ from each other. Working in rural areas, working in urban areas, working with specific populations, utilizing specific federal programs, coordinating with other nonprofits, collecting good data, etc. etc.

It was at a lovely downtown hotel in a room filled with super cool people.

And there was a BREAKFAST BUFFET, oh joy!

A scrambled egg, cheerios and flavored yogurt parfait (I used to snarf those down in college… I miss flavored yogurt… it’s just too Frankenfoody and unethically sourced for me to eat now; sad), and enough EXPENSIVE BERRIES TO FILL UP MY BELLY! I love love love buffets. I never eat enough berries to leave me truly happy. I love berries. I should really grow them.

We had a nice introductory session, where various current and former politicians reminded us (this is a direct quote): “Most members of Congress are caring human beings”.

Hahahahaha.

And then it was breakout session time. I went to one that discussed data (because I am a thrill a minute) but it really WAS thrilling because it ended up starring my new HERO. Mariana Chilton. Director of Center for Hunger Free Communities.

Awesome things Center for Hunger Free Communities does:

-Pushes for food insecurity screenings in hospitals.

In a nutshell, this captures the most vulnerable people when they’re in a crisis situation: in a hospital, either because they lack health insurance, because they or their child has had a medical emergency. Perhaps they deal with issues of domestic violence (the incidence of which increases in households that are food insecure). The idea is that these people, in crisis, are asked by the doctor/nurse/health professional who admits them, whether or not they are in a state of food insecurity (a lot of the time, proxy measures are used: for example, you might ask, “Did you have to choose between buying food and paying rent this month? Or between buying food and paying for medicine?”) Last year, I thought all the time how our kids were definitely in need (they were low-income to qualify for our program, and they received food bank meals every day after school, AND they took home food for the weekend), but that in some ways they were the lucky ones, whose parents were on top of it enough to put them in an afterschool enrichment program. When you’re screening in a hospital, you’re catching the most vulnerable people you might not catch anywhere else. If you’re interested, you can read more about it here: Children's Healthwatch

- Documents hunger from the perspective of actual hungry people

Rather than a bunch of people like me who have (blessedly) never faced food insecurity, why not hear about it from the people who have? See the real environment and real challenges. Here: Witnesses to Hunger

-Combines nutrition and public health research

As someone who’s obsessed with both (and hopes, maybe, someday, to have my name followed with RD/MPH), I was hugely inspired by Mariana Chilton’s research. The latest of their organization’s impressive reports demonstrates (I’m talking to you, Newt Gingrich) that feeding the hungry, along with being the morally right thing to do, also reduces health care costs. You can read it here: The SNAP vaccine

(FYI, this jargon is really familiar to me, working at a food bank, but SNAP stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. In general, if any of these subjects interest you, please get in touch! They’re what I deal with at work every day and what I’m passionate about. Drop me a line at lelelurvesplants@gmail.com)

On a less deep note, I was super excited for lunch. My supervisor, Amy, had gone the previous year and spoke highly of the food.

I was immediately excited to see iced tea at every seat. I love free iced tea so much.

 

They made a big hoopla of asking who was vegetarian/kosher/gluten free and put stickers on our name tags… and then it was a buffet?

Silly.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed my mound of Caesar salad, roll, assorted roasted veggies (Amy and I spent an amusing amount of time speculating which veggies), potatoes, a giant vegan butternut squash ravioli with eggplant tomato sauce…

… and there were mini Crumbs cupcakes! Hugely exciting.

But then I hadn’t had a chocolate one.. and they were so small… and also so good.

The nonprofit world is so female. (Single dudes,, you are really missing out on an opportunity. Start volunteering!). We spent a long period of time at lunch chatting about cupcakes. And having to go to the bathroom a lot. And weddings. In retrospect, it was kind of embarrassing.

Breakout session #2 was a bit less awesome, just because getting food to kids in after school programs (what I do, under a federal program called CACFP) is a bit complicated. Do you send prepackaged meals? Do you do a vendor? Etc. etc. etc.

The day concluded with a candlelit, atmospheric gathering that involved chocolate fondue (!)

 

Random roast turkey (?)

 

Passed appetizers (this was a fried artichoke that was surprisingly just okay)

 

And an open bar!

While a speaker discussed a conference I lack the funds to attend, I tried my first Cosmopolitan. I did not like it, and was glad it was free.