If you can and have the means, I highly recommend donating to Family Meal, a Portland-based nonprofit designed to help food service and agricultural workers during a medical debt crisis. Your help right now is needed more than ever. Thank you.
Wow! The fall term of my senior year is now mostly wrapped up… just a couple papers left to write and then I’m done. How did this term feel so fast yet also like a billion miles per hour?? I think it was my messed up sleep schedule that fell into place after week 5, but I’m going to ignore that…
Anyway, thank you for letting me take a reprieve for last week! It was honestly such a struggle to maintain enough motivation to finish out the last week, and I may or may not be using blogging as a procrastination method… but on this exact day last year I also posted an end of term update, so I thought to myself wow that’d be so fun to do again one year later! So let’s jump into it! 😀
One Year Later…
Last year’s post was primarily about the articles that I had written for the Daily Emerald since it was my first term there. But now it’s been over a year now, and it is still shocking to me how much my writing has changed – not just my beats, but my actual style. This time last year is actually when I started actually committing to writing once a week consistently, all while experimenting and not being certain of the topics I would be writing about. (Ironic isn’t it, as a food blog and the plethora of food topics I could’ve picked, I just… didn’t.)
So what have I been up to? (Besides writing – I’ll mention my favorite pieces at the end)
Here’s a few of the highlights:
Trying new recipes/foods
I tried my best to try to make something new each week, and I think I succeeded!
One of the first things I made was spaghetti carbonara! It lasted me… like a solid four days. I’m not a cheese girl, so I made sure to put in a ton of green onion whenever I was eating it to offset the cheesiness.
I think I recall not having enough cheese when I made it, so it came out a lot less cheesy than I thought it would be. It was also during this time I was kind of obsessed with bacon since I figured out a way to cook it in my conventional oven…
What else, what else…
Oh, I finally made lasagna for the first time as well. You might have seen it when I was live-Tweeting my experience, but it was both cathartic and very delicious. Again, it also lacked enough cheese… I only had half a bag of shredded mozzarella in my fridge, having forgotten to get some on my grocery run RIGHT BEFORE making this lasagna, since I am so unaccustomed to perusing for cheese.
If you don’t already follow me either my Twitter or Instagram – what are you waiting for? You’re missing out on some prime content, haha. But to actually get back on track, I’ll just do a little montaging of other things I made:
- Snickerdoodles (it’s been years)
- Mushroom miso soup
- Stir frying tempeh
- Pancakes (again, literal years since the last time)
- Cream puffs (ditto)
- Roasted broccoli
- Sirloin seasonings
Sure, these aren’t exactly the most exciting or advanced things – but ask yourself when was the last time you made something you had never tried before, was super rusty on, or just plain experimented? It’s a slow process, and I think next term I’m going to be more ambitious – I’m already thinking of the things I want to try next term! But for now, I’m quite pleased with what I was able to try and mostly succeed with.
Took photos of (almost) everything I made and ate
So, this doesn’t sound like a huge feat, but I think in terms of just looking at my own dietary habits and using it as a gauge for how healthy I am, it was kind of successful! I feel like it helped me not want to choose options I knew I would regret later just for instant gratification, and generally having all the foods I made and ate to look back on is kind of its own form of journaling.
I’ve been enjoying experimenting in the kitchen more, and I think documenting all my efforts has been really rewarding in feeling like I’m doing better at navigating in the kitchen – regardless of if I’m actually improving, haha. But hey, progress has to start somewhere, right?
Here’s some of the foods I made and ate!
Started a YouTube channel
Well, after years of wanting to do it, I finally decided to just… do it. I’d always told my closest friends to take away my social media channels if I ever get to the point of wanting to do videos, but the content creators I watched this year really inspired me to let go of the idea of having any expectations that most people go into video making have – fame/clout, money, attention – and do it for the sake of having fun with it. And I have been! I just wish my homework wasn’t so much so I could do more, however I just got a tripod so I’m excited to be able to do more things for myself with these videos.
I actually just posted a fall update GRWM (“get ready with me”) yesterday, as my official third video on my channel. I would be uber grateful if you could check it out, but again, no pressure. My home will always be doing anything in the written form, so don’t worry about me going away from this blog any time soon! 😉
Articles I wrote
This wouldn’t be like last year’s check-in piece if I didn’t mention anything about actual articles I wrote. So here’s a couple that really made me proud:
Asking for a friend: how not to screw love up
Okay, but first can we admire how beautiful this illustration is? I finally got my request of changing the art that accompanies these advice pieces changed and I love it sooooo much.
Anywho, onto the actual topic.
This piece holds a special place in my heart because one, the question broke my heart, but two, at the time I had just broken up with someone and it forced me to really rethink about love and relationships in a way that I hadn’t since my break up of last year. Also, that I think many people regardless of what prior relationship experience they have will always have that lingering thought in the back of their mind, and providing my own input helped me through coming to terms with the breakup and hopefully helped a lot more people in their pursuit of love.
Sticks & Stones is worth a food coma
So out of this term, I didn’t really write a whole lot about food, surprisingly.
However, this review was so much fun to do because one, it was delicious, but two, I think after all the thinking, reading and writing about food in respects outside of food writing that it really improved how I wrote this piece.
If you are in Eugene and have a hankering for meatballs, I highly recommend ordering from Sticks & Stones (#notsponsored) and trying it for yourself!
And what took the most time this term (and why I didn’t write as much, quite frankly) was because I wrote this whopper of a story.
It took me almost three weeks, interviews with both students and faculty, plus cutting it down from 10,000 words (my first draft was really that long) to under 3,000.
I loved covering social media happenings from the summer, so to me this was a no brainer to write about – but it also cemented to me I can’t go into hard news writing because I was very drained after. But it was a great experience – and the second cover story I wrote this year! Still boggles my mind that I did that, but it couldn’t have worked out without the amazing support I have with the rest of the editing staff of the Emerald. They’re truly amazing and what makes my time there so enjoyable.
So that’s it from me for this week – it feels weird to not be writing explicitly about food, but hey, I’ve still got the rest of the year. Should I do another holiday series? Experimenting with baked goods. perhaps? Let me know what you think below, or any other thoughts you may have.
Thanks again for sticking it out with me another week, I really appreciate your investment in me as not just a blogger but a person. It never ceases to surprise me when I get likes on my posts and people follow me – little ‘ol me! I’m so grateful for your continued support, and hope you are in good health and staying safe as winter (for my fellow Northern Hemisphere folks) starts to settle in.
Have you eaten yet? If not, don’t forget to!
Em
Originally published on sikfanmei.home.blog on December 8, 2020.
0 Responses
yes to baked goods!