Category Archives: Contemplation

Unexpected finds: deals at Eataly!

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For our extended family gathering on Saturday at Chris’s mom’s cousin’s place, I originally had planned to make a mango tiramisu to bring over. Unfortunately, the two places walking distance from us were no longer selling ladyfingers, so I had to go with a Plan B option pretty quickly based on my pantry. And because my pantry is pretty well stocked, I had a lot of potential options. But I stuck with my mango theme and ended up making mango lassi butter mochi cake from one of my favorite food bloggers Milk and Cardamom, and it was a huge hit. Since I had to open a large can of kesar mango pulp, I had a lot of pulp leftover. I had already purchased the heavy whipping cream and mascarpone to make the tiramisu, and I didn’t really have the headspace to figure out how to repurpose them. So I decided that for Chris’s dad’s birthday coming up this Thursday that I would make my original dessert of mango tiramisu repurposed as his birthday cake. But that meant I had to find those damn ladyfingers.

Chris insisted I was overthinking it and told me just to buy them on Amazon. So I went on Amazon, found a decent brand from Italy, and purchased two 7 oz. packs of imported ladyfingers for… almost $20. Yes, I thought it was expensive, but I chocked it up to inflation. Chris saw the email receipt from Amazon and balked at the price, asking me why they were so expensive. I told him my rationale, and of course, he didn’t think it was enough. So he started doing searches on ladyfingers and somehow found out that Eataly right here in New York sold a 14 oz. pack of Italian ladyfingers for $7.99, so less than half of what I would have paid on Amazon. He cancelled my Amazon order, and yesterday, I went to Eataly Flatiron to check out the ladyfinger stocks.

I think the last time I stepped foot into an Eataly was pre-pandemic, so over six years ago. I have zero reason to go to Eataly because I usually get my Italian groceries from Little Italy in the Bronx, or at other Italian grocery/specialty stores. Eataly has always just been too packed and touristy for me to enjoy. I always hated going in there and feeling like a sardine; walking in there was never a comfortable experience. But walking in there today (at an off hour, obviously), I was pleasantly surprised. There were a few interesting sample stations set up to entice visitors to either order interesting new drinks or treats. There were also a good number of sales when it came to grocery items, whether it was cocoa-hazelnut spreads, Italian olive oils, pistachio cream spreads, and multiple types of Italian cookies. Then, I found the Eataly brand of ladyfingers, a 14-oz. bag, for even less than what Chris saw online — it was $6.49! So I ended up spending less than a third of what I would have spent if I had bought a similar product on Amazon. Who would have guessed that the cheapest ladyfingers I could find would be at Eataly of all places! I just assumed they would be more expensive there, but I was obviously very wrong. In addition, I picked up a jar of wild strawberry jam from an Italian brand that I hadn’t seen in years — also on sale!

Now that I had this positive experience at Eataly and saw so many interesting items on sale at pretty reasonable prices, I realize that I have more of a reason to occasionally pop in there to browse, especially since there is an Eataly in SoHo, not too far away from Kaia’s current school. So, maybe I will be more intentional about stopping in there when I am in the mood to browse Italian groceries. It’s always fun to find good deals on tasty things!

One seemingly little decision that paves a very different future — forever

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Today, I met up with a friend’s friend I met for the first time at a kid’s birthday party several weeks ago. We met at a coffee shop on the Upper West Side and talked about our backgrounds, work, kids, and families. This friend grew up in the Dominican Republic, but she is fluent not just in Spanish, but also in French (and English). Her two young daughters are at a French daycare and school. So I was curious to understand how she learned French, and then how she decided to have her daughters immersed in French language.

She said that her mom wanted her and her two younger siblings to learn English. But when her mom started looking into the schools, she found out that while the private American international school’s fees were extremely high, the private French international school was just a fraction of the cost. With this school, her children would learn not just English, but also French — at a massive discount! So it was a no brainer for her to send all three kids to the French school. That French K-12 led to all three kids moving to France to study and eventually work. This friend lives in New York now with her husband and two daughters, while her two siblings are still living and working in Paris and the south of France.

