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.

Our apartment is like a children’s death trap. No, let me reword that. A child would not die running around this apartment. I would probably die from the horror of seeing any little blob running around this apartment and breaking literally everything, from the glass coffee table to the glass legs of my dining room table to even my small but growing collection of European Christmas houses that we have displayed in our living area.

It kind of felt that way today when we invited four friends over, two of whom are a couple with a 1.5 year old son. He was generally very sweet and well behaved, but there was of course the occasional moment when I was watching him and literally holding my breath at what was going to happen next. He’s my child, so I can’t just grab him and hold him down like I may have wanted to. He smashed a squishy football into the plate of frosted pumpkin cinnamon rolls. He slammed his mom’s mobile phone onto the top of our glass coffee table (thankfully, it wasn’t hard enough that any damage was done), and we had to keep him far, far away from the Christmas houses (they are made of ceramic, and I’d probably strangle him if he did anything to them). I was at the most peaceful state when he had passed out from exhaustion. That was a good moment.

I knew this when we got this apartment and the furniture that came with it, but this apartment is not child-proofed. In fact, it’s a terrible place for little children running around. There’s glass furniture everywhere, sharp corners, delicate display pieces from my little houses to our wine decanters. I shared this story with colleague, who said to me that yes, while you do have to child-proof your house once you have kids… you kind of have to child-proof your child and make sure they understand what’s off limits and what’s wrong.

That is so terrifying.

Tonight, we went to see the off-Broadway show Too Heavy for your Pocket, which is set in Nashville during the early 1960s, when racial segregation was the norm, and when whites went to the white bathrooms and the “coloreds” went to the coloreds’ bathrooms. The main character gets a scholarship to attend college, a big deal for him and their family, but he decides to risk it by joining the Freedom Riders’ movement to stand up for black people’s rights. That also means he risks leaving his wife a widow, and a single mom given that she’s actually pregnant with his child (but he doesn’t know this because she’s too angry with him to tell him).

There’s the micro element of how Bowsie’s standing up for black people’s civil rights affects his two friends and wife, and thus his family. But there’s also the macro element of how what he’s doing is contributing to a better life for his future children and future generations of black Americans who simply want to have a seat on a bus and not think about certain sections being for whites vs. blacks. There’s the desire to live in a world where he doesn’t have to have a designated water fountain just for people who have the same colored skin as him. And there’s the desire to just be, and to be equal to everyone else. Maybe he might die, but he’d die for his future generations of black men and women, and for his child who may end up growing up in a world, never knowing what it was like to sit in the back of the bus with other “colored” people.

The feeling I had watching this show was similar to how I felt when Chris and I visited Little Rock Central High School last October with my local friend there. Imagining being one of a handful of people who looked like me, attempting to attend my first day of school full of white people who didn’t want me there would be absolutely terrifying. My friend and I both joked that day that the two of us would be too scared to do what the Little Rock Nine did in the late 1950s. We’re not fearless or radical at all; we have lots of fear. We’d be scared of pain, scared of being spat on and given death threats. And in Bowsie’s case, we’d be scared of dying and never seeing the people we love ever again.

That’s why every time I hear stories of the Freedom Riders or anyone who has protested or risked their lives for civil rights, I always feel a little bit more and more awe and respect for these people. They were thinking about the future lives of others, not even their own lives or the lives of people they knew in their lifetime, and how those lives could be better. They’re far bigger than I could probably ever be.

I woke up this morning, and for the first time in four weeks, I did not wake up coughing. I actually felt better. My throat wasn’t filled with mucus. And my voice actually sounds better than it did yesterday. And as the day progressed, I felt less need to constantly drink liquid to keep my throat moist, and I coughed far less. It looks like the simple over-the-counter treatment regimen is already working for me.

Now, I’m wondering why I didn’t just see my regular doctor sooner to get this referral. This is when it’s bad to avoid seeing the doctor and to just think you will get better naturally on your own. Because how was I supposed to know that my stomach acid was eating away at my throat, and that something as simple as Tums and antacids would be the cure?