Saturday was wonderful--I went into New York and took in a matinee performance of Jude Law as Hamlet on Broadway (excellent, and not just because it was Jude Law). I then made it back to Princeton for an tasty fall dinner with friends (acorn squash!), and got over to my fellow Oregon fan's room at the Old Graduate College to catch the second half and two overtimes of the incredible Duck victory over Arizona. Memo to Arizona fans: don't rush the field before the game actually ends. Civil War, here we come! We celebrated by watching the contraband video "I Love My Ducks" and then I moved down to the D-Bar in the basement to catch the second set of the Turkish rock band from New Brunswick, Istavrit Istanbul. Made me wish I was in the City of Seven Hills right now...
High on Ducks and Turkey, I got home and realized that a different kind of fowl awaited me. This Turkey was the main course for the Woodrow Wilson School Thanksgiving Potluck and I had volunteered to cook it for the next day's festivities. The 21-pounder had been dropped off at my house around noon...completely frozen. Thank you, Butterball. I did not know at the time they have a hotline, but I do know my way around Google pretty well. Search: how to thaw a turkey asap! Naive little me. It takes 5 hours PER POUND to thaw a turkey in the refrigerator, and here I was, a mere 15 hours from serving time with a rock of turkey ice on my hands. Leaving it out on the counter is bad for the quality of the meat, and you cannot just stick the thing in water overnight and go to bed while it warms up. Oh no. You have to CIRCULATE the water EVERY HALF HOUR, gradually warming the temperature to help thawing progress and prevent the growth of bacteria. Joy of joys. The Office and 30 Rock kept me up for one hour, then I started cheating a little. I would nap for 45 minutes, then circulate the water. I eventually pried out the bag of innards, wrenched the frozen neck from the inside of the big cavity, and Hallelujah, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition--by 8 am, the thing was ready to be dressed by a very tired yours truly.
Dump a little celery, carrots, parsley and onion in the cavity, spices and herbs and garlic all over, and put that turkey in the oven. You only need to adjust the temperature and baste every couple hours (and in between bastings, I took a nap--and had a group meeting for a school project). In the end, voila! That bird came out so pretty! I'm sure I have a picture, which I will share eventually. Greeted by cheers in the Robertson basement, the turkey was demolished by several scores of hungry graduate students. Nothing left but bones!
The juices in the pan also made for an excellent gravy and the grease that accidentally spilled in the bottom of the oven made for--a week later--a not-so excellent grease fire. This evening, as one of the roommates was preheating the oven for her dinner, smoke started pouring out of the oven. Flames in the oven pan quickly followed. Whoops. Forgot to run the self-clean feature. Google will tell you that water will NOT help put out a grease fire, and this was useful information. However, the fire could not be contained by the pot lid, which was the other suggestion. 9-1-1 it was, and oh, the turnout was huge. By the time the four police cars (Public Safety, Princeton Police...), two police SUVs, two fire engines, and a facilities van had arrived, the smoke alarm had stopped beeping, and the fire had put itself out. Disaster averted. The cops and firemen were very nice...let's hope they are equally as nice if they get called to quiet us down at my roommate's birthday party this Friday...
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Good morning, Vietnam!
After the longest flight of my life, and a debriefing from our professor after an evening arrival at the hotel, exploration of Hanoi had to be postponed until Sunday. Too tired to go out on the town, I reveled in the luxury of the Hotel Moevenpick, which as their tagline suggests is “Passionately Swiss”. While I have never heard those two words together in the same sentence, I now define it as:
1. Having very comfortable pillows and beds, perfect for relaxing on as I finished editing a fellowship essay
2. Having a strangely un-private bathroom: one wall of the rainforest shower is a glass window into the bedroom, and the shades can only be controlled from the outside. Kinda weird.
3. Having delicious room service! First bowl of authentic Vietnamese pho: check! So you understand how good it is, I’ve included a pho-to (haha, get it?)
Getting out of the hotel in the morning was even more exciting than pho...my first time in Asia non-Minor! The first thing you have to adjust to in Vietnam is the extraordinary numbers of motorbikes that weave in and out of Hanoi traffic. The only rule they follow is that they go where they want, and any time you want to cross the street, you just have to take a deep breath and go for it. Sudden movements are a bad idea. As our professor told us from her day of experience: walk with a "measured gait" so they can swerve around you—which they usually do pretty effectively.
These motorbikes carry Vietnamese professionals on their way to work, young couples out for the day, entire families, decorative items, or furniture stacked high on the back…and almost every individual on a bike is (unbelievably) wearing a helmet. I was told the government recently instituted a law requiring helmet use, and once the law went into effect, behavior changed overnight. Credit it to a good public education campaign (the fee is more expensive than buying a helmet!), a government with the authority to make things happen, or the fact that helmets come in so many styles and colors they become a fashion statement of coolness…whatever it was, it worked. The next step would be encouraging people to actually straps on the helmets-—Burberry patterns aren’t magically protective if the helmet flies off your head in an accident.