I wonder if her mom ever envisioned the future of her three kids not just being tri-lingual, but also moving quite far away from home and in their daily lives, speaking a different language than their native tongue. That one seemingly little decision changed her kids’ paths in life forever. It makes me wonder what Kaia’s young adulthood and adulthood will look like — merely because of seemingly small choices that Chris and I are making now.

Pre-recorded video interviews as the norm in today’s interview process

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For the last 22 years (including interviews during college), I have been used to having interviews conducted over the phone, video conferencing, and of course, in person. Back in 2020 when I was looking for jobs, presentations of various sorts were a given with the types of roles I considered. But alas, a lot has changed since 2020. Artificial Intelligence has taken over. Pretty much every tech company out there is either pushing an AI product, or at minimum, claims to have some product, which is then “powered by AI.”

So it shouldn’t have come as a shock when I was invited to interview with a company in the last week, and instead of being asked to have a recruiter phone/video screen, I was asked to do a pre-recorded video interview as the first step of the process. This is meant to streamline the screening process and to get a sense of how well I speak and present myself (especially given I am being considered for a customer-facing role, which would require these skills). In the brief email, they shared that I would be given three questions, with about one to two minutes to answer each question. If needed, I also had the option to re-take each answer once. Before I would start, I would be given the opportunity to test my microphone and video to ensure the audio/visual was working properly. In total, they said this should take me no more than five minutes of time to complete.

I did some research on the tool I’d be using. It seems like this is more “normal” now than it is not. Every organization on the face of the planet is looking to streamline their processes and become more efficient, and if a recruiter can review hundreds of candidates in five minute videos of each speaking versus thirty minutes, that’s cutting the time needed to interview by over 80 percent. Why would they not do this if they could and then focus on tasks that actually require direct human-to-human interaction? I guess these are the things I am learning now since I’ve been out of the habit of interviewing for almost six years now.

TIL that Cornell was built between two gorges

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When I was in high school listening to peers around me talking about how they would choose the colleges they’d apply to, one criteria inevitably always came up when it came to private schools out of state (of California): the beauty of the campus. This seems a little ridiculous when you think about it: when you are enrolled and going through the hell of midterms or final papers and exams, do you really think you will be meditating on how beautiful your chosen college campus is?! My college had a beautiful campus, and while I did appreciate the architectural details, the large green lawns, and the lake, these details were always lost when I was stressing about my studies.

However, for those I knew who applied to and went to Cornell, whether that was for undergrad or grad work, not a single person ever, ever told me that the campus was intentionally built between two gorges: the Fall Creek Gorge and the Cascadilla Gorge. There’s a huge waterfall and dam that runs through the middle of the campus. From certain hills on the campus, you can see sweeping views of Cayuga Lake, which is one of the eleven Finger Lakes (and one of the most well known, next to Seneca Lake). And the university actually utilizes the natural water flow through Fall Creek Gorge to power a hydroelectric plant, which generates a portion of the campus’s electricity. That’s quite impressive. Ezra Cornell, who designed the university, intentionally built it around the two gorges. I just found this to be such a unique and impressive story, one I had zero idea about before visiting the campus today. And it would be very good future trivia on American colleges and universities — and a point in favor of Cornell being on the top lists for “most beautiful college campuses.”

Although I will say that as soon as I knew there were gorges around the campus, plus the huge dam, my mind (and eyes) immediately started looking for suicide netting… which I quickly noticed. The nets are like the suicide net around the Golden Gate Bridge — meant to feel like slicing yourself through a cheese grater if you chose to jump into it. Where there is beauty, there can also be pain.

How long are we allowed to be kids?

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When we were getting ready to go to Kaia’s friend’s 4th birthday party in our building yesterday, out of nowhere, Kaia decided that she wanted to wear her cow costume (from Halloween two years ago, as it was oversized!) to the party. Originally, Chris was not a fan of this and insisted that she just wear regular clothes. But Kaia is stubborn (just like both of her parents), and she continued persisting that she really wanted to wear it. I thought about it for a minute and just told Chris that we should relent.

