Black Squirrels and Quiet Fridays

Hi, everyone!!

It's one of the last Fridays of the semester so that means classes will be over by next week and then the rush to conquer finals will begin!

But for now, it's a quiet Friday afternoon, and I have Pandora playing in the background. It's funny because when I first turned on Pandora today, one of Sam Smith's songs was the first to play. I was thinking of him earlier today because he's been nominated for 5 Grammy awards this year! There will probably be a 6th nomination later tonight during CBS's Grammy special. I'm so happy for him! He is truly talented and deserves all of this success and more.

I submitted two poems to be published in the December edition of The 67th Street Scribe, and they were both published this week! Writing poetry is one of my biggest passions, and I love when I get to share it with the world. This club just started this semester, and they've been getting some great submissions so definitely check them out! And for you prospective students out there, this is a great way to get your work out there if you end up at Macaulay. :)

Speaking of getting involved, a club that I've mentioned several times on this blog is The Macaulay Messenger. My partner and I are currently editing the last batch of articles for the semester, and we hope to publish by Monday. Writing for The Messenger is another great opportunity to get your work out there once you're attending Macaulay.

On Monday, my friend and I went to Central Park and spent some time enjoying the unusually warm weather. I love that it's only 3 avenues from Hunter, and I can just head over there when I don't feel like being inside. It's beautiful this time of year in a haunting way. The trees have lost their leaves so the leaves are all scattered on the ground. The sky is filled with clouds and everything is in shades of gray with hints of green, brown, and orange/yellow/red.

Beautiful, right?

A black squirrel that we followed around for awhile. haha. 

Studying us from a tree.

S.

Quote of the Week

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” 

~ Rumi, Masnavi i Man'avi, the spiritual couplets of Maula

Thanksgiving Sweet Potato Mash

Hey everyone!

Last weekend I (and everyone in the populated world) went home for Thanksgiving. Since I was 14, my mother and I have made the turkey together. It was a point of pride for me, considering I had no idea how to cook then. Now that I'm at college and reasonably well-versed in cooking, I decided to take on some more responsibility for our Thanksgiving dinner. As in all of the responsibility. Thankfully I was only cooking for 8. Here's a short run-down of all of the stuff I made by myself this Thanksgiving:

• Turkey (17 pounds!)
• Acorn squash with nuts and fruit
• Rice pilaf (this is what we stuff our turkey with)
• Steamed and stir-fry broccoli in oil
• Haricots-verts in garlic and oil
• Salad (huge!)
• Sweet potato mash
• Stuffing (on the side)

It only took me 6 hours to do all of it. The hardest part was the timing of cooking everything so that it was ready and hot for when the guests actually sat down to dinner, but not overcooked and burnt. My point of pride this Thanksgiving was my sweet potato mash. I made it from scratch. Here's how I did it:

• I bought 5 sweet potatoes, peeled them and cut them into small square chunks.
• I boiled the sweet potatoes until they were soft/I could put a fork through them.
• I mashed them by hand with a large fork until they were smooth. You could also whip them use a hand blender, but only if you want them to be a little frothy.
• This was the fun part. Sweet potatoes are only mildly sweet on their own, so I had to add lots of spices and sweetener. I used cinnamon, nutmeg, Vermont maple syrup, maple agave, and rum extract. There are lots of options to sweeten your potatoes, from pure brown sugar and butter, to maple syrup, to agave. You can also add vanilla extract for some extra yummy taste. I've even seen mash with marshmallows. 
• I used healthy doses of each one of these spices, not really measuring, just tasting along the way. Make sure you have lots of people taste it as you go along. Too much nutmeg can ruin it. Too much agave or maple syrup, not so much.
• Another option once your potatoes are boiled and mashed is to bake the potatoes in a ceramic bowl, which brings out the flavor of the spices. 
• Last, you can keep the skins in there if you want to add a little extra crunch to your mash.

I was really scared about these sweet potatoes since I kind of winged the recipe from a couple different online sources, but everyone loved them. The other dishes I did well enough on. The turkey came out well, really juicy. I almost burned half of the vegetables, mostly because I couldn't figure out the timing or heat levels of my stove. It's weird cooking at home after cooking at the dorm for so long. I kind of got used to knowing what the heat levels on the stove at the dorm meant and was baffled trying to figure out what equalled a 6 on the stove at home.

Anyway, I really enjoyed cooking my Thanksgiving dinner. I really like hearing about alternative recipes and options for Thanksgiving dinners. Let me know if you guys have any you really like that you make in your family. New recipes are so fun.

The Big Rush

           Well, I've finally reached that time of the year when students start panicking. With there being only 2 weeks left in this semester and finals week coming up soon, I find myself meeting deadlines one after another. I have about 4 assignments due within the next two weeks and who knows why I didn't start them. But even so, I found my first semester at Hunter College to be very relaxing and fun. As a college student, I now get a lot of free time to plan out my own schedule each week. Is it just me or is college more relaxing than high school?
          Anyway, many of my friends have already begun to ask ourselves what we would like to do after college despite the fact we've only just started college! But I am also guilty of that myself. A lot of what we do in college determines how much opportunities we would get to do anything else after college. This prompts us to plan out the next four years of our college lives without considering how much we would change during those four years. Some people have already decided to limit the kinds of classes they take by doing a double major.
           But personally, I think we should all just enjoy the process of taking different kinds of classes in the beginning. We might find different interests due to one class we take and become inspired us to consider a career in a particular field. Although it is good to plan ahead, we shouldn't rush ourselves to finish college at the expense of our excitement. There is a lot that we can discover in college through classes, extracurriculars, and friends. So for everyone like me who is guilty of trying to make college a big rush, let's try to relax and spend the first year finding ourselves within these vast amount of opportunities we have.

~Justin