We managed to safely dodge all the bikes on our walk from the Moevenpick to Hoan Kiem Lake, and took in the peacefulness of the temple on the lake before diving into the bustling streets of the old quarter. Women in the traditional cone hats look like giant scales of justice as they tote their wares on platters hanging from the ends of bamboo poles—you decide if the dragonfruit or the pollution masks look more deserving of your attention and a few thousand dong (it’s the currency…and no, Princeton students aren’t all that mature so yes, we’ve made plenty of jokes about this).
In need of sustenance, I opted for an early lunch—more pho! It’s a chopstick challenge, but it’s worth the effort—and it sounded better than fried roodles:
After lunch, Maura and I took what we thought would be a quick detour into a salon for a bikini wax. Rather than take the standard 20 minutes, we were in there for over an hour and a half, as the ladies waxing were painstakingly thorough—with an emphasis on the pain. Ready for a more enjoyable experience, we meandered over to a market, where we decided the Vietnamese are no longer Communist. Knock-off Converse, North Face, designer jeans, and plenty of non-essential crap were available in abundance. We did find something we wanted at the fabric vendor stalls though, and bought some beautiful patterned silk to take to a dressmaker. But by now, the jet lag was kicking in, and I was in need of a nap. Taxi back to the hotel, and I collapsed on the feather-soft pillows of the Moevenpick and was instantly asleep.
Three hours later, I groggily awoke to realize I needed to get ready for dinner. Our first meeting of the trip was with a WWS alumnus who is now the Clinton Foundation’s country director in Vietnam, working on environmental and waste initiatives. Benny took us to a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant, where we gorged on spring rolls, various meats, leafy veggies, and plenty of rice while swapping stories of the beloved Woo. Benny wanted to take us out, but we begged off until another night—too many meetings tomorrow and way too tired.
1. Having very comfortable pillows and beds, perfect for relaxing on as I finished editing a fellowship essay
2. Having a strangely un-private bathroom: one wall of the rainforest shower is a glass window into the bedroom, and the shades can only be controlled from the outside. Kinda weird.
3. Having delicious room service! First bowl of authentic Vietnamese pho: check! So you understand how good it is, I’ve included a pho-to (haha, get it?)
Getting out of the hotel in the morning was even more exciting than pho...my first time in Asia non-Minor! The first thing you have to adjust to in Vietnam is the extraordinary numbers of motorbikes that weave in and out of Hanoi traffic. The only rule they follow is that they go where they want, and any time you want to cross the street, you just have to take a deep breath and go for it. Sudden movements are a bad idea. As our professor told us from her day of experience: walk with a "measured gait" so they can swerve around you—which they usually do pretty effectively.
These motorbikes carry Vietnamese professionals on their way to work, young couples out for the day, entire families, decorative items, or furniture stacked high on the back…and almost every individual on a bike is (unbelievably) wearing a helmet. I was told the government recently instituted a law requiring helmet use, and once the law went into effect, behavior changed overnight. Credit it to a good public education campaign (the fee is more expensive than buying a helmet!), a government with the authority to make things happen, or the fact that helmets come in so many styles and colors they become a fashion statement of coolness…whatever it was, it worked. The next step would be encouraging people to actually straps on the helmets-—Burberry patterns aren’t magically protective if the helmet flies off your head in an accident.
We managed to safely dodge all the bikes on our walk from the Moevenpick to Hoan Kiem Lake, and took in the peacefulness of the temple on the lake before diving into the bustling streets of the old quarter. Women in the traditional cone hats look like giant scales of justice as they tote their wares on platters hanging from the ends of bamboo poles—you decide if the dragonfruit or the pollution masks look more deserving of your attention and a few thousand dong (it’s the currency…and no, Princeton students aren’t all that mature so yes, we’ve made plenty of jokes about this).
In need of sustenance, I opted for an early lunch—more pho! It’s a chopstick challenge, but it’s worth the effort—and it sounded better than fried roodles:
After lunch, Maura and I took what we thought would be a quick detour into a salon for a bikini wax. Rather than take the standard 20 minutes, we were in there for over an hour and a half, as the ladies waxing were painstakingly thorough—with an emphasis on the pain. Ready for a more enjoyable experience, we meandered over to a market, where we decided the Vietnamese are no longer Communist. Knock-off Converse, North Face, designer jeans, and plenty of non-essential crap were available in abundance. We did find something we wanted at the fabric vendor stalls though, and bought some beautiful patterned silk to take to a dressmaker. But by now, the jet lag was kicking in, and I was in need of a nap. Taxi back to the hotel, and I collapsed on the feather-soft pillows of the Moevenpick and was instantly asleep.
Three hours later, I groggily awoke to realize I needed to get ready for dinner. Our first meeting of the trip was with a WWS alumnus who is now the Clinton Foundation’s country director in Vietnam, working on environmental and waste initiatives. Benny took us to a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant, where we gorged on spring rolls, various meats, leafy veggies, and plenty of rice while swapping stories of the beloved Woo. Benny wanted to take us out, but we begged off until another night—too many meetings tomorrow and way too tired.
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