“We should just let her wear it,” I said to him. “She only has so much time when she can wear a costume like this when it will be considered ‘acceptable.'” Plus, she’s already slowly getting too long for this oversized costume, and she won’t be able to wear it soon anymore. So we should just let her get more wears and fun out of it as long as we can.

Of course, Kaia was thrilled. She insisted that the cow be fully zipped up, and that she even wear the cow “head” (the hood part). Knowing her, I had a feeling she’d last only a short time at the party with the outfit since it would get quite hot and stuffy, especially with so many people in the apartment. So predictably, the cow costume eventually came off. But of course, all the adults marveled at her cow costume initially. One of them even asked me, “So, is this her weekend outfit of choice?”

Kids can get away with so many things that adults could never get away with: making beelines and cutting people off for seats on public transportation; constantly angling for freebies at stories and restaurants; simply smiling and getting free candy from doormen in buildings; wearing single-piece full length costumes on just any average day. I love that about childhood, and I wish we could all learn to embrace it more. Childhood is finite — it will all come to an end, and then we will no longer be given grace on so many things. Well, I can’t really personally embrace it since I’m quite far from my childhood years, but I want to let Kaia embrace it for as long as possible. I want her to enjoy her childhood and not have her rush to become an adult. There’s so much fun and magic in childhood that gets lost when we focus too much on the future and “getting big.”

A sore left hip flexor, and when cortisol spikes in middle age due to slowing metabolism

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I only did one run this week on Wednesday, which isn’t normal for my weekly workout routine. I did my usual warm up, then as soon as the run was done, I could tell my left hip flexor was tight. Then annoyingly, it remained tight all day… through today. I’ve never had a tightness in my left hip flexor before. After weaning from breastfeeding and doing more high intensity runs back in 2023, I discovered tightness on the right side for the first time in my life. The amazing trainer at my gym gave me suggestions for strengthening exercises for my glutes, hamstrings, and hip flexor to prevent the tightness. In addition, I did more hip flexor stretches and incorporated a yoga session per week to increase mobility. That seemed to do the trick: I cannot remember the last time my right hip flexor was sore. But now, it seems my left hip flexor is crying out for help, asking, “Hey! Remember me! You need to help me, too!” Those exercises I did for my right side were also done on my left side, too. So this may just be a new weakness I’ve identified that may need to be addressed in a slightly different way.

Aging is a gift. Not everyone is lucky enough to see their next birthday, to live up to the age you or I am at. And I’ve embraced it with more confidence every year. But I will be honest: identifying these new changes in my body and trying to figure out how to troubleshoot them have not been very fun. I am extremely active, exercise far more than the average person does, and try to take care of myself the best I can to ensure optimal health and fitness. But finding out about all these new physiological shifts of midlife, such as declining estrogen that slow metabolism, is challenging. Just a few years ago, if I knew I needed to burn some extra fat, I would just do a harder, more intense run and for longer. I’d do barre or pilates fusion until it burned. And it always worked then. This isn’t the case anymore, and it isn’t that simple where I am now. I’ve already been going hard for the last few months since coming back from Australia and the Philippines, and I’ve only lost about 3-4 pounds out of the eight I wanted to lose. The extra belly fat is just stuck there and doesn’t want to leave. No one else would notice it other than me, though. Running more intensely is NOT producing fat loss because it doesn’t address this age-related shifts that slow metabolism. Plus at this age, steady-state running can even spike cortisol levels, signaling that the body needs to protect itself and guard the fat more, especially in the abdominal area. I guess that’s why I have a little more pudge around my lower waist than I did pre-weaning.

I guess I will need to embrace brisk incline walks a couple times a week now, in place of 2-3x week runs. I will see if it results in any change because I have a feeling my cortisol must be spiking. I suppose this is the right attitude: test and learn, test and shift when things don’t work! These are the new things I am learning to live with — the fact that I cannot control all the changes happening to my body as easily as I did before.

Transitional weather conundrum: what am I supposed to wear?

