I’m a sneaky friend. I will never, ever serve you food that I know you are allergic to. If you are pescatarian, I will never give you food that has chicken broth or pork bits in it. If you are deathly allergic to crustaceans, there’s no way I’d sneak it into the food I serve you because I don’t really want anyone dying or dialing 911 while at my apartment.

But if you claim to dislike something when I know there’s a strong possibility you would like it, especially when it’s made a certain way, I’m probably going to try to serve it to you. Why? Do you know how many people everyday utter statements like “I don’t usually like <lamb or insert some other food they think is gross>, but I had it at <fill in the restaurant name>, and it was soooo good!” Isn’t that a sign that you probably could like it if it was prepared a certain way?

So I made banh cuon, a Vietnamese steamed rice crepe traditionally filled with minced pork, shrimp, wood ear mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms tonight — a very laborious dish that takes a lot of time and preparation, and I decided, what the hell, I’m going to keep in the shrimp even though my friend coming tonight says she refuses to eat it. When I described all the dishes at the table, I left out the fact that this dish had minced shrimp (she’s probably going to read this blog post now and call me out on my trickery). I felt a little guilty, but I did it anyway.

So she served herself, and she ate it. And she went back for seconds and thirds. And then she raved to me afterwards and even after she left via text how amazing the food was.

She just happily devoured shrimp. I wonder if she had any clue or inkling. I’m wondering if I should tell her this, or if I should just keep it a secret.

In our new building at this time of year, they allow units to volunteer and sign up to give out candy to kiddies who will be trick-or-treating on Halloween afternoon or evening. So I decided to volunteer our apartment. I bought two different types of Kit Kats and a bag of variety M&Ms for the kids. And I told Chris that I want us to re-use our his-and-her matching banana costumes from five years ago so that we can greet the kids in our own costumes. He didn’t seem to be a fan of this.

In my adult life, given I have lived in New York City for all of it other than the years in college, I’ve never really had the joy of greeting trick-or-treaters, reveling in their interesting costumes, and handing out candy to them in their enthusiastic states. I feel like this is an “adult” thing to do to participate in our building’s activity. Now, I just need to get Chris to participate, too.

Tonight, we went to see After the Blast, a show at the Lincoln Center about the aftermath of a huge devastation that happens on earth that results in all human beings needing to retreat underground to survive. No one is able to feel the sun on their face again, or see a blue or grey sky, or even see wind blow through trees or bushes. Every “experience” is simulated, and everything is regulated from the amount of water you drink per day to the ability to move forward and get pregnant and have children. The two protagonists in the play are struggling with fertility, as they’ve been rejected many times by a council in their request to get pregnant. The wife is suffering from depression and wants very badly to go back to earth again, but at the rate they are going, it could take over 100 years to get there, and she will obviously be gone before then.

A few things struck me about the play. One of the first comments she makes when she’s having a seemingly two-sided chat with a robot who has been rented to help her is around stupid things that humans say that are actually terrible. Why do we say “having a blast” to connote “having a good time”? After having a massive explosion on earth that resulted in everyone who survived needing to retreat, that saying has taken on a new meaning for her. And why do humans say “shits and giggles” to mean “having fun,” as well? Is “shit” fun? And when her husband Oliver asks if she remembers when they used to sit in restaurants and have water immediately poured into their glasses.. and then quickly refilled once even half a glass was consumed… isn’t that just the craziest thing, to live in a time and a place where the amount of water was not regulated, where you could drink freely and no one ever admonished you or measured what you were doing?

And then I remembered — that water comment is specifically about the U.S. When I’m in other countries like Australia, they don’t just pour water freely without asking into your glass and throw it out when you are gone. They have carafes of water at the tables with empty glasses at your place mats so you take what you want and leave behind what you don’t. This fucking wasteful country. We have no idea how good we have it and exactly how wasteful we really are.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Vegas for our annual user conference. It’s the first time our conference has been in Las Vegas, so a lot of people are very excited. Given that I do not enjoy clubbing or staying out late to get trashed, Vegas has never really been my scene. But I have a feeling I’m going to be seeing a number of customers lose a lot of money at poker tables and colleagues get so drunk that they won’t remember what they said or did the night before.

We actually had a long training session last Friday on all the procedures for Opticon. One of the things that our head of human resources said that I’d actually never heard before was, you know how people always say, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” Well, in our case, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas because we’re bringing our office to Vegas. For that three-day period, all of Vegas is our office, and so that is how we should behave.

