Post 6. Recipe for "Everything" Omelet

So this is one of our staple foods for the weekend. It goes really well with home-baked bread.

"Everything" Omelet:

Servings: 2
Ingredients:
- Eggs - 4 (Organic preferred)
- Sour Cream - 2 Table Spoons
- White Ground Pepper - 1 teaspoon
- Red Peppers - 1/4th of a pepper
- Green peppers - 1/4th of a pepper
- Green Onions - 3 whole
- Green Chillies (optional) - 2 whole
- Tomatoes - 1 Large or 2 mediums
- Pre-cooked Ham/Sausages/Turkey (whatever meat you want) - 1/4 pound
- Imported Feta Cheese - 1/6 pound
- Corn Oil

Directions:
Step 1
- Cut all the veggies into small pieces - the smaller the quicker they cook.
- Cut the meat into portions of choice
- Cut the feta cheese into small 1/2 cm squares

Step 2
- Crack the eggs in a medium bowl, and whip them to a frenzy (until it foams and is evenly mixed).
- Dollop the sour cream into the bown and continue to whip until the sour cream breaks up and the small granules mix into the egg.
- Throw in the ground pepper and keep whippin' for about 3 mins at a high speed.
- Set aside

Step 3
(Careful, hot oil and cold water don't mix in a friendly fashion. If you burn yourself, it's not my fault)
- Heat a 12" heavy pan under high heat, and pour about 2 teaspoons of oil when hot.
- Wait for the oil to be medium hot.
- Turn down the heat to medium.
- Throw in the veggies and the meat - stir-fry until the meat is browning or the veggies are crinkling up - about 3 mins.
- Arrange the veggies and meat on the pan in a semi-circle on one half of the pan.
- Turn down the heat to 40%
- Grab the egg mixture, give it a quick whirl, and - this is key - SLOWLY pour the egg mixture on the veggies. Let the egg run around the pan to create a circle, half with veggies and half without.
- Let cook on 40% heat... take care to poke the egg mixture through often so the runny liquid on the top is also cooked. This should take about 3 mins.
- Take the feta and distribute evenly on the side with the veggies. Remember, you're not using any salt in this recipe, so your source of saltiness is the Feta!
- Once the mixture is not runny, turn off the heat.
- Carefully pry the bottom of the side that has no veggies/meat and flip up to cover the side that has the veggies. The flipped side should be a golden yellow/light brown color.
- You're done! You can cut in half and serve on breakfast plates of serve on a large dinner plate for a more intimate brunch!

Enjoy. Let me know if you try this out

Post 5. Weekend's up!

This weekend was rough - but fun, in a rough way. I wanted to fix the bloody toilet which has been broken since last year and clean up the place and have Erin and Tom over for a small dinner at home celebrating Erin's birthday and cook chinese to take to Mom's for her birthday on Sunday... sounds great, but things took forever!

On Saturday, we woke up late, and brunched on one of our famous "everything" omelettes. Recipe to follow soon.

I started working on the toilet at noon. Basically, it was leaking everytime we used it and we didn't know where it was leaking from. From a previous foray, I'd glimpsed that the shutoff valve didn't close right, so there was always water being pushed out through the pipe that connected to the toilet tank. That was definitely a pain, since I couldn't really shut the water off and it kept leaking - I had to use a makeshift bucket to collect the water in, and empty it out every 2 mins while working on the toilet. Not to mention the position of the bucket was directly in the way of the toilet because of the short hose... ugh.

I bought one of those replacement kits from Lowes (our hardware store of choice) and planned to overhaul all the internals in the tank. The process was easy enough - just strip everything out, and put the new parts in. But life's never that simple... Our previous owners had put a plastic inner-tank to reduce water usage, but the inner layer was leaking into the outer layer - which had no gaskets to stop the water seeping out through the holes. Yes, the previous owners were retards.

Anyway, long story short, after much grunting and labor I managed to get the new kit installed, the holes plugged with new gaskets and the leak stopped. Obviously, my bad'ish back was pinging happily by the end of it. But hey, the leak's gone. I still have the faulty shutoff, but since it's connected back to the tank, it's all good (for now!). So while it works temporarily, I'll need to round back on it again. Ramit's coming this weekend and we're gonna demo the bathroom the week after anyway.

By this point, it was 5pm and I was a smelly, tired skunk. Not a combination that puts either Crina or I in a good mood. Fast forward - Erin and Tom came over, we went grocery shopping (Sam's Club and Jewel in Evanston), cooked while watching an episode of Planet Earth, and ate, drank and made merry chatting up till about 1:30am.

This didn't bode well for Sunday, since we had to cook and take lunch to Mom. Which we did, just not as early as we'd hoped - we reached their place at 3pm. We made Kung Pao chicken, Chicken Fried Rice, Chicken Satays with Peanut Sauce and Wonton Soup. Good shit - Foodnetwork.com has easy recipes!