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The weather has been pretty wonky here in New York the last couple weeks. This last week, it’s been so cold that even after doing a thorough wash of our down-like winter coats to (originally) put away until next winter, I actually had to take them out again for Kaia and me. Kaia wore hers twice this week, and I wore mine once! It’s April, and we still need to turn the heat on at home…

So today, it was actually supposed to hit low 60s F in the city. Kaia wore a light jacket to school. I wouldn’t leave the house until the afternoon to meet my friend, and I had no idea what I wanted to wear. Because I tend to run cold, I put on a sweater, plus a medium-weight coat on top of it. I walked outside for two blocks and already felt too hot, so I took off my scarf.

Everyone who is into fashion always goes gaga for “transitional” seasons like spring and autumn. These people love their autumn or spring jackets, their cute tops and skirts, and count down the days when they can put together these nice outfits. I, on the other hand, am not at all a fashionista, truly dislike both of those seasons for dressing myself. I never have any idea what to wear, how to layer things. And since I run cold, I tend to overdress, which then means I will need to shed layers, which then means I will need to either carry said layers or stuff them in a bag. And that is so annoying to me. It’s even more annoying now that I have a preschooler, who always insists I carry her crap, as well!

I met my friend for tea today. After she hugged me, she looked me up and down, then back down and up. Then she said, “Are you a bit warm in this?”

Sometimes, I wish I could just go outside wearing a big warm brown paper bag and call it a day. That would be so much simpler.

Finding good things everywhere I go

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I get told I am full of shit for this belief a lot: I truly believe that no matter where you go in the world, whether it’s a different neighborhood, town, city, or country, that there is always good food somewhere there. I think of it like I think of people and beauty: there is beauty when you give a place a chance. There are also good, well-meaning people if you give them a chance and take a little time to get to know them. I know every single place I’ve been to has something good or great that I’ve enjoyed.

So, even for places that I have been to that I have very little strong opinion about, I can still feel myself getting protective over them when people I know make sweeping, negative generalizations about them. I was telling my friends this last weekend that I was going to be in Raleigh this week for work. A friend (who has never been to Raleigh) shared that her husband has had to go to Raleigh a few times for work, and she said he was not a fan; he said there was no good food in Raleigh. As someone who has been to Raleigh once and had three very solid meals there last year, I could feel myself getting annoyed.

“Where did he go, and who chose the places?” I asked.

She said some colleagues chose the restaurants and that he didn’t. To be honest, I don’t think I would have had much more faith if he had chosen them.

I told her that I found a really great bakery cafe there that I loved and was planning to go back this week. And today, I made good on my word: I stopped in for an iced latte, a kouign amann, and two caneles to go. Every bite of that kouign amann was perfection: each bite shattered, had this addictive crunchy sugar coating on the outside, and definitely had seemingly millions of flaky, buttery layers. I got one canele for me and one to bring home for Chris. I ate my canele in flight, over 7 hours after I purchased it. It still had a super crunchy outside and a gooey, soft, tender inside, with a strong vanilla bean flavor. Last August, I had a delicious tapas meal with a work friend. That same trip, my colleagues and I hosted a great happy hour event for a prospective customer that had amazing appetizers. And last night, I had a very noteworthy, crunchy banh xeo generously stuffed with lots of shrimp and pork, along with a pork bao and a calamansi spritz. If you do your due diligence and spend the five minutes or less it takes to look up Google Reviews or some AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT, I highly doubt you would fail to find a good restaurant or six in Raleigh.

Sometimes, I wonder why I feel so frustrated when people make negative over-generalizations about places, especially smaller U.S. cities. It’s clear that I do not live in a small U.S. city — quite the opposite! And I think I do know why: it’s almost indicative of how quickly and based on very few interactions people can draw sweeping judgments and harbor negative stereotypes about other people or groups of people. If you want to get to know anyone or any place, you have to come in with an open mind and an open heart. If you already are coming in from a big city and choose to think that everything in said smaller city must be crap, that will inevitably color whatever experiences you have there — and ultimately taint it. And well, that’s your loss, not that place’s, because it means you are not able to enjoy your time spent there. And since none of us is living forever, we should try to do what we can to at least attempt to enjoy every moment we’re so lucky and privileged to live.