It honestly sounded a bit parental, but I think we all know that we usually don’t have 4-6 drinks with customers in the office and ink deals that way. That’s done at restaurants and at conferences like these.

We have a bigger apartment now, which meant that it was supposed to be easier and more comfortable to host people over for meals. Well, we have space enough for a comfortable four-seater dining room table, and once there’s more than four people over, not all six can sit at the table in a way that makes sense. This proved to be a bit challenging today when we invited four of our friends over for an interactive Vietnamese summer rolling session, which included using your hands to make your own rice rolls. I felt like we were all elbowing each other as we dipped our rice paper into the water, grabbed different herbs and fixings, and added banh xeo to our plates.

I guess none of that really matters when the food is good because it seemed like no one else minded. Everyone busily made their rolls and stuffed food down their throats. One of our friends ate the most we’d probably ever seen her eat in a single sitting. Sometimes the things that annoy you are the things that no one else seems to notice at all.

When I was living in my apartment in Elmhurst, I cooked a lot just for myself. Oftentimes my roommate would also eat food I’d make, but most of the time, I thought about what recipes I wanted to test, and if she happened to like it, then she could eat it. And because she liked to cook, too, I’d occasionally eat her food. But I could never get over the egg waste that happened.

What egg waste? Well, If I am making something that uses only egg yolks, you’re damn well sure that I’m also going to find a use for those egg whites. I paid for those eggs, the whites and the yolks, so I am going to use both parts in some way possible if they need to be separated. Wasting them always looked so painful to me. I remember when my roommate was being very health conscious, and she would omit a yolk or two from her omelets and literally throw them into the garbage. I would literally wince. I couldn’t help it. Then, I’d tell her not to waste them and to save them in a glass with plastic wrap so I could find a use for them (that never happened even once, sadly).

What do you do with egg whites? You could make a meringue or in most of my cases, add it to another egg scramble or omelet or just fry it up on its own. But yolks tend to take a bit more thought. You can just scramble a yolk and eat it because it’s probably going to turn out dry from lack of moisture. The easiest ways to use it up, depending on how many you have, would be to make puddings, custards, or (mmmm) ice cream. This time, with two egg yolks, I decided to make chocolate pudding – exactly four servings of it. And I used my 66% Valrhona dark chocolate. And, it ended up quite rich and decadent. No waste in this apartment.

This week has already started as quite chaotic, as my company is currently prepping for its big conference of the year in Las Vegas, which is happening next week. I am going to be there to help facilitate the event and also to meet with customers, both old and new in my book of business. Not everyone on my team is going, and the team members who aren’t going are expressing jealousy of the ones who are going.

I’m sure the event will be a lot of fun over three days, but at the same time, I don’t think I’d be that disappointed to not go. At these events, networking is everything, and so is “building relationships.” I am really an introvert at the end of the day; I like my quiet time to reflect and be by myself, and I have a really hard time being “always on” at events like this. I am literally planning dinners and drink events with customers that begin at 9:30pm in the evening. And I usually like to sleep between 10:30-11:30, so I cannot even imagine how tired I am going to be next week once the week is over.

Caffeine will be a good friend of mine next week.

I was having a chat with my colleague the other day, who told me that she and her boyfriend, who she lives with, have been trying desperately to find ways to save money in this expensive city. They’re both working on paying back loans from their undergraduate studies, and on top of that, her boyfriend is paying off his law school loans. So when they were evaluating their expenses one day, they were both shocked to find that on average in the last several months, they’ve been spending about $800-900 on groceries per month! That’s over $200 per week! What could they possibly be buying — fois gras and rib-eye steaks every week?!

I told Chris this in disbelief. Granted, I haven’t ever carefully scrutinized our grocery expenses, but that just sounded like too much to me. On average based on memory, we’d spend about $50-60 on groceries per week, and oftentimes, that would include re-stocking up on stables that last a long time, whether that’s olive oil, dried beans, or spices. Chris said it was around $70 per week on average based on Mint data (that’s $280/month). We also would eat out a couple meals during the weekends, but most New Yorkers do that and more, anyway. Oftentimes, my biggest grocery expenses are in January-February of every year because I’m restocking staples, as my rule is that I have to empty out and use “staple” items like spices, rice, beans, canned goods, by the end of the calendar year.

So now she’s trying to save money by having her boyfriend expense both of their dinners every night on his current client by staying at the office until at least 8pm every night (that’s the rule at his firm). I wonder how much they are spending on groceries now. Eeek.