We also get a huge Tiramisu cake for them (since it's not as sweet and both parents could try it). The surprise was finding Ayaan actually at home! It's always great to see my little brother - although he's not little at all.

We came back home around 7:30pm - but we didn't come back empty handed. Mom had made an awesome 3d painting for us - it's 4' by 2' and it has carved metal on wood... I'll post a picture soon. Looks great!

We spent the rest of the night cleaning up the kitchen (which was a mess!) and putting up the art piece from Mom as two spotlights to highlight it. I think now we have enough paintings around the condo - funny how we went from bare to decked in such a short time!

Post 4. One more...

...before I hit the road for today. It's been an eventful one. Yaay, weekend. This weekend is pretty jammed - It's Erin's birthday in the coming week so we might celebrate early on Saturday. Sunday is my mom's birthday, so Crin and I will probably cook some food and take it to her house in Naperville.

Speaking of mom, she's doing better - the first round of chemo treatment is going on, and it's been working well. She's got the usual battery of side-effects, but she's hanging tough and keeping her chin-up. Next round is on April 4th. Please don't send her flowers, etc. Instead, donate what you were going to spend to the ACS.

Mom is being treated at NWH, and getting treatment at the Prentice Women's Hospital/Robert H. Lurie Center. But she's staying at home mostly, with occasional trips to the mall and walks around the park when it's warmer.

Dad has been - and I must emphasize this - super awesome; he's been so good at taking care of her. If you call them at home, make sure you tell him you appreciate what he's doing, because he's my hero.

Heading out - more later.

Post 3. It's That Time of The Day...

...when your brain starts to lag and energy seems to turn itself upside down. Thinking of keywords and SOV can take a toll on you! This is also approximately the time when a big lunch causes me to experience food-coma.

This is the time when, because you don't think, I don't either.

I wish.

Friday is my favorite day of the week - because it preceeds the weekend, duh. But also because I tend to get the most amount of work done of this day. It's weird how the correlation between weekend-motivation and unfinished-work inverses as the weekend nears, culminating in a super productive Friday.

So I found out that my dinner plans for the evening are at Samah, with Crina and her colleagues from work. This is thrilling because I love middle-eastern food, and they serve the best in the city (IMHO, punk). This starts at 7pm. Please, no paparazzi.

I feel this is also a great moment to admit/confess that my best friend in the whole wide world (next to Crina, and in a very hetero sorta way) is Wasama Doja. I wish I could link to his facebook profile, but if you're curious just search on Facebook. I'll post a picture of him some point down the line. Wasama is short, thin, smelly and possibly the most misunderstood/under-rated person in the world. It sucks to be him, but I couldn't change him if I wanted to.

This segways to my other great friend - Jason Varden; also of Facebook fame (thanks to my enflaming pictures). He was recently tasked with a dire responsibility, and something he was born to do - secret to be revealed later this year.

Post 2. Search Never Had It So Good.

Working in the Search industry during this economic downturn makes you forget how badly things are affected in other sectors outside our bubble. Check out this article on CNN.

Chills and shudders as you think whether this can happen to you. The answer? YES. Idiotproof yourself - both SmartMoney and CNN have a couple of good reads.

If you're looking for a job, and you have SEM/SEO experience - check out where I work. I know we're hiring!

Post 1. Because it's better to be late.

Who knew blogging would take this much motivation?

Having witnessed the awesome growth and scope of personal blogging, and taken part (in-so-much-as) in the revolution that is corporate blogging/blog-marketting, it's a weird thing to have a blog of your own.

I think reading other people's blogs is much easier than writing one yourself. Maybe that's just me (obviously, since there are ten-trillion blogs out there) but blogging for me isn't just about me. This is the nature of BLOG - are you really laying your life out there, and doing this as an "inwards" tool? I doubt it.

I've forced myself to start today, however, because of a multitude of reasons. Top of that list is no doubt that I don't want to be last person on the planet to not have a blog. I also think I have more useful and important things to say than most people. Sorry, this is my latent arrogance. Deal.

I've imposed some rules on myself, and we'll see how long this lasts.
1. I will not make this a "review" blog
2. I have no expectations that this blogging motivation is going to last past today
3. I... don't have any other rules. At the moment.

I do want to leave you be with what this (hopefully) will entail:

I'm a marketer at heart - so all things marketing (interactive, mostly).

I'm a cynic and pessimist - so commentary will be biased.

I'm a workaholic and avid reader of all literary genres.

I'm a romantic and am in a relationship that makes me less of a cynic and pessimist.

I'm also on a H1B visa, and have graduate degrees. This is what I do.

I'm writing this at work. So, uh, GTG!