An evolving world whether we want to accept it or not

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I am back in North Carolina again today, but in a different city: Raleigh. I’ll be here for just over 24 hours. While here, I had to do something really annoying in preparation for my onsite work event tomorrow: make a stop at a FedEx location that was out in the middle of nowhere in the boondocks of Durham… just to pick up some posters that our marketing team had sent to our customer’s office park campus, but because the courier could not find the correct building, had to send it back to a local FedEx. After I checked into my hotel and went to my room to get some work done, I went out to get a Lyft to take me to FedEx.

My Lyft driver was really friendly and outgoing. He’s in his late 50s and has lived all over the Northeast of the U.S. Funnily enough, he was actually born in what is now Elmhurst Hospital and grew up in Woodside. I told him I was a transplant from San Francisco and actually spent my first four years in New York in Elmhurst. He did not believe me. He also did not believe me when I told him that Woodside is an up and coming area of Queens, and that trendy bakeries, cafes, and restaurants are actually opening there.

“You are lying!” the driver said, laughing hysterically. “There is NO WAY Woodside or Sunnyside is a place to eat out! It was a complete dump when I lived there, and it has to be just as bad today! High crime, gun shots, drugs everywhere — a place to never be seen! I don’t even want my 20-year-old kid going there!”

I challenged him (because I always do this now, and I own it). “Okay, then,” I said to him. “After you finish this ride, I’m serious: go on your phone. Look up the business From Kora on Google Maps and look up the ratings and reviews. It’s one of the top rated bakery/cafes in all of New York City! People travel from all parts of the city, New Jersey, and even Connecticut to line up and eat pastries from there! GO DO IT! Places change and evolve over time. I realize that’s hard for a lot of people to stomach, but no place stays the same forever.”

Mr. Anti Sunnyside/Woodside still didn’t believe me. He still thought I was joking. Then we drove closer to the FedEx where there were signs for downtown Durham. He started telling me about how when he first moved to the Raleigh-Durham area 30 years ago, downtown Durham and Raleigh were “absolutely disgusting.” No one wanted to go there or be seen in those areas. Today, both places have growing businesses and offices flourishing. Both have great restaurant and bar scenes. People from the ‘burbs actually do come in to dine at these restaurants.

The driver hesitated for a bit and realized his double standard in his own speech. “Okay, so maybe Woodside and Sunnyside are experiencing this change that you claim Woodside and Sunnyside are,” he relented. “Fine — I’ll admit that I haven’t been back to that area in over 30 years. I just haven’t had any reason to, and I definitely had no desire based on what I grew up with!”

Nothing stays the same forever — no town, city, state, country, person, dog, anything. We can either evolve with it and go with the flow, or be doomed to stay in our own old, aging fixed mindsets.

Candied nuts – the simplest addition to salads that can make it pop!

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As someone who has always loved tinkering in the kitchen with different ingredients and recipes, I have always enjoyed candies nuts in salads when I’ve had them. But for some reason, I never thought to make them myself. I know they are pretty simple and straightforward to make: you take a bunch of nuts, coat them in maple syrup or simple syrup, sprinkle a little sea salt on top, and toss them. Then, you bake them at a low-ish temperature in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until they are crystallized. When you are done, you get this magical savory-sweet, high protein, high fiber snack that will quickly impress people when they find out you actually made them yourself. It’s low effort, but high “wow” factor.

Well, I finally got inspired and pushed to make them for a beet and lentil salad with tahini-yogurt dressing recipe from Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Linger cookbook. Honestly, this is not normally a cookbook I would have bought for myself; it’s all about salads, and the entire book is vegetarian. But after being gifted it and going through it, I’ve realized I am quite inspired by Hetty’s take on what a “salad” is, and I love the way she pairs ingredients together. It’s definitely made me rethink food pairings and what flavors complement each other.

So for this salad, (pre cooked) beets and shallots are pickled in a sweet vinegar mixture with spices. Then, you add cooked lentils, toss them both together in olive oil and salt/pepper. And finally, you smother a tahini-yogurt sauce on them, topping them with candied walnuts. And yes, the candied walnuts truly MAKE this salad pop. It’s one of those salads that are very memorable not just because it’s gorgeous to look at with the color contrasts, but because the flavors all meld together really beautifully.

And that, my friends, is a beautiful, delicious salad worth making and eating